Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 118

In the Art Marketing Minute Podcast, you’ll learn how to sell your art, how to market your paintings, and everything else you need to know in order to have a successful art career. 

In this Art Marketing Minute, Eric Rhoads shares thoughts on understanding your strategy for advertising through social media, and how to market your art online without distressing your gallery.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 118 >

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

What questions do you have about selling your art? Visit artmarketing.com/questions or e-mail Eric at [email protected] (include your name and where you’re from) to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

FULL TRANSCRIPT of the Art Marketing Minute:
DISCLAIMER: The following is the output of a transcription from an audio recording of the Art Marketing Minute. Although the transcription is mostly correct, in some cases it is slightly inaccurate due to the recording and/or software transcription.

Announcer:
This is the Art Marketing Minute with Eric Rhoads, author of the Amazon best-selling book, “Make More Money Selling Your Art.” In the marketing minute, we answer your questions to help your art career brought to you by artmarketing.com, the place to go to learn more about marketing. Now, here’s your host, art magazine publisher, Eric Rhoads.

Eric Rhoads:
In the art marketing minute, my goal is to answer your questions so that you can get answers. Right. Okay, so upload your questions at artmarketing.com/questions. Or you can email me [email protected]. Or just send me a note at Eric at plein air magazine, whatever cranks your clock. Amandine, my producer from France, who probably enjoyed the segment because she probably felt like she was at home. Amandine is going to ask our first question.

Amandine:
The first question is from Anthony Mankey, Jr. from Michigan. I’ve been advertising through Facebook ads at $10 a day for a little over two months now with no sales. I am advertising in multiple countries. My question is, should I advertise in America only to get better results?

Eric Rhoads:
Well, this is a loaded question. And one of the things that happens, Malcolm excuse me, Anthony from Malka, Michigan Sir, one of the things that happens Anthony is we oftentimes will pick a tactic before we pick a strategy. And a tactic is advertising on Facebook or Instagram or advertising in a magazine or advertising on a website or sending a direct marketing piece. Those are tactics. But the strategy is where you need to start, you need to ask yourself, What am I what is my primary goal for the year? What am I going to accomplish? And then once you understand that, it changes what your tactics will be. Because let’s say you said, my goal for the year is to get a list of 5000 people who are interested in taking workshops from artists, that would be one strategy another might be I want to get a list of 5000 people who are interested in my paintings. So if you had, if that were your strategy, then your Facebook ads would be all about that it wouldn’t be about trying to sell them a painting, it would be trying to get them to you would be trying to sell them a click, click through for my free my free ebook on the 10 best painting tips I’ve ever done or ever had or the 10 best paintings I’ve ever done. So then if you have the ability to build your list, then you have the ability to talk to your list more frequently because you have their emails. And then from that you have a chance of repetition. And we all know that. If you’ve listened to this a lot, you know that repetition sells products. So but why did it not work? Well, first off, let me answer your question, Should you concentrate on America only to get better results? Yeah, probably, as a matter of fact, I would concentrate. If you take your $10 a month, I would can’t concentrate on one small area. And because that way, you get an opportunity for more repetition. But let’s let’s go back. And let’s talk a little bit about Facebook advertising. I do a lot of Facebook advertising. I spend so much money on Facebook, that when I had a problem with Facebook, they fixed it real quickly because we’re a big advertiser. So that’s I can’t tell you the amount but it’s hundreds of 1000s of dollars that I spend on Facebook and Instagram, I spend money on tick tock, I spend money on everything. Because it’s important to me, but I only spend money if I’m getting a return and a return means I’m getting at least breakeven and hopefully at least one times more, you know, in other words, a two to one on my spend. So if I spend $10 I want to get $20 back, that’s not easy to accomplish, especially with a first order. And there’s a lot of sophisticated technology and a lot of sophisticated algorithm and a lot of other things that get behind this. That will really be important to understand if you’re going to be a Facebook advertiser, in my particular case, I, I study this stuff all day, every day, I focus on it, I learn about it. And yet I still employ experts, either in my own company or experts outside of my company who have skill sets that I don’t have, because somebody who lives in that world all day, every day, might have a chance of doing better for you. Now, I have had agencies that have completely ripped me off, I’ve had agencies that have made me a lot of money. I’ve had agencies that have gotten me no progress, but their intent wasn’t to rip me off. So you got to be careful about that kind of a thing. And you’re in a little different world than I am. Because, you know, my numbers are a lot different. But start with your tactic, I mean, start with your strategy, and then move to your tactic. Now, there’s also a lot of other things, Facebook is not working for you for probably a couple of reasons. First off, I believe that you have to have multiple impressions on something, before someone will buy it. Statistically, someone needs to actually physically see something seven times before they’re willing to buy it. There are exceptions to that rule, I have seen an ad on Instagram and bought it instantly. But I’ve also seen things hit over and over and over and over again. And I wasn’t interested. But the more times I saw them, the more I got interested and then maybe eventually I bought something. And so that’s the idea of multiple impressions. And that’s true for any form of advertising is you’ve got to get multiple impressions. And so if you’re, if you’re spending in a wide area, $10 a week, or a day or whatever you’re spending, you’re not likely to get that concentration. So if you have a concentrated audience, and you spend more in that concentrated audience, you might get more Impressionism, more impressions. But it’s hard to accomplish that. And Facebook, it’s hard to control it. Facebook works essentially, on a bidding system, whoever spends the most money to get in front of a category, or a keyword is the one who is gonna get seen the most. And so, right I did a campaign the other day, and the price to get in front of someone was $100, to get in front of one person. And if I spent $10, that $10 would never get in front of them now. Not since not everybody’s got to buy, I got to spend, you know, 10 times that or 20 times that to be able to make it effective. So you know, if your cost to acquire a customer is $100. That’s okay. The goal really is to outspend everybody else because if you can outspend them as long as you’re getting a return on your money, then you’re going to get more business. But most of us look at our most of us should look at this as a marketing budget, how much are you willing to spend? Now, if you had let’s say you’re selling a painting for $2,000? And you say to yourself, how much am I willing to sell that? How much am I willing to spend to get a $2,000 sale? Well, a typical in marketing, depending on what industry you’re in, is to spend 10%, some people spend 5%, if you’re in the cosmetics industry, you might be spending 30% Because you have more to spend because the cost of the product is lower, and you want to develop customers. So you might be willing to get some customers early, by spending more, and then turn them into secondary customers write it meaning, sell them a second piece, the third piece, and that’s the way advertising really should work anyways, as is get them out on a kind of a loss leader, so to speak something that is affordable, and get them in love with you and then offer something else to them. So you can get your money back that way from the second purchase or the third purchase. You know, you spent 60 days at $10 a day $600. It’s a lot of money. If it’s not working in Facebook environment and Instagram environment and probably in Tiktok environment, you can actually spend 10 or 20 bucks in 124 hour period of time and find out if people are clicking on your response and on your ad and responding to it. You don’t have to take two months till you change things. And so you probably maybe throw away a little bit too much money there where that the thing that makes people click through is Do I have a compelling offer. And that means that the ad that you write has to be something that people are interested in has to get their attention. What’s the headline that’s going to get their attention if the headline is is about, oh, you should see the work of Eric Rhoads artists they’re going to be like Yan boring. If it says look at the compelling images this artist is doing Then you’re gonna want to click through, you know, and then you’ve got to try to figure out how to convert them to a sale. Typically, in a Facebook environment or an Instagram environment, a low cost under $25 is the best way to get somebody to buy something free is even better. But then you’ve got to get them free. And if you spent if you have free, sometimes free people who buy under, or take something free, don’t spend money to get something for $5, at least they’re willing to spend money, then you get them out on a $5 sale for a brief view of something, and then maybe you sell them something more. So there’s a lot to all of this, chances are, it’s about copy. It’s about concentration, there’s always problems. But focus on reinventing yourself and seeing experiment, you know, we sometimes will run 30 or 40 or 50 ad campaigns, and they don’t work and we try to fix them fast. And, keep testing things till they work. Testing is always the key. I love concentrated off audiences because ultimately, if I can get more repetition in front of somebody, they’re more likely to want what I have to offer. And that’s what it really boils down to, is, you know, you can’t force anybody to want something, you can put something in front of someone and hope that they have the desire to buy it. You can’t force them to buy. And so you’ve got to make sure that it’s a group of people who are gonna want to have that desire. And that’s tricky. Okay, comedy. And what’s our next question?

Amandine:
The second question is from Christina from Chicago, Illinois. How do you market your fine art online without distressing your gallery?

Eric Rhoads:
Well, Christina, that is a terrific question. And distressing, is a really good word. So imagine this, put yourself in their shoes for a minute, you rent a space, a beautiful storefront, in a nice part of the community. You haven’t remodeled you put lights in, you haven’t lit you make arrangements with 20 3040 Top Artists. You get their work and your gallery you spend money advertising to track people you hold shows you hold cocktail parties, you hold openings, and then suddenly find out your artist is selling online direct, often at a lower price, how’s that gonna make you feel? You want to think about the big picture here, you know, if you’re wanting to sell through galleries, you need to be thinking about long-term relationships versus short-term game. Really top top top-tier galleries will not allow their artists to sell direct. And if they do, they kick them out of the gallery. Now, if this gallerist, I can think of a gallery in New York, for instance, that, you know, they’re selling 50 and 100,000 $200,000 paintings, they’re going to make your year for you if they’re successful. But you could blow it all by selling direct because you decided to get greedy. And so that’s something you got to be careful about. Now, some galleries will tolerate a little bit of direct sales in certain conditions. For instance, I have an artist friend who has a deal with his galleries, that he will only offer things online in a daily painting environment that are unframed, and that are under a certain size, maybe under eight by 10. And within a certain price range. But the bigger things always go to the gallery, and he never sells direct in those cases. Most artists I know, still don’t sell too much online, some do, but not a lot. You know, in the grand scheme of things, it’s not as many as you would think we all hear about these big success stories and, and we all think, well that’s gonna happen to us. There are there are certainly ways to do it. And I teach that in some of my courses in my book, but you know, selling from a gallery gives you an advantage because they are talking about you. They’re building your customer base, they’re building a collector base. They know the market, they they’re advertising and promoting bringing people in, are spending money, they’re talking to customers, they’re shipping paintings, they’re collecting the money, they’re dealing with refunds, they’re selling, they’re following up. And those things matter because you’re gonna have to do all of that yourself if you’re selling directly and then you’re not doing what you should be doing, which is painting. That’s how I feel about it. And when I’m in some galleries and they do a lot of work for me, and there’s still work I have to do like shipping and so on but the one thing I would say is never ever ever ever sell direct to a galleries client. I was in a gallery show I was only in the show for two three weeks. I sold a painting several paintings, but I sold a painting to this guy, and he contacted me He on Instagram and he said, Hey, I bought some paintings from you at the show. Do you have anything else I can see. And so I sent him a note. And I sent pictures. And I sold him, three, four or five other paintings. And when the money came in, I contacted the gallery. And I told him Listen, even though the show was over, and even though technically, I’m not in your gallery, and even though I don’t technically owe you any money, I would not have that customer if it weren’t for you. So I’m going to send you a commission. In my particular case, I gave an option. I said, I’ll send you a cash Commission, or I’ll pay you in some other way, offered something to them. And they ended up picking one of the two. And they were happy that I did that. And they said, Gee, nobody does that. You have integrity, we get screwed over by artists all the time. Now, I’ll tell you another story. I was at a gallery in Tucson, and I was sitting there meeting with the owner. And I said, Do you mind if I take these paintings down? While I’m talking to you? I said, Sure. Why are you taking them down? He said, well, a guy walked into the gallery. He said, I love that painting. But here’s how much I’m willing to pay for it. I said, No, the guy walked out, he contacted the artists direct, the artist called me and made up a story about why they needed that painting back. And then the guy ended up calling the gallery and said, hey, just FYI, I just want you to know, I bought it direct from the artists for 50% off. So the gallery fired that artist, and the gallery told all his friends at other galleries in town that the artists had wronged him. And that gallery was sending back all the paintings and no longer representing that artist. And that artist is probably blackballed among that those friends don’t play those games, they’re short-term thinking they will hurt you. You know, the reality is that art galleries do a lot of work, maybe they’re not doing the work you think they should be doing. But they’re doing all the work that I described, they’re spending money, they’re promoting you, or they should be promoting you. And ultimately, they will help you sell now, if they’re not selling after a while, then have a discussion with them move out of the gallery or something else, but don’t violate them. That’s, that’s tricky. So lots of things you can do to sell direct paintings or direct prints or other things, but you got to be really careful because some galleries look at that as poison and they don’t want to deal with it. Just a thought, if you’re gonna do it, then maybe I have friends who are not in galleries at all, and they do direct selling, and they’re very effective at it. So there’s a lot of ways you can do it. So just consider the options because you don’t want to hurt your reputation. I have stories of people who have done things like this 10 years ago, 15 years ago, that people still talk about, they still won’t touch because they were burned. You don’t want to be that person. Okay, that’s today’s art marketing minute.

Announcer:
This has been the marketing minute with Eric Rhoads. You can learn more at artmarketing.com.

How to Submit Your Art Marketing Questions: What questions do you have about selling your art? Submit it at artmarketing.com/questions to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

By |2023-01-25T16:01:08-05:00February 10th, 2023|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|0 Comments

Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 113

In the Art Marketing Minute Podcast, you’ll learn how to sell your art, how to market your paintings and everything else you need to know in order to have a successful art career. Each episode answers questions from artists by host Eric Rhoads, author of “Make More Money Selling Your Art,” publisher of several art magazines and newsletters, and author of ArtMarketing.com. 

In this Art Marketing Minute, Eric Rhoads answers the questions: “Should you hire a marketing specialist?” and “How can you implement TikTok as a marketing tool?”

Have a question about how to sell your art? Ask Eric at artmarketing.com/questions.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 113 >

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

What questions do you have about selling your art? Email Eric today at [email protected] (include your name and where you’re from) to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

FULL TRANSCRIPT of the Art Marketing Minute:
DISCLAIMER: The following is the output of a transcription from an audio recording of the Art Marketing Minute. Although the transcription is mostly correct, in some cases it is slightly inaccurate due to the recording and/or software transcription.

Announcer:
This is the Art Marketing Minute with Eric Rhoads, author of the Amazon best-selling book, “Make More Money Selling Your Art.” In the marketing minute, we answer your questions to help your art career brought to you by artmarketing.com, the place to go to learn more about marketing. Now, here’s your host, art magazine publisher, Eric Rhoads.

Eric Rhoads:
Amandine, my producer is going to ask the first question.

Amandine:
The first question is from Deb Price Kennedy from Centerville, Massachusetts. Should I hire a marketing specialist?

Eric Rhoads:
Should I hire a marketing specialist? Thank you Amandine, you know, should I buy a new car? Should I drink a coke at dinner? You know that? I mean, there’s got to be more to the question. So I don’t need to be critical, Deb, but it’s impossible to answer that question. Because I don’t have any data points. And one thing that you will learn, or you might learn if you really get good at marketing is that everything is about data points, right? Because you have data points that inform your decisions. You know, in my world, it’s like, how many people opened up an email? And how many people read that email and clicked on something, those are data points, and you are always comparing one against the other trying to better yourself and get those data points. I don’t know why you would be asking the question. So I’m going to assume a couple of things. But I don’t know what your situation is. And that’s why I can’t answer it for you exactly. But let’s, let’s say for instance, that you’re an artist, and you’re making $10,000 a year and I tend to use round round numbers just to make it easy. And your goal is to get to $20,000. Well, when you think about it, that’s doubling your business. That’s a pretty big deal. Most people can’t figure out how to double their business in one year. I’ve tried that many times, I’ve had a chance to do it a couple of times. So it’s not exactly easy. But you have to ask yourself, if Let’s assume I could go from 10,000 a year to $20,000 a year, how much would I pay to go to $20,000? A year? But you know, if I’m at 10, and I go to 20? How much would I pay to get there? Because that’s kind of how a marketer thinks now I would I would be looking at that and saying, Would I be willing to pay 10,000 to get 10,000? And most people go, Well, that’s stupid. Why would you do that? And the reason is, let’s say, for 10, last 10 years, I’ve been doing 10,000 a year. And next year, I do 20, but it costs me 10,000 To get that 20. But that’s okay, I’m still at the 10,000 I had, but now my baseline if I do 20,000 Every year for the next 10 years, I’ve paid 10,000 to get myself to a $20,000 range. And it might be worthwhile. And that’s where an advisor can help you now, most of us look for metrics that are not quite that extreme. So we might look and say hey, to get 10,000 would I pay 10% of that? Absolutely. Would I pay? 20%? Absolutely. Would I pay 50%? Maybe not as absolutely, but it depends on you. And of course it depends on your costs and cost of delivering these paintings and all the other things that do that but you’d be ahead of the game. And if I paid 10 grand to get to 20,000 and another 10 grand to get to 30,000 and another 10 grand to get to 40,000 if there was a way to do it, I would probably do it because then you’re getting your baseline hire. Now, I might say what am I willing to pay for that 10 grand increase. And it depends, you know, depends on it as the advice Good advice isn’t cheap. Now I charge $5,500 an hour for consulting. I try not to do it very much. And that’s why I charged $5,500 an hour because I don’t have an hour very often. But it’s time now for me to raise my rates. Because now that I’m in demand, I have to get my rates up. Because when you’re in demand, you have to get your rates up. I had a watch company it was Seiko actually hired me as a consultant for them on a tech project because I did that for a while. And they actually paid me enough money that they bought me a whole new house from that money. But the amount of money which seemed like a lot of money to me, to them, it was like, Hey, he he 20 XStar business, it’s certainly worth doing that. So that’s the way you want to look at it is what am I willing to pay? And but the first thing you’ve got to start, you got to backup because you’re way ahead of yourself. The first thing is, like, what is my target outcome? Where do I want to be? Because target outcome makes makes a huge difference. Now, there’s a lot of bogus, fraudulent HYPEE art marketing and marketing advice out there. And a lot of it is just complete nonsense. In my in my particular case, I hope it’s not nonsense, but most of it, I’ve learned by doing it, and I made a lot of stupid and expensive mistakes learning it. But there are two answers to any problem. What are those two answers? It’s two resources, you can either have the resource of time, or you can have the resource of money. If you’re busy, like I tend to be, I don’t have any time. But I have plenty of money. If I spend money to solve a problem, then I’m ahead of the game. Because if I don’t have to spend three months solving that problem, or six months or a year, then I’m ahead of the game, right. So a lot of us don’t have money. And so what we do have is we have time, you can oftentimes if you don’t have the money, you oftentimes have the time, you could spend time. So like I try to master things all the time, I want to learn things, I’m always taking courses, sometimes they’re courses that have nothing to do with anything I’m doing just because I want to learn it. But if I want to master something that I put aside some time, it might be a month, it might be three months, it might be three years. But I think anybody can master anything within about two years. And you know, if you focus all your time and energy on that, if you want to focus your time and energy on growing your business, then you can do that yourself, you don’t need somebody else to do it. And I think anybody can change their trajectory in life or their trajectory in business. In about 90 days, if you stop to think about it, you come up with a plan and you implement it, you can get there in a very quick amount of time now. I read like a madman, I buy courses, I buy lots of courses, I probably spent five or $7,000 on courses. You know, I have I people out there that buy a video from time to time to improve as a painter, I have other people who buy every one that I put out there, and to see the difference that they’re making in you know, in their work, because they’re studying, they’re really serious about it. So you can become an expert. The other thing you got to keep in mind is what was true in marketing a year ago isn’t even true today. Some of it is there are some principles that never change. But there are things that are changing fast and to be a pro, you have to invest your time to stay ahead of it. Now, why do I say that if you’re going to hire an expert, let them do it. The problem is that you need to be able to manage the person or people that you are having advise you, and they’re gonna see right through you if you don’t know what you’re doing, and they’re gonna tell you things that that some are gonna be honest, some are gonna be dishonest, some just don’t know. And so you have to learn the process. So you need to learn it yourself, no matter what you may not have to get the depth of knowledge that they know, but you need to know enough to ask the right questions and drive them in the right direction. Now I have lots of people who work for me, I have lots of people who are experts, some are employees, some are freelancers, some are agencies, but I got to know their business pretty well. Because I got to be able to stay on top of them and owning any business, a small art business included. You got to know these things. And so an expert might help you. But you got to know enough about it. You can’t just you can delegate but you can’t advocate you got to stay involved in the process. So the other thing is that really you gotta go back to the root of all of this room. Remember, anytime you want to do anything, you need to start with what is the end in mind, it’s real easy to say, well, I want to hire an expert. Why do you want to hire an expert? What do you want to achieve? How much money do you want to make? What else is important other than money? What is it about reputation? Or what is it about your pricing? Or what is it about getting into better galleries? You know, these things matter to they’re not always directly about the money? And so first, you got to start with, what do I want to accomplish? What’s my timeline to get there? How much is it worth it to me? If I spend this money and it doesn’t work? Am I bankrupt? Am I out of money? What if this expert isn’t any good, I hired an ad agency, no names, I hired an ad agency. In another country, they were supposed to be one of the best in the world, everybody was raving about them. I wrote them a very, very big check for a project that I was doing. And they completely bombed, they completely failed. I was completely disappointed because I really wanted to work. And, you know, sometimes these things happen, you know, they didn’t have any experience in the thing I was trying to do. But they believed that their system would work for that they were wrong. I was wrong. So anyway, that’s, that’s the long and short of it, you got to kind of know where you’re going first, and then what you want to accomplish. So that’s a long answer to a short question Amandine, what’s next?

Amandine:
The second question is from Gabriel from Lake St. Louis, Missouri, how to implement TikTok as a marketing tool.

Eric Rhoads:
How do I implement TikTok as a marketing tool? Well, Gabriel, you’ve stated this correctly, you see all things that involves tactics are tools. And using tiktok as a marketing is a tool, right? using Instagram as a tool, using a magazine as a tool using a website is a tool. Those are all tools, they’re tactics. And if you were working on your car, let’s assume you had some mechanical skill, which I don’t have much of, you don’t use a hammer to loosen a bolt. Why? Well, first off, you’re going to ruin the bolt, you might break the bolt, you need the right tool, right. So you need, you need somebody who’s going to hand you the right tool, or you need to go find the right tool, the right socket, or whatever. So imagine if you’re watching trends, and you’re watching and everybody out there in the world is using hammers to repair their cars. And it’s like everybody’s doing it, I got to do it. Why? Because everybody’s doing it. That’s kind of how we think it’s very seductive. You want to do what everybody else is doing. So you start using a hammer, even though you don’t need a hammer. The point being that you got to know what you need, we get seduced by things like TikTok and social media and Instagram and reels and all the fun stuff. Because we see these YouTube stars making millions and you see tik tok stars making millions, you know, because they’re just dancing. And they do it all the time. And what we don’t see is that these kids are spending 810 hours a day sometimes, you know, seven days a week writing, recording, creating their reels, and we don’t see the struggle that they had to get there. And some of them didn’t have a struggle. You know, what Mr. Beast does on YouTube takes a lot of time and a lot of writing and a lot of planning a lot of people to pull it off and a lot of money. But he makes it look easy. But it’s not easy guarantee that so a habit that we all have is to get seduced by shiny objects, like tik tok. But first you got to ask yourself, what needs to happen. It’s kind of like what I was talking about before goes back to the idea of goals. What do I need to accomplish? What are my goals? What do I want TikTok? Or Snapchat or Instagram to do for me? And are they the right or the wrong tools to get the job done? Just you know, marketing, we all tend to go for what everybody else is doing. Remember, got milk and everybody started copying got milk. That whole campaign did not move the needle on milk sales. And everybody thinks it did. So they started doing you know, got pizza. The whole campaign was developed because they wanted to make the Board of Directors feel like they were doing something to move the needle, but it didn’t work. And yet everybody copied it was unique. It was fun. Don’t copy until you know why the copying what you know what you’re copying because there’s more to it. Now, I have lots of big Instagram sites. Some of them have hundreds and 1000s of followers. It’s taken me a long time to get there. It’s taken a lot of effort. You know my personal page is only about 17,000. My plein air mag pages 120,000. My realism today pages 205,000. But my Tik Tok is still under 1000. You know, even though I’m getting 30 40,000 views, I’m not getting followers. But none of that matters unless you have a specific purpose. I have a specific purpose, I have a specific plan. I monitor metrics for very specific reason. But you got to keep in mind that you know, when you see somebody that’s got 100,000 followers, you go to I need 100,000 followers, do you really? Why? What are you going to do with it? How are you going to turn it into money? Otherwise, it’s just vanity metrics. Getting followers on social media is cool. But unless you’re accomplishing a very specific purpose from that, and it might be branding, it might be awareness, it might be actual physical money, it might be finding ways to get email addresses, you know, there’s a lot of different things you can do. But you need to understand it first. So you need what I call a conversion plan. How do you get them to buy? Just getting out on Tiktok? isn’t enough? You need to know what you know, what is the process? Now, you can easily do this on social media easily. It’s It’s simple. It’s not easy, right? I guess it’s simply do it on social media. But it does require a plan. And it requires a lot of work. Now, people don’t usually give you money until you ask for the order. So if you’re going to say I want to make money selling paintings on TikTok, you got to figure out how to make it work, how to get him to the right place, how to make them come to you to a place where they can buy your painting, right. So there’s a whole lot to that. But to answer your question, if you have put the time aside daily, you come up with a compelling content, and you start putting it out there. If it’s good, it builds and Tiktok and Instagram and others have an algorithm, if they start seeing a lot of heat and a lot of activity, they’re going to put it more front more people in front of it, because they want them to click on it too, because that increases their metrics. And so you know, you just got to get it out there. And there’s lots of courses about how to sell on Instagram and Tiktok. And I bought one of them once and it was kind of useless. And by the way, it’s constantly changing. But you know, it’s about frequency. It’s about posting frequently. I post daily on Tik Tok, which are cuts from my art school live daily on YouTube. And we just cut them into 32nd reels or one minute reels. And then we put them up there and we put them everywhere we, we repurpose them on Facebook, we repurpose them on Instagram and so on. We put them out on you know, everything LinkedIn, et cetera. So, but if I were going to do it, right, for TikTok, if I had the time, I would do custom content specifically for TikTok with a very specific purpose in mind. That’s not important to me right now. But that might be what you should do. Now, the other thing is, there’s a very big possibility. This is gonna sound crazy, but there’s a big possibility TikTok is gonna go away. How? Why? Because the US government’s trying to shut it down because it’s sucking data from people, including you. And it’s all going to China. I don’t want to get into political discussions. I don’t even understand it. But there’s an awful lot of talk about shutting it down. There was talk before it didn’t happen. Part of it got sold, supposedly, but data’s still going in. So TikTok may not be the answer. And by the way, you know, I mean, if you look back at MySpace, it was like the hottest thing and then it went away, it can happen now maybe less likely to happen with something that’s strong, but you know, there’s gonna always be something that’ll replace it. There’s always new shiny objects, the new social media, there’s some new ones that are coming out that are right around the corner. So define what you want to achieve. get exact detail as possible about what you want to achieve, what you stand for what you want to be known for. And then once your strategy is determined, then you go to tactics. TikTok is a tactic.

Well, this has been the art marketing minute with me. Eric Rhoads. My goal in life is to eliminate the idea of the starving artist to help your dreams actually come true. So if you want to submit questions, simply email [email protected]. And to learn more about marketing ideas, you can visit Artmarketing.com. Thanks for listening.

How to Submit Your Art Marketing Questions: What questions do you have about selling your art? Email Eric today at [email protected] (include your name and where you’re from) to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.


> Visit EricRhoads.com (Publisher of ArtMarketing.com) to learn about opportunities for artists and art collectors, including:

  • Art retreats
  • International art trips
  • Art conventions
  • Art workshops (in person and online)
  • And more!
By |2022-12-20T11:09:45-05:00January 6th, 2023|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|0 Comments

Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 94

In the Art Marketing Minute Podcast, you’ll learn how to sell your art, how to market your paintings, and everything else you need to know in order to have a successful art career. Each episode answers questions from artists by host Eric Rhoads, author of “Make More Money Selling Your Art,” publisher of several art magazines and newsletters, and author of ArtMarketing.com. 

In this Art Marketing Minute, Eric Rhoads explains if you should pay for a sponsored post on social media and, before you spend a dime, what to consider; advice for writing an informative and engaging artist bio.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 94 >

 

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

What questions do you have about selling your art? Email Eric today at [email protected] (include your name and where you’re from) to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

FULL TRANSCRIPT of the Art Marketing Minute:
DISCLAIMER: The following is the output of a transcription from an audio recording of the Art Marketing Minute. Although the transcription is mostly correct, in some cases it is slightly inaccurate due to the recording and/or software transcription.

Announcer:
This is the Art Marketing Minute with Eric Rhoads, author of the Amazon best selling book, “Make More Money Selling Your Art.” In the marketing minute we answer your questions to help your art career brought to you by artmarketing.com, the place to go to learn more about marketing. Now, here’s your host, arts magazine publisher, Eric Rhoads.

Eric Rhoads:

In the marketing minute I try to answer your marketing questions and you can always email me those questions or anything else. I’m always there for you. I answer every single email [email protected]. Here is a question from molucca mc. Art. I don’t know what that is, must be a Twitter handle or something. Malachy MC says, should an artist pay for sponsored posts? Or not? I’m assuming the question is about sponsored posts on social media like Facebook or Instagram. I have a rule before I spend a dime on anything. I try to determine the following things. And these are important get a pen. Number one, what is my goal and my expected outcome from my ad? What do I hope will happen? Am I trying to get people to look at my art? Am I trying to get them to subscribe to my newsletter? Do I want them to follow me? Do I want them to attend a workshop? What’s the one thing? Of course you want it all? But what’s the one thing? Because that determines how you do it? Secondly, how do I get at least double my investment back? If I spend $10, then I personally expect to get $20 back then hopefully a lot more. So what must happen for money to come back? What a lot of people find out when they ask themselves these questions is it’s not easy to buy on your website or on your social media, there may be things that are blocking. So if I’m not selling something on the spot, I have to ask myself, what’s the value to me? So the value is branding? Of course, it’s valuable to get them on your newsletter, of course, it’s valuable to get a name. But what if you get 10 people to subscribe and it costs $10 each? Is it worth it? Is it worth $100? Each? Is it worth $1,000? Each? How do you know? If you have no idea if they’re art buyers, art lovers who don’t buy, or artists who may not buy? Then don’t spend the money? Go to places that you can target who’s my exact target? How do I reach them? And then can I afford repetition? You see if you cannot afford repetition? You shouldn’t be advertising? Because repetition is one of the three legs of advertising the three legs of advertising is media market and message. What media are you using? What is the market? And what is the message and and the message really comes down to you know your headlines and the content. But can I afford the repetition repetition is so important. It’s rare that anybody responds to any marketing from one ad or one repetition. But if you can get somebody to see an ad seven to 10 times within a certain period of time, it can work really, really well for you. I’ve I’ve watched artists go from poppers to having a lot of money because they just stick with it, they have the repetition takes a while. But if you’re willing to be patient, that’s what you need to do repetition. And you also want to make sure that if you’re reaching the right kind of people, the kind of people who buy so if I can’t afford to make sure that the ad reaches the same person seven to 10 times, it won’t work. And typically, if I buy advertising, I buy advertising for long periods of time, I usually sign 234 year contracts. And the reason I do that is because I know that it’s that repetition over time that builds momentum over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. One time I got talked into buying an ad in an auction house magazine, and I thought well, I’m going to reach all these rich collectors and I’m going to sell a lot a lot of subscriptions to fine art connoisseur magazine, I ran a full page ad I paid many, many, many, many, many 1000s I think it was $18,000 for it. And I sold exactly two subscriptions. If I had to run that ad over and over and over and over again, I probably would have sold several 1000 subscriptions but I didn’t do that. And of course I didn’t need that big of an ad to do that. So I learned my lesson. That’s one of the ways we we all learn is that we’d make mistakes. So before you spend any money, don’t throw your money away without knowing your goals and wedding won’t know your outcome. There’s also a lot of people throw their money away with things like boost this post or sponsoring an ad yet they have no goals, no outcomes, no specific financial goals. And without those things you’re throwing money away whether it’s social media ads or ads in one of my magazines, fine art connoisseur plein air. It’s not smart business until you have a goal. My sales organization will take you through your goals and if you don’t Normally, they’ll help you understand what might be the right strategy to have in mind. So keep that in mind.

Next question is from David Wood. David says, do you have any advice on writing an informative and engaging artist bio? David, the answer is yes. Thanks for asking, I have a rule. My role is Zig, when everyone else Zags. I get sent and read or exposed to literally hundreds of artists BIOS, and I’m usually gone within 10 seconds, because they’re boring. There is a rule in all advertising and everything that you do, whether it’s your website, whether it’s your business cards, whether it’s your ads, whether it is your artists bio, everything you need to do, everything you do needs to have headlines that sell and selling is really relating to people finding something that really gets their attention, you need a headline that makes me want to read the rest of the copy it you have to assume that if they don’t read the headline, they won’t read the first line, if they don’t read the first line, they won’t read the second line, if they don’t, there’s a guy by the name of Sugarman, who wrote a book for Advertising Age, and he talks about this, he calls it the slide, you got to get people to read that headline, enough people to read it. And of course, if you’re doing email, you got to get them to read the subject line. If they don’t open this, if they don’t open the email, the subject line doesn’t get their attention. It’s not going to give them anything. So subject line, and then headline, then first sentence and so on. And once they kind of start reading, then they’ll keep reading, but you got to get them through that first paragraph, that second paragraph, and so you got to write things to pull them through, and artists BIOS tend to be really really boring. Now I have spent 10s of 1000s of dollars I’m not kidding 10s of 1000s of dollars taking courses and programs on MRI and reading books and watching videos on writing headlines. research says that without a strong headline, there’s only a 10% chance that someone will read anything further. When I’m writing headlines I sometimes will write 20 or 50 headlines before I decide which one to use don’t use the first two or three things you use keep coming up with ideas I tell myself if I can’t come up with 20 I’m not any good right so I write 20 headlines and then I go alright which is the best one which is going to get the most attention and and I have taken copy you know we sell a lot of videos and things I have taken copy on a on a product that bombed, rewritten the headline only and the first paragraph and all of a sudden that product was a huge success. That’s how much it matters. So it matters with your artists bio it matters with everything you do because your goal is to get people to read it to pay attention to you. So where I put most of my time is in writing and I’m friends with some copywriters who make literally millions of dollars in some get paid about 60 to $100,000 just for a single two page letter. That’s how important it is. You know, if you’re selling books online or vitamins or something, you know, a good letter can make the difference between 10,000 in sales and 10 million in sales. That’s how important it is. So these copywriters are worth every penny because they know how to sell things with words, each of us need to spend most of our time on our headline. And then on our first or second paragraph, when you’re writing an artist’s bio, or you’re writing your website or you’re writing your ad, it doesn’t hurt to get some professional help because I use professional help from time to time. Although I’ve I I’ve spent a lot of time learning and growing so that I can do them and make strong headlines. There’s also this concept of the slide right I talked about that a minute ago, imagine a playground you climb this slide, you get to the top and then you slide down and copy the headline is the top of the slide, or the first step on the slide. Second step is a powerful first sentence which leads you to the third step which is a second sentence, and then you get them to the top and then you get them over and then they slide down and then they buy. Alright. Now if I were writing a killer artists bio, I’d tell a powerful story. Because as I said, my Sunday coffee the other day, stories are one of the most effective forms of communication. No one buys on logic and get that out of your head. Logic does not exist. Logic facts, nobody cares. You’ve got to turn that into emotion. emotion is what works right? No one wants to hear that David Wood was born. In a log cabin on a lake, but if your headline said how a house fire let a young survivor to become an important artist, you get their attention, they’re going to read the next slide. And then you tell the story and you weave in everything you want them to know and you stand a much better chance of reading the whole thing. I talk a lot about this in my videos. I think the very first video has all the information on how to tell stories and how to write stories, and make stories about your artwork. Remember, making stories about your artwork and giving it to the gallery is really important because stories are easy to remember that can pass them on to collectors much easier to remember than facts. Ask yourself this. Also, what is the purpose of an artist bio, it’s really nothing more than a sales document. Its purpose is to make them want to own your work. It’s got to give you credibility, but it’s got to reach their heart facts don’t reach the heart. Facts are boring. Another thing always tell yourself to add, which means all right. So this is something that took me a long time to learn. You know, if you make a statement, let’s say I make a statement that says David Wood is one of the top artists that xxx in 2019. Which means you will be getting one of the best pieces of Western art in your collection, which will go down in history as an important piece of art. So if you make a statement, ask yourself how can I say which means now you can say it different ways. You don’t have to actually say those words. But try to find a way to translate for people don’t assume they’re going to know things on their own. Anytime you state something state the benefit to the reader or the buyer, which is why which means is important. also assume that they’re not going to read it at all. And if they only read the opening paragraph, can you accomplish something in the opening paragraph that is going to get them to be interested in buying your art. So like anything in marketing, and quite just like painting there’s a primary purse purpose a focal point right there’s a focal point in your artist bio. So I hope this marketing tip has been helpful went a little longer than normal.

Well, this has been the art marketing minute with me. Eric Rhoads. My goal in life is to eliminate the idea of the starving artists to help your dreams actually come true. So if you want to submit questions, simply email [email protected]. And to learn more about marketing ideas, you can visit Artmarketing.com. Thanks for listening.

How to Submit Your Art Marketing Questions: What questions do you have about selling your art? Email Eric today at [email protected] (include your name and where you’re from) to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.


> Visit EricRhoads.com (Publisher of ArtMarketing.com) to learn about opportunities for artists and art collectors, including:

  • Art retreats
  • International art trips
  • Art conventions
  • Art workshops (in person and online)
  • And more!
By |2022-12-14T16:50:48-05:00November 22nd, 2021|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|0 Comments

Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 70

In the Art Marketing Minute Podcast, you’ll learn how to sell your art, how to market your paintings, and everything else you need to know in order to have a successful art career. Each episode answers questions from artists by host Eric Rhoads, author of “Make More Money Selling Your Art,” publisher of several art magazines and newsletters, and author of ArtMarketing.com.

How can you get full mileage out of a social media campaign? What are some ways you can start teaching art to a specific demographic? Eric Rhoads answers in this Art Marketing Minute.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 70 >

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

What questions do you have about selling your art? Email Eric today at [email protected] (include your name and where you’re from) to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

FULL TRANSCRIPT of the Art Marketing Minute:
DISCLAIMER: The following is the output of a transcription from an audio recording of the Art Marketing Minute. Although the transcription is mostly correct, in some cases it is slightly inaccurate due to the recording and/or software transcription.

Announcer:
This is the Art Marketing Minute with Eric Rhoads, author of the Amazon best selling book, “Make More Money Selling Your Art.” In the marketing minute we answer your questions to help your art career brought to you by artmarketing.com, the place to go to learn more about marketing. Now, here’s your host, arts magazine publisher, Eric Rhoads.

Eric Rhoads:

In the art marketing minute I try to answer your questions you can email yours to me [email protected] And I always love having your questions. As a matter of fact, that’s where I get my content. Here’s a question from Linda Finnstad of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, who says she has a series of sassy Angel drawings and has started a campaign where she posts an image a day on social media going for 365 days, 10 days into the project. She said she’s getting great feedback as well as sales on Amazon. So our question is, how do I get full mileage out of this campaign? Well, I think first you have First off, you have to Oh, she said, I would hate to look back and realize I missed a fabulous opportunity. Linda, it’s a good question. The first thing I always do is I try to define my goals. You know, what is? what is success to you? What do you want that to look like? Because it might be you know, maybe it’s about selling paintings, but maybe it’s about publicity, maybe it’s about branding, maybe it’s about something else. So try to define what is your 80% goal, what’s the one thing that if 80% of it happens, you’ve accomplished a goal, always start there with everything you do. I also would say that you really started a little prematurely in this in the sense that your planning should be done before you ever start. Because there are things you could do in your planning that will give you a better start, try to get your planning done in advance before you launch your program. But in this case, you can’t do that. So there’s a giant PR opportunity. First off, I would write a press release something as simple as that, write a press release about it, attach them images and put it on the internet through PR wire PR web, there are several services, you’re going to have to pay, you know, 50, probably 150 200 bucks, you’re gonna have to pay more if you show an image. But it’ll show up in Google search that way. And also, when you show up in Google search, you know, people will discover it by accident. And so you want to have your website and all that stuff in there. The other thing to do is to post it as a story on LinkedIn, because every story, unlike Facebook, and Instagram, and other social media, if you put a story on Instagram, it also shows up in search. And so oftentimes, you can find that story. And of course, that’ll link to you. I would also hand picked some dream stories that you want, for instance. So this is the kind of thing that people magazine would like. So I’d go on LinkedIn and get some names of some editors of People Magazine, I find you know, as many as you can find eight or 10 or 12 of them and send them all a personalized email with some photos and photos of you with the paintings and let them know that you have a high resolution images as well. And I would hire a professional because, you know, as an editor, we’re always looking for content. I have a friend who used to work at People Magazine. And you know, sometimes they would have dry spells where they just couldn’t come up with stories and they need filler. And they would grab filler, you know, somebody sends in a press release, and it’s got some great images, they don’t have time to send out a photographer. So they just grab that story, use the images. And so you want some fun images and some different images, I think that would be helpful. You want high res available to them. And so they know that because in printing if they have to print it up, and then of course, if you get a story, then you can tell everybody, you’ve got a story. And that kind of gets the momentum going one time, I went to a seminar and this lady said, you know, write your own press release, write your own story and send it off to magazines. And sometimes they’ll publish it. And I was on an airplane coming back from that seminar. So I wrote a story specifically for a magazine about myself. And I got home and I sent it in and they ended up running it and it was in a national magazine, and it was hardly changed at all. And they used my picture and everything else. So that was pretty cool. So you can do that too. I would send releases to 50 of your top dream story places you know People magazine or, or whatever magazine you think and of course these days it’s it’s about websites, it’s about magazines. The other thing you want to do is look for influencers right? So like there are Instagram influencers. And you could go to an Instagram and find somebody who’s got a million people or maybe Instagram or who does something on angels and say to them listen, I would love for you to do something on my thing and in exchange I’ll give you one of the drawings and next thing you know they put it up there for you and boom you know you’ve gotten seen by the potential of a million people however many so the other thing is I’d look for a chance to get a celebrity sale. Now influencers are a great way because then you can set Well, this influencer that influencer has my work. But what about a celebrity? You know, is there a celebrity that might have a fitting story about a guardian angel, you know, select, you know, Google the term celebrity, and guardian angel and see what comes up, maybe you’ll find a celebrity that has a guardian angel story. And then you say, Hey, I loved your story, I’m going to send you my painting, or my drawing, and then send it to them, get them to snap a picture and say, do you mind if I tell everybody about it, they want publicity. Everybody wants publicity, if you’re in celebrity world, and then you now have something else to talk about. So PR is a great way to go. Social media is great, but it’s limited to your presence. And so you’ve got to find ways to get others who have more presence to leverage you to get it, get it shared. Also, keeping something alive for a year is tough, you know, you want to ask yourself, is a year really appropriate? Or do I just really want what do I really want to accomplish? Can I accomplished that goal and, you know, in three months, so I would develop a plan and see if you can just jam it hard for three months, and then you know, maybe a year later, you can, you can get some more publicity. I also would say, try your local newspaper. Nobody thinks about local newspapers anymore. But there are demographics that read them, they’ll go to art gallery shows, and the best part about a local newspapers, they can get picked up and syndicated by other newspapers who are looking for content. I once had a story in 200 newspapers, because the Associated Press wrote a story about my book. And it they syndicated and I ended up in the LA Times, and the New York Times, and Chicago Tribune and a bunch of others. So that was pretty cool. So the other thing, ask yourself, who’s your target demo demographic? Who was it women, men? What age? What do they spend their time doing? You know, if they’re into gardening, then you know, figure out how to get a gardening publication to do a story how to do it, do a drawing of an angel in a garden and come up with a concept. The idea is to think outside of the I hate that term outside of the box, but interview your buyers, to the people who have bought something from you on Amazon, talk to them and find out what was it that appealed? And what is their story? And what does it mean to them, and maybe that’ll give you ideas, and you can learn things you had not anticipated. And maybe that’ll be helpful. Anyway, that’s, I hope that was helpful.

Linda Andrews from Concord, North Carolina says I would love to share my love of art and landscape painting with young people. What are some ways I can start teaching classes or workshops to this demographic? Well, I think it would be very welcome. Of course, COVID is going to be in the way right now. But it’ll be over one day. So I love I’ve got a goal of teaching a million people to paint and I’m really far along in that goal. But I, you know, I’ve got to hit that million. And then once I hit that million, I want to go to 2 million and 5 million and 10 million and so on. I love the idea of teaching people to paint because it gives them something more in their life, you know, people can be bored, I would first go to Plein Air Force calm. It’s website I put together. There’s a lot of ideas on there on how to speak to groups. I had high school assemblies. To make it easy. We have a documentary you can share. So the idea was that some people are not good speakers, but they could go to a school and say, Hey, I’m Eric. I’m a plein air painter. What does plein air painting Meanwhile, it’s about getting outdoors to paint, you know, and some of you don’t want to be an athlete. And some of you don’t want to be a musician. But some of you want to do something creative. And something that has a really fun potential career with it. Or maybe just a fun potential hobby. Well, plein air painting is getting outdoors, and painting what you see. And when you paint outdoors, you know, give them all the reasons you know, you’re, you’re meeting a lot of people you’re talking to people, you’re painting better color and shape and form and things like that. But then play the documentary, which goes about 20, 30 minutes. And then at the end of that documentary, you can say, hey, what questions do you have? So it makes it really easy to get them engaged. And then you could say, Well, listen, I’m I’m going to supply all the materials and I got a group setting up for plein air painting, and I have some, this is all free. But if you want to sign up for some lessons that’s available to you too, and and you’ll get you know, you’ll get two or three people and you might get 30 people you just never know. And I just start contacting the offices of all the different high schools and maybe even the middle schools and you know, get out there and talk to them and talk to the art teachers. They love somebody to come in and fill their day so they don’t have to teach sometimes, you know, and and get the kids excited, you know, so you can go in and talk to classes. They will welcome it. I would call the Laguna plein air painters association called call Rosemary Swimm. They’re asked for ideas. They bring in busloads of kids from the inner city and they teach them to paint. They have painters painting with them, they have materials, and they make it simple, and it’s really very successful so they can give you some clues. I would also consider right now maybe offering some zoom classes and invite students in for free, maybe, you know, call an art teacher and try it. Get some experience first and you know, just see what works. It’s going to be fine, you’re going to be great. You might want to come up with an incentive or something that makes it really fun for kids and do something to make it cool. Anyway, I think this is a great question. I think it helps. I hope that you can make that happen. I think all of us should be doing that. We should get everybody in every town doing this and we would change the world. Right? Well, anyway, that is this week’s art marketing minute.

Well, this has been the art marketing minute with me. Eric Rhoads. My goal in life is to eliminate the idea of the starving artist to help your dreams actually come true. So if you want to submit questions, simply email [email protected]. And to learn more about marketing ideas, you can visit Artmarketing.com. Thanks for listening.

How to Submit Your Art Marketing Questions: What questions do you have about selling your art? Email Eric today at [email protected] (include your name and where you’re from) to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

By |2023-12-27T08:38:24-05:00May 31st, 2021|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|0 Comments

Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 62

In the Art Marketing Minute Podcast, you’ll learn how to sell your art, how to market your paintings, and everything else you need to know in order to have a successful art career. Each episode answers questions from artists by host Eric Rhoads, author of “Make More Money Selling Your Art,” publisher of several art magazines and newsletters, and author of ArtMarketing.com.

In this Art Marketing Minute, learn tips for finding (and creating) commission work, and hear feedback on whether social media should be your sole avenue for promoting your art.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 62 >

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

What questions do you have about selling your art? Email Eric today at [email protected] (include your name and where you’re from) to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

FULL TRANSCRIPT of the Art Marketing Minute:
DISCLAIMER: The following is the output of a transcription from an audio recording of the Art Marketing Minute. Although the transcription is mostly correct, in some cases it is slightly inaccurate due to the recording and/or software transcription.

Announcer:
This is the Art Marketing Minute with Eric Rhoads, author of the Amazon best selling book, “Make More Money Selling Your Art.” In the marketing minute we answer your questions to help your art career brought to you by artmarketing.com, the place to go to learn more about marketing. Now, here’s your host, arts magazine publisher, Eric Rhoads.

Eric Rhoads:
Here’s a question from Rachel Harris who attended the recent Realism Live online conference and her question is about commissions. She asked what’s the best way to find a market for commission work? By commissions she means doing paintings that people commissioned you to do. Right? That’s what I think she means anyway, start with this idea. First off, people don’t know the word commissions. It is not a term used by regular everyday people. If they think Commission’s they think like they’re getting a sales commission on something. So don’t confuse them. They don’t know the term, the best way to present it is to look at people who are lookers, let’s say you’re in a gallery environment, or they come to your studio, they’re looking around, you can drop a hint very subtly, say, by the way, if you don’t find something you like, we also can do some custom paintings of your favorite subjects or your favorite people. You know, sometimes people ask me to paint a deceased aunt or uncle or, or a brother or a family member or their kids, or their favorite vacation home. What you want to do is load their lips, you could say things like, Hey, have you ever been on a trip and you found like this place that totally inspired you, if you can get me a photograph of that I’ll create a beautiful big painting, any size you want, for you for your home of that particular subject, put the ideas in their head because they don’t think of it themselves. And then put it everywhere. Put it on your newsletter, your website in your ads, you know, ask me about creating custom paintings of your favorite subjects. Don’t use the word Commission’s also, it’s a good idea for your website, do a story on it, like, tug at their heartstrings a little bit, you know, like, Jane’s husband died, they were the happy couple. They lived together for 40 years. And, Jane remembers when they first met. And you know, Bob was 30. And she just loved him so much. And she found a photo of when he was 30. So she asked me to do a painting of it. So I did this painting of him when he was 30. And she just cherishes. It’s one of her favorite things. And so, you could talk about how that works. And then do a little story for your website or for your newsletter. And that’s a good thing. And remember, insider terms are things people don’t understand. Don’t use insider terms.

Now here’s a question from Mike Freelander in Scottsbluff. Nebraska. Hi, Mike. He says because social media is so big these days, it seems like I don’t need anything else. Do you agree? Well, I’m assuming Mike is saying I’m not sure ‘I need anything else for marketing’? Well, that’s a slippery slope, Mike, if you’re using it, and it’s selling as much work as you want it to sell, and it’s working for you. No, you don’t need anything else until it stops working. And the problem with that is there’s a thing called a single point of failure. So single point of failure, let’s say that you are flying an airplane, and it’s a single engine airplane, and that single engine goes dead. While you’re up at the 10,000 feet. What are you going to do? Well, if you have a twin engine airplane, you still have another engine to backup for you. The same is true in marketing. And this is a common problem. It’s something happens a lot. And that is that people have a single point of failure, they put all their money into a single marketing source. And suddenly, sometimes that single marketing source stops working or it dries up, or there’s regulation that changes everything a friend of mine was in the infomercial business. And the law changed in one day, he went from having a billion dollar business to having no business. And that’s because he had a single point of failure if he had other marketing things going on. So I like to think think of it as the Parthenon, I’ve talked about this in the past, think of the Parthenon, it has multiple columns. If you had the thing on the part that what do they call that thing on the same focusing on a single column. And that got hit by a car while the rest of the building would come down? Right. And so you want to have at least three columns, because it’ll make it more stable, but it’s better to have five or six columns, you want to spread your money around a little bit and it’s not necessarily right to spread it in appropriately. For instance, you can spread to many places to advertise. And then you’re not getting enough traction from what you’re doing. And that’s a whole nother topic. But you know, the reality is social media can be good. Some artists are telling me they’re selling some work from it. I don’t hear very often that artists are selling all their work on it. You know, you want to have a gallery or you want to have a direct marketing line. You want to have your your social media, you might want to have some advertising, you might want to have a lot of other things. You know, social media is great for getting leads, but it’s not great for getting buyers. Now there are again exceptions to that rule. And so what you want to do is say okay, how do I generate leads, how do I create something that I get a lead from spending that money. And then those were those leads can be warmed up and turned into a customer over time, what I find with most of my artists, friends, and most of the artists I deal with, and some that I’ve consulted with that most of them have their social media following or other artists. And they really don’t have a lot of known collectors known art buyers on there. As a result, when they post something or when they advertise, it’s not necessarily reaching the right people. So it’s very tricky. And so most people misuse social media and social media is a beautiful thing. Don’t get me wrong, I love it. It’s very effective. And it’s a good way to stay in touch with people and to put your work out there. It’s also a good way to be misunderstood because if you’re putting out you know, a lot of people put out unfinished paintings people don’t read, they think it’s finished, and they go, why would he post that it’s not very good. So, like all things though, my marketing philosophy is stand in the river where the money is flowing. And wherever the money is flowing, you need to be there. And for me, the money is flowing where there are massive amounts of known buyers of art people who are collectors of art who are who are archives of collectors. That’s why things like you know, my audiences that fine art kind of Sir plein air. Those are the river where the money’s flowing. Those people buy paintings, they buy lots of paintings, we sell tons of paintings through ads from various collectors if people have effective ads. And yes, you can employ social media, I use social media. I spent a lot of money on social media, but I use it very specifically. I very rarely ever get buyers from social media, I get leads and then I have to figure out how do I turn them into buyers. That’s a whole nother complicated subject. It’s, it’s something we can address on another day. But the bottom line is anything that’s working for you keep putting money after it and just know that everything dries up at some point. Sometimes it’s your own fault because you’re doing bad advertising or bad marketing. But you can change that. And so you want to constantly be monitoring what’s happening.

Well, this has been the art marketing minute with me. Eric Rhoads. My goal in life is to eliminate the idea of starving artists to help your dreams actually come true. So if you want to submit questions, simply email [email protected]. And to learn more about marketing ideas, you can visit Artmarketing.com. Thanks for listening.

How to Submit Your Art Marketing Questions: What questions do you have about selling your art? Email Eric today at [email protected] (include your name and where you’re from) to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

By |2023-10-11T11:54:27-04:00April 5th, 2021|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|0 Comments

Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 53

In the Art Marketing Minute Podcast, you’ll learn how to sell your art, how to market your paintings, and everything else you need to know in order to have a successful art career. Each episode answers questions from artists by host Eric Rhoads, author of “Make More Money Selling Your Art,” publisher of several art magazines and newsletters, and author of ArtMarketing.com.

In this Art Marketing Minute, Eric Rhoads shares advice on using social media for marketing versus paying for advertising, and tips on branding consistency.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 53 >

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

What questions do you have about selling your art? Email Eric today at [email protected] (include your name and where you’re from) to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

FULL TRANSCRIPT of the Art Marketing Minute:
DISCLAIMER: The following is the output of a transcription from an audio recording of the Art Marketing Minute. Although the transcription is mostly correct, in some cases it is slightly inaccurate due to the recording and/or software transcription.

Announcer 0:02
This is the Art Marketing Minute with Eric Rhoads, author of the Amazon best selling book, “Make More Money Selling Your Art.” In the marketing minute we answer your questions to help your art career brought to you by artmarketing.com, the place to go to learn more about marketing. Now, here’s your host, arts magazine publisher, Eric Rhoads.

Eric Rhoads
In the marketing minute, I answer your art marketing questions and the way to submit them is just email me [email protected] there is no stupid question. That’s how we learn right? Okay, here’s a question here. This is a stupid ques- No, I’m just kidding. This is a question from Amy in Chicago. Amy is going to hate me she’s never going to write in again. Anyway, she says isn’t social media marketing enough? Why would I ever pay for advertising? Well, I’m not suggesting you should pay for advertising. You have to figure out all of us have to figure out what our strategy is and what our tactics are and what you’re trying to accomplish what you’re, do you want to sell art Do you want to brand yourself to want to get invited to events, what is the purpose of your marketing? And then that will determine what you need to do. We have these misperceptions about social media there are a lot of people think, well, all I got to do is put my stuff on social media and my stuff will sell. It’s kind of like saying, does anybody remember phone books? It’s kind of like saying, well, I just put my name in the phone book, and people will call me Well, the phone books filled with lots of people. It’s like having a website. Oh, I just got to put up a website and everybody will discover me. No, that’s not true. I mean, some might buy an accidental search. But the reality is that they’re going to discover websites when you promote them. And, and so the same is true with other things. Now, if you’re promoting on social media, and you’re doing it properly, and it works for you, and you’re making money and you’re getting your goals accomplished, then that’s all you need, quite frankly, why would you pay for advertising? Why would anybody Why do 10s of thousands of businesses advertise? It’s because they get a return on their investment. They’re trying to reach people. They don’t have, we have this belief that everybody on social media is getting our posts and the reality is on Facebook, only two to 3% ever see any post that you do that means if you had 5000 followers, which is their Max, only two to 3% will ever see that post. And sometimes it’s the same people all the time because there’s these algorithms that they use. And so as a result, you want to be aware that you’re not necessarily reaching people. Now, there’s a lot of strategies. I teach in art marketing Bootcamp, at the conventions about how to penetrate that how to make that work for you. But the reality is, you also need to make sure you got the right people following you and you’ve got to have the right messaging. So if you’re going after collectors, for instance, or people who are buying art, you got to get go after people who you know are going to be the kind of people that you want, and so you got to fill up your followers with that. You can’t be talking to artists, other artists and talking about Artists stuff that other artists are interested in you got to be talking to things that other collectors are interested in. So you got to change your tactics and most of us have our Facebook pages or Instagram pages filled with our friends and as a result we’re not necessarily getting the right kind of followers and that’s why it typically doesn’t work for people it might work for you and that’s great if it does but advertising is about reaching people you’re not reaching and the ability to target to reach people that you that are in a particular category you know, like if I if you want to target people who are known art buyers or known art collectors, then you go to places where you know they are you know, like my magazines plein air magazine, fine art connoisseur, etc. So I pay for advertising I spent a lot of money on advertising I can’t even say how much it’s a lot but I it works for me and I get a return and so the more I spend the more return I typically get. And it takes time it builds up over time but then it just keeps return. As long as I feed it, so that’s why I do it.

All right. Next question comes from John in San Francisco, who asks, How important is it to have consistency in the way that you market your brand? Do you have any tips for being consistent and branding? John, good question. Thank you. Well, think about your favorite brands think about any brand. What are the biggest? It used to be? I don’t know if it still is, but the biggest most well known brand in the world was McDonald’s. What if they started using green arches? Or what if Apple started using yellow on their logo instead of black or silver, whatever they use? These are little things that matter. People are creatures of habit, they want to be comfortable, they get to know you. It’s like a friend that you know, you recognize, right? I remember some actress can’t remember who it was had plastic surgery. And it’s like, I didn’t recognize her anymore. And so it was very uncomfortable for me and I’ve never gotten used to it. So I think the idea is that you create a look a consistent look and you want to stick with it. You want to be careful Though a lot of artists are using their signatures as their logo, and that’s okay, but you don’t want us to use signatures alone because the ad needs to have or the logo needs to have the name under it. Because people can’t usually read signatures unless it’s very, very easily readable and even that I would not assume they can read it, you know. So it just doesn’t hurt to make sure you do that. But you want to look for things like consistency, color, theme, consistency, same look, same type everything on your business cards, website, you know, everything you do your brochures, everything you want, that comfort of consistency. Also, you just want to make sure that you’re reinforcing your brand constantly. You’ve got to, we all think that everybody knows who we are, you run one ad and you think everybody knows who you are. That’s not true. You have to build it up over time. It takes time and time and time again, I always talk about repetition is the key to everything. You’ve got to have repetition to the same audiences. People don’t even read respond to things until they’ve seen you seven times in a short amount of period of time. So you got to figure out how do I solve that problem? It’s about repetition. All right. Anyway, that’s, that’s my tips on art marketing today.

Well, this has been the art marketing minute with me. Eric Rhoads. My goal in life is to eliminate the idea of starving artists to help your dreams actually come true. So if you want to submit questions, simply email [email protected]. And to learn more about marketing ideas, you can visit Artmarketing.com. Thanks for listening.

How to Submit Your Art Marketing Questions: What questions do you have about selling your art? Email Eric today at [email protected] (include your name and where you’re from) to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

By |2023-07-19T08:22:33-04:00February 1st, 2021|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|0 Comments

Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 38

In the Art Marketing Minute Podcast, you’ll learn how to sell your art, how to market your paintings, and everything else you need to know in order to have a successful art career. Each episode answers questions from artists by host Eric Rhoads, author of “Make More Money Selling Your Art,” publisher of several art magazines and newsletters, and author of ArtMarketing.com.

In this Art Marketing Minute, Eric Rhoads shares advice on how to make your social media posts more interesting than others, and smart ways to get your work into an art gallery.

Click Here to Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 38

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

What questions do you have about selling your art? Email Eric today at [email protected] (include your name and where you’re from) to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

FULL TRANSCRIPT of the Art Marketing Minute:
DISCLAIMER: The following is the output of a transcription from an audio recording of the Art Marketing Minute. Although the transcription is mostly correct, in some cases it is slightly inaccurate due to the recording and/or software transcription.

Announcer
This is the Art Marketing Minute with Eric Rhoads, author of the Amazon best selling book, “Make More Money Selling Your Art.” In the marketing minute we answer your questions to help your art career brought to you by artmarketing.com, the place to go to learn more about marketing. Now, here’s your host, arts magazine publisher, Eric Rhoads.

Eric Rhoads
In the Art Marketing Minute I answer your art marketing questions email them to me, [email protected] By the way, that’s a good place to go for lots of art marketing tips. So here’s a question from Justin in Eclair Wisconsin, who says I’m pretty active on Facebook, especially in artists groups. I also have Twitter and Instagram, which I barely use, but My question is, how do I make my posts more interesting than anyone else’s?

Well, Justin, congratulations. That’s a brilliant question you should be asking yourself, we all should. But first, let me ask you why you care. Now, I know you’re not here to answer. But you could get noticed by yelling fire in a movie theater, which by the way isn’t legal. But getting attention isn’t always what you want. You know, it’s the old thing that you know, you put in a print ad sex now that I’ve got your attention, well let people get turned off by that kind of thing. So first, you need a strategy. What are you trying to accomplish? Why do you want people to pay attention to you? What do you what do you hope to have happen? Do you want them to look at your artwork? Do you want them to know your name? Do you want them to buy art? And if it’s about branding, that’s one thing. But keep in mind that the people you’re talking to is kind of like singing to the choir. Right? Most artists have most of their followers, friends etc. are not necessarily people are going to buy paintings from them, which is a big problem if that’s what you’re trying to do. If it’s not what you’re trying to do, it’s a great, great situation. So know what you’re trying to do. And then make sure you have an audience of the people you need, which is a little tougher. So here’s another way to answer the question, though, or here’s answering your question. First, the most important thing in any communication, any speech, any ad, any email and a subject line, the most important thing in anything, is the first thing out of your mouth. If I walk onto a stage, and I say, Hello, my name is Eric Rhoads. I’ve already lost him. But if I say, today, I’m going to tell you how you can take. I’m going to tell you how you can put $50,000 in your pocket by the end of next week. I’m gonna have everybody’s attention right now. I got to live up to that. I got to tell them the truth. I got to tell them something is get their attention. But you’ve got to have something compelling. So we call that a headline and a headline is used to draw people in. And if you don’t have a headline, they’re not going to get drawn in headlines make up about 80% of the success of an ad of an email of a subject line opening the email. And that is everything. So I have spent years reading books, studying headlines, go into webinars, going to seminars, working with consultants, I have worked with some of the best headline people in the world to learn and grow and teach you and I can I can teach you some of that stuff. Probably at the plein air convention. I could do that. Anyway, you’ve got to grab attention and curiosity, but you got to do it in a in a way that is appropriate is tasteful is ethical. And also you’ve got to get their attention fast. After the headline, what’s the next most important thing? Well, it’s the next most important thing you talk about or say So you draw them in with a headline, then you ask you have a sentence or you ask a question that draws them in further, then you go a little further and a little further and a little further. Now there’s other ways you can do it. Like in my Sunday coffee, I do a little different approach. It’s a much softer approach. But I’m I’m trying to create a much softer approach in that environment. So I don’t do these, these real big time attention getting headlines there. Sometimes I do, but not often. So anyway, great images also make a great difference. You know, people are drawn to really, really good, interesting, compelling images. And of course, what we just learned in the plein air podcast about how the eye is drawn to certain things. That is something that in the Dan Hill podcast, that’s something you’d really like, that will help you.

Okay, this next question comes from Todd who says, You said that reaching out to galleries is a bad idea to make you look desperate.

I agree. Being a Canadian trying to gain a foothold in the USA market. How do I go about gaining gallery representation and gaining an audience? If nobody knows me? Well, by the way, Todd is really good painter. So hi, Todd. Here’s what I would tell you. First off, it doesn’t matter if you’re a US citizen or from New Zealand or from Canada. Getting into a gallery is tough no matter how you slice it, and it’s not going to be necessarily a disadvantage for you one way or the other. The number one question I devote most of my time to in art marketing is this gallery question. How do I get in? You see galleries are inundated with artists submissions. So my rule is to Zig when others zag you know, everybody is emailing galleries, they hate that most of them, not all of them. They they’re getting emails. They’re getting up unsolicited packages, sometimes they’re getting unsolicited paintings in the mail, they got to open them up, they got to look at them, they got to put them back. They got to mail them back. They hate that. That’s really annoying. So what can you do that’s different, you know, just showing up to the door with a handful of paintings. That’s annoying. You know, you’re there in the middle of their day. They’re busy, maybe not right now, but normally, and so be different, do something else no one else is doing now I believe the best way is to be introduced in or get somebody to recommend you. But I also think that you want them to follow you and be tracking you without them knowing that you’ve made them do that. Now that’s a very stealth kind of thing. I talk a lot about that in some of my books and videos. But essentially, one of the ways to do that is by leaving intelligent comments on their social media. If they’re posting something, don’t go Hey, look at me, hey, look at me, call me do this with me. You know, just write a nice intelligent comment and it If they see you on there enough, don’t go too much. It’s it’d be the equivalent over over texting somebody, just, you know, being there on occasion and say something smart. And then eventually somebody go, Hmm, this person smart. I wonder who they are. And they click on your thing. And they go, Oh, I think I’ll follow them. Oh, nice artwork. Well, I think I’ll keep track of it. Scott Jones told me one time that he has a dummy email address, and he uses it to keep track of artists and to see what they’re up to. And you know, usually when you first tune in that, you know, they don’t have a good portfolio, they maybe do one out of 10 good paintings. And so you keep an eye on these artists over the three, four or five years to see if they get better, they get consistent and so on. And then if they do, you know, they might be tracking you quietly and secretly. So that’s something. Remember people want to do business with successful people. It’s the old rule of you know, how do I get successful? How do they wanted me to be successful, but how do I get successful and the answer is easier than most realized. galleries You’re drawn to big names, they want the best artists, they want the artists with the big names who are going to sell the most art, the ones who are in the most demand. And the best way to get a big name is to advertise. Now you can spend a lifetime doing shows and getting recognition and and all of that other stuff, getting articles about you. And that’s really important, you should do that. But the problem is that even if you let’s say there were five art magazines, you probably can’t get in all five of them in the same year, because they don’t want to do the same thing everybody else did. And they’re not going to get one story a year. You’re not going to get one story sometimes every two or three years, unless it’s paid for play. And that’s when when magazines are selling their articles, which is a no no as far as I’m concerned. But people do it all the time. Anyway, the idea here is you want to be seen and recognized and so buy ads, and you could buy ads and we have found and research has supported the fact that people think that ad campaigns content in an art magazine is equally as good as article content because they’re there to look at beautiful paintings. And so your ad is getting you seen more and more and more and more, the more you repeat it, the more you’re seeing, the more your name grows, the more that other people start talking about you, the more you get invited into other places. And so advertising is fast, editorial is slow. So I think that this is a really great strategy. I’ve used it my whole life and it’s very effective. And it’s a great way to get noticed a lot and get things done fast. And of course, galleries will be drawn to people who are supporting themselves in advertising because they’re going hey, this, this person believes in themselves. I’m going to watch what they do and plus they’re seeing your work and they’re starting to like your work. Next thing you know you get invited in. Also once you’ve built your brand, you can command higher prices and that just continues to grow, the more your brand grows. Hope this helps. Anyway, that was the art marketing minute.
Well, this has been the art marketing minute with me. Eric Rhoads. My goal in life is to eliminate the idea of the starving artists to help your dreams actually come true. So if you want to submit questions, simply email [email protected]. And to learn more about marketing ideas, you can visit Artmarketing.com. Thanks for listening.

Remember to Submit Your Question: What questions do you have about selling your art? Email Eric today at [email protected] (include your name and where you’re from) to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

By |2022-12-14T16:50:25-05:00October 19th, 2020|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|0 Comments

Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 37

In the Art Marketing Minute Podcast, you’ll learn how to sell your art, how to market your paintings, and everything else you need to know in order to have a successful art career. Each episode answers questions from artists by host Eric Rhoads, author of “Make More Money Selling Your Art,” publisher of several art magazines and newsletters, and author of ArtMarketing.com.

In this Art Marketing Minute, Eric Rhoads explains how to get your website and social media presence noticed; and how to know when it’s time to find an art dealer (and how to do so).

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 37

 

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

What questions do you have about selling your art? Email Eric today at [email protected] (include your name and where you’re from) to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

FULL TRANSCRIPT of the Art Marketing Minute:
DISCLAIMER: The following is the output of a transcription from an audio recording of the Art Marketing Minute. Although the transcription is mostly correct, in some cases it is slightly inaccurate due to the recording and/or software transcription.

Announcer 0:02
This is the Art Marketing Minute with Eric Rhoads, author of the Amazon best selling book, “Make More Money Selling Your Art.” In the marketing minute we answer your questions to help your art career brought to you by artmarketing.com, the place to go to learn more about marketing. Now, here’s your host, arts magazine publisher, Eric Rhoads.

Eric Rhoads
Here is a question from Ginger box. I don’t know where Ginger is from. Ginger says I have no idea how to get people to see my paintings on my website or on Instagram. I see some people with thousands of followers but I have no idea how to reach that many. How can I get my art noticed on my website and Instagram? Well, ginger, I have a saying and the saying is tactics without strategy fall on deaf ears. What that means is that unless you have a clear purpose and maybe you do a clear purpose or clear direction for your messaging Everything will be cloudy and your response rates will go down, you won’t get the followers you want. So I’d like to ask you why now you’re not here to answer the question. But why do you want them to see your paintings? What actions do you want them to take? Are you trying to sell paintings? Are you trying to get them to friend you? Do you want them to join your blog? Do you want them to visit your website so you can capture their email address? Each of those would be a different strategy. And you want to have one clear strategy that you want to accomplish with whatever it is you’re trying to do, whether it’s instagram or facebook or something else, because the strategy you use will be more on track? depending the answer to your question varies depending on the strategy. So if you want to sell paintings, a great strategy would be to get them to come to your website, of course, not just to see paintings, but more importantly, so you can communicate with them about other things that you’re doing. And that’s why you want to get their email address and so you got to get them to give you their email address and you got to create something and incentivize people To get them to come there, we use things like 240 plein air tips, and people come and get those. And that way we have their information so we can contact them and tell them about all the cool stuff we’re doing. All success is based on repetition. And so people need to hear your message seven to 10 times and Whatever method you know, sometimes it’s on Instagram or Facebook, sometimes it’s an email, sometimes it’s something else. But you want to get seven to 10 impressions in a fairly short period of time. And most people will visit a website one time and they’ll never return again. Once they’ve looked around. They’re thinking, well, I’ve seen it they don’t think like well, I’ll go back and see what’s new. You got to kind of get them to do that by other things. So what you can do is once you get them to your website, get their email, then you can ask them if they want to opt in for your newsletter or for something else you’re going to do and if you can get them to provide that or even a mail address that You can send them, a free ebook, you can send them a free book it send them different things. And it’s that repetition that really sells product if that’s what you’re trying to do. Now, my art marketing at a box product does this. It’s very effective. And it really forces repetition. It’s all done for you. It’s all pre written. It’s all scheduled. And so you have something to do every single month. And if you follow the strategy that really works effectively, people tell me they’re doubling and tripling their sales from it. So I think that the idea of repetition is really important. And you’ve got to define first what your specific tactics are. We use an Instagram guy, and, and this Instagram guy tells us certain things we need to do and don’t need to do and one of the things you need to post something every single day, what you post needs to fit within what people are there for. And so, like he said that people’s response rates go down and they unfriend you or unfollow you very fast. If, for instance, you’re a person who posts a historic painting every day, and then you post a picture of your dog, the minute you post, picture your dog, people go away and they go away forever. So you got to be consistent with whatever it is and make sure that you’re talking about that particular thing. If the goal is to get them to the website, focus on images that create curiosity, get them to want to see the whole image by visiting the website that’s a very effective but rarely use strategy I’ve seen used very effectively.

Eric Rhoads
Next question comes from an anonymous person who says…By the way, we don’t make these up. I don’t know who sent this but… says I tend to be overly shy I find myself unable to reach out and make sales. I work full time. And it’s my lifelong dream to be able to make a living as a full time artist, I entered juried shows and Plein Air Convention or competitions, and I’m a member of a couple of prominent art societies. I know I must persist and that it’s my own self holding holding me back. My questions are at what point is it more beneficial to find an art dealer to sell your work rather than going it alone? And how do you know what to look for an art dealer to find a reputable one, so as to not be taken advantage of, well, it’s a, I’ve got a whole bunch of stuff here for you, my friend. And the first thing is, this is kind of like one of those. I don’t know how to describe this. It’s like you, it’s a lot harder to get an art dealer if you’re not famous. And it’s like, how do I get famous if I don’t have an art dealer, it’s kind of one of those endless loop kind of thing, there, there will be come a time in your career that once you’re selling it off and your work is, is selling well that you’re going to want an art dealer. But getting one early on isn’t easy. Now I talk a lot about how to get them in my various products, my videos and so on. But, it’s not easy. Then. Here’s the Another thing I’d like to say, and you’re not gonna like my answer, I’m sorry. And I don’t want to offend anybody. But artists should not typically shift the responsibility their career to somebody else, like a gallery. The reason is that you have no control. And if they fail, you fail. Now, I’m fine with having art galleries. And in some cases, I’m fine with even in exclusivity with an art gallery, if the relationship is fruitful enough, and if you have somebody who is really truly a professional, that’s not likely to be going out of business, but every business no matter how good they are, has fluctuations of good and bad weeks or months or years. And it it’s fluctuations of local economies or national economies or, maybe they’re a Hawaii gallery, and all of a sudden traffic to Hawaii stops for some reason. So if you’ve got mouths to feed, including your own, you want to have control. So the part you don’t want to hear is you’ve got to get beyond your limiting beliefs. You said you You yourself said you know you have them, you’ve got to get stronger. Now think about this, if we have back troubles, we need to fix the problem. So maybe we go to a doctor or a chiropractor or we say, my back problems are persisting because I need to strengthen my core. So you have to develop those muscles in your core, maybe you’re getting a trainer, maybe you go to the gym and you’re working on it. If you’re in business, including selling art, which is a business, then you have to always be developing new muscles, if you’re in business, you have to have an accounting muscle. You have to sit you have a sales, muscle and marketing muscle, shipping muscle, those kinds of things. And so you got to get really good at a lot of things. That doesn’t change who you are, you’re still an artist at heart. And but, for that moment, you’re flexing that muscle or putting on that hat, for that moment, you have to track your, your financial stuff, you got to do that. You can’t expect somebody else to do that. You can get help. You got to have control, you have a weakness, and you’ve got to overcome it. And if it’s about selling because you’re shy, then you have to overcome that shyness. Don’t let yourself off the hook and give yourself an excuse because you’re shy, step up and overcome it. Even if you, you know, it’s gonna be tough. If you think it’s hurting you, you’ve got to overcome it. And I’m not trying to be rude or insensitive, but shyness is based on lacking confidence. And confidence is about getting better control over your state of mind. Now, I can say this because I used to be painfully shy. I couldn’t stand and talk in front of three people. I would look down at my feet, I’d speak quietly, I did not believe any else. Anyone else wanted to hear anything from me. I now I became a radio DJ at the age of 14. How did I do that? Well, I was talking to a microphone in an empty room. But the minute there were other people in the room. I couldn’t do it. And so I had this alter ego, this other persona. And so I was I knew it was in me, but I couldn’t do it in front of other people. And so one day my mentor said, Look, if you want to accomplish your dreams, you’ve got to overcome your shyness, and he recommended Toastmasters. So I joined. And I hated it. I had to stand and speak in front of 30 people every week, and I was horrified. But every week it got easier and easier and easier. And soon I quit. And I was fairly comfortable. And then one day, I had an opportunity and I had to speak in front of a crowd of thousands of people. And I was so petrified, My hands were sweating, and I was wanted to vomit, and I was, didn’t want to come out and it was really scary. But I got out there and I knew my material, because if you know your material, you have confidence. I knew my material. I had rehearsed it, and I pulled it off. And I want to tell you that I do art marketing bootcamp at the Plein Air Convention every year in front of 1000 or more people and I’m up there for three mornings. in a row for an hour and 15 minutes or something, I rehearse that in my room the night before, I want to make sure I’m confident I don’t want to go in there and wing it. A professional never wings that a professional is always on top of things. So you just have to learn how to be professional, how to be prepared for sales and how to understand it takes some training, get beyond all of this, you can do it. Your real issue here is that you’re getting in your own way. And anytime any of us are getting in our own way, we cannot buy that excuse. , if you’re you’ve put on too much weight and you can’t do something because you’re you put on too much weight. You have no one else to rely on, but yourself to solve that problem. If you have a knee problem or a back problem, it’s your responsibility to go resolve that you know you don’t, you’ve got to find somebody to help you with. In this case, you got to find somebody to help you. I wouldn’t want anyone else making decisions for me in my country. In my my career and and controlling my life and my family, because if your gallery goes under, and you have nothing else going on, you’ve got a problem. But if you have galleries, two or three of them, and you also have some other things going on that is done appropriately for the galleries, so they’re not feeling like you’re undercutting them or doing something sneaky behind their back. Then you have a business and everybody needs a business. You don’t ever want your business relying on a single pillar. Being in one gallery is a single pillar. Think of the Parthenon with one pillar holding it up. That pillar goes down, that top part goes down, right? You need multiple pillars, so you got to learn these things, develop your muscles, and you got to trust me on that. Anyway, hope this is helpful.

Well, this has been the art marketing minute with me. Eric Rhoads. My goal in life is to eliminate the idea of the starving artists to help your dreams actually come true. So if you want to submit questions, simply email [email protected]. And to learn more about marketing ideas, you can visit Artmarketing.com. Thanks for listening.

Remember to Submit Your Question: What questions do you have about selling your art? Email Eric today at [email protected] (include your name and where you’re from) to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

By |2022-12-14T16:50:25-05:00October 12th, 2020|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|0 Comments

Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 35

In the Art Marketing Minute Podcast, you’ll learn how to sell your art, how to market your paintings, and everything else you need to know in order to have a successful art career. Each episode answers questions from artists by host Eric Rhoads, author of “Make More Money Selling Your Art,” publisher of several art magazines and newsletters, and author of ArtMarketing.com.

In this Art Marketing Minute, Eric Rhoads shares insights on using social media for marketing (even if you avoid social media), and networking tips for freelance artists.

Listen to the Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 35 >>>

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

What questions do you have about selling your art? Email Eric today at [email protected] (include your name and where you’re from) to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

FULL TRANSCRIPT of the Art Marketing Minute:
DISCLAIMER: The following is the output of a transcription from an audio recording of the Art Marketing Minute. Although the transcription is mostly correct, in some cases it is slightly inaccurate due to the recording and/or software transcription.

Announcer 0:02
This is the Art Marketing Minute with Eric Rhoads, author of the Amazon best selling book, “Make More Money Selling Your Art.” In the marketing minute we answer your questions to help your art career brought to you by artmarketing.com, the place to go to learn more about marketing. Now, here’s your host, arts magazine publisher, Eric Rhoads.

Eric Rhoads:
In the marketing minute I answer your art marketing questions. All you got to do is email me, [email protected]. Here’s a question from a YouTube listener who said, I’m a fairly successful artist, I make a good living and I refuse to do social media. For me, it’s a giant waste of time and I’d love to hear your thoughts as to whether or not an artist should engage in any social media at all. Well, it’s not an easy answer because it can be a giant time suck and it’s hard to measure the value unless you do it exactly right, which is something very few people know how to do. Now a lot of people are posting a lot of stuff And posting progress shots and posting their paintings. But I’m not sure that a lot of people are selling a lot of paintings from it once in a while somebody gets a Hey, I want to buy that painting. But there are not very many people who are actually selling a lot of art. And there’s a reason for that. It’s because they’re not doing it properly. I think it can be done properly. I would refine your question a little bit more by asking is not doing it hurting your business, you say you have plenty of business. And if that’s the case, it’s probably not hurting it. But just keep in mind, a lot of people built a business and they have momentum, and then it dries up and it stops suddenly, because they’re not keeping their momentum up. That’s why advertising is important to things like that. But social media can be advertising and there is advertising opportunity there. But it’s a whole different game on social media works very well for things where it’s clicking buy this now, and it’s not necessarily an expensive item. So So clearly, Facebook, Instagram, etc, are mainstream and most people are on it. But does it sell art? Well? Is it gonna get you into more galleries? It might I mean, there are gallery owners who watch and they clearly are paying attention to what people are posting to find out what they, what they’re doing whether or not they’re bringing them in. It’s not automatic, of course. But again, there’s a formula. You know, today, it’s kind of like not being in the phonebook and the old days, you know, when people use phone books, if you weren’t in the phone book or the Yellow Pages, they wouldn’t remember you well. Being on the web is more like being a phone book, of course. And I think having a website is absolutely critical too. And it sends a signal if if you’re not doing it well or if you haven’t updated in 30 years, but anyway, a lot of people will randomly learn about you discover you because someone may have clicked on or commented on your Facebook and then they see that and they you know people pick up on it, but Most artists actually don’t have many collectors following them. Some do. Most of the artists have their friends, fellow artists following which is nice, a nice way to be seen nice way to be social. But it’s not necessarily moving the sales needle, although artists do buy paintings and so that can happen. But you have to know how to do it exactly. And I do hear stories about a few people selling consistently, but not very much. There is one thing to know is there’s a false belief about Facebook, and even Instagram. And that is that we think that everything we post is being seen by all of our followers. Well, on Facebook, only 2% of the people on average, will actually get to see what you post and that’s assuming they see it because they’re scrolling through, they might miss it. If you don’t have good creative, you don’t have good graphics. If you’re not saying something interesting. They might buzz right by it. I do that all the time. I’m flipping through just going fast. So just because it’s somebody’s speed doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed to be seen. So what you want to do is, of course, if you’re working on business, you want to be in a controlled environment, that’s an environment you control yourself or someone that you know. And trust controls a controlled environment, to some extent would be email, except you can’t control it completely because you might end up on a spam list or you might get no open rates, advertising, you know, things like our magazines, our newsletters, like some of the stuff we produce, obviously controlled environment, it’s, it’s gonna get out to the right people. But you have to, no matter what you’re doing, if you’re using it for marketing, there’s three legs on the marketing stool, and I talked about this in my books in my videos, and that is that you’ve got to have great attention getting content or copy. copywriting is very important headlines are very important. And that’s true on social media too. You’ve got to get people’s attention, you got to have a great graphic. Next, you got to have a great audience. And that is An audience who is the audience that you really need to reach. And then of course, you’ve got to have repetition, any message. In order for people to take action on it usually has to be repeated and seen by that individual eight or 10 times, and sometimes over longer periods of time depending on how much time has passed because we lose memory of certain things when we sleep. And so in a short period of time, you want to be seen 789 10 times in a longer period, it might be 30 4050 times depending on if you’re building a brand or you’re trying to sell something in particular, great content, great copy, great audience and repetition without those things, most marketing will fail. The next question comes from Jan Coby. It does not say where Jan is but she says, I used to paint as a greeting card artists for five years for the leading greeting card company now teach art part time and I’m developing a line of card ideas. I would love to free For other card companies, and share my new ideas, but I don’t know how to proceed. I have a list of greeting card companies and art directors all over the US. And I plan to send them five by seven postcards to my best work for consideration. What’s your best advice for me to find freelance work?

Eric Rhoads 1:04:19
Well, Jan, you must be pretty good. I think that the first thing is to take an inventory of what you already have. You have connections at the big greeting card company. And unless you left on bad terms, maybe they would become your best customer. as a freelancer. Have you thought about that if you open that door? Secondly, you’re probably in touch with a lot of other greeting card designers. And they probably worked for other companies too. And they know former designers they know art directors, maybe ask them the question. Can they make introductions? Can they tell you who they know? My guess that they’re probably not a lot of greeting card companies. I might be wrong, but I don’t think there are hundreds of certainly probably Not thousands. And my guess is that they all have designers on staff or they all use freelancers, one or the other, maybe both. So why would they buy your designs? What’s unique about your designs, you need to come up with a compelling reason to get their attention. This is called strategy. Cease mailing postcards is a tactic, what you put on those postcards and what you’re targeting and who you’re talking to and what your messaging is. That’s strategy, cards or tactics. Now, let’s say there are six to 10 companies and six to 10 art directors. Why send a card? Why not just pick up the phone and call each of them and introduce yourself? It’s only six people. So if you get a no, you can probably ask a couple questions and learn about the likelihood that you would succeed with them long term. And if it were me, I’d start my own card company. Then the key is getting distribution and being able to afford to print your cards but You’re up against some big guns. So why not create something unique and different, like an online greeting card company, make it so that they can order online cards through an app and have them auto mail to the people you want with the messages you want. There are some apps out there that do that kind of thing. I don’t know if they have designs like what you provide, but you could certainly work with apps or you could do it yourself. My rule is that self employed is always better than employed. In other words, you’re controlling your destiny more if you have your own business. So think about that. Now, being a freelancer is having your own business. So that’s a good thing. But you’re also relying on other people. If you can rely only on yourself and your great marketing and your great distribution. Think Big and you can control your own world. Now related to your question about postcards, I love postcards. They’re very effective. Now they’re expensive. They’re not as expensive as other types of mail, but you can probably count on you know, 50 or 50 cents or $1, or card, depending on how many people you’re sending to if you’re sending to 1000. You know, it’s going to cost you 1000 or $2,000 for a mailing. And postcards don’t typically work without what we call repetition. And what I do postcard campaigns, I like to hit people over and over and over again in a few weeks period of time, you know, every week every two weeks twice a week, you will grow on them, people will start paying attention, they won’t respond immediately, but eventually a high percentage of them will respond. Anyway, hope this helps. This has been the art marketing minute.

Remember to Submit Your Question: What questions do you have about selling your art? Email Eric today at [email protected] (include your name and where you’re from) to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

By |2022-12-14T16:50:24-05:00September 28th, 2020|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|0 Comments

Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 7

In the Art Marketing Minute Podcast, you’ll learn how to sell your art, how to market your paintings, and everything else you need to know in order to have a successful art career. Each episode answers questions from artists by host Eric Rhoads, author of “Make More Money Selling Your Art,” publisher of several art magazines and newsletters, and author of ArtMarketing.com.

In this Art Marketing Minute, you’ll learn if you might want to consider using a different name, and how to make the most of Instagram.

Art Marketing Minute Podcast: Episode 7

Submit Your Art Marketing Question:

What questions do you have about selling your art? Email Eric today at [email protected] (include your name and where you’re from) to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

FULL TRANSCRIPT of the Art Marketing Minute:
DISCLAIMER: The following is the output of a transcription from an audio recording of the Art Marketing Minute. Although the transcription is mostly correct, in some cases it is slightly inaccurate due to the recording and/or software transcription.

Announcer 0:02
This is the Art Marketing Minute with Eric Rhoads, author of the Amazon best selling book, “Make More Money Selling Your Art.” In the marketing minute we answer your questions to help your art career brought to you by artmarketing.com, the place to go to learn more about marketing. Now, here’s your host, arts magazine publisher, Eric Rhoads.

Eric Rhoads 0:23
Thank you Jim Kipping. And thank you for joining us today. My goal is to eliminate the idea of the starving artists. So let’s get right to today’s questions. Well, here’s a question from Joan Barnum. Now, I normally don’t use last names, and I don’t know where Joan is from but in this case, it’s relevant because she says thanks so much for your podcast and for the marketing minute. I tune in every week and I’ve learned so much value from both. I’ve been learning what I can about selling my art and I’ve been trying to establish some kind of online presence, but I discovered recently However, that there is a well known watercolor artist out there whose name is very similar to mine. She’s Joanna Barnum. And I’m Joan Barnum. I wonder if it will make it difficult for people to find me online. And if I should consider changing the name, under which I do business, reverting to my maiden name, for instance, I’m just in the beginning stages of the process. And so I’m going to make this sort of move now would be the time.

Well, I couldn’t agree more. It’s a great question. It happens more than you think I can think of several. What comes to mind is Scott Pryor. And then there’s Scott W. Pryor. Both artists, there’s Charles white, and there’s Charles H. White, both artists. And Heck, there’s even another Eric Rhoads. Who was, well, an adult film star. That wasn’t me thankfully. Yikes anyway, he’s dead. I might not be after I mentioned that. Anyway, if you already established the name and then you discover somebody else’s got the name or then you got a little bit of a problem. And you if you’re starting out though this is a good time to avoid confusion and brand yourself under a name where there’ll be no confusion. Now I grew up in radio and we used to do stage names all the time, and you might want to invent a name that sends a signal of confidence to your buyer. Some people pick names that are about their brand, you know, like if you’re a spy, you could be Roger danger. Or you know, remember Jonny Quest. He was an adventure in the cartoons, Richie Rich. But seriously, go out there and come up with a name that really works for you. Now, I wouldn’t call yourself Monet, though there are people out there who’ve done it. There’s an actress whose name is Monet. I wonder if it’s real. I doubt it. But anyway, come up with something distinctive. Stage names are pretty common and there are a lot of artists actually who you Stage names it and if your maiden name works, it’s great. But if it’s hard to say, or it’s hard to spell or hard to read, like if your maiden name is Roberto, it’s, you might want to do something easier. Like I have this friend who’s a radio person and her name was Rabinowitz. And you know, how do you spell it? So she changed it to Robin’s. And you might do something like that. Or you could just be distinctive by saying, you know, your middle initial. The other thing you’ve got to your advantage is that you want a name that’s memorable and you have a name that’s memorable. Right? Who is memorable PT Barnum is memorable. Why not be L. Barnum or PT Barnum or some variation on that or there may be you play off of that, you know, Linda Barnum, like you know, like PT Barnum, the greatest show on earth, you know, you can have some fun with that. So give it some thought. Anyway, it’s a good time. Remember, you are a brand we invent names for brands. And why not do it for artists brands now I think authentic and real is best. But in a case like yours, where there’s going to be confusion, and the names are close, you might want to consider distinguishing yourself with a different first name at least. And don’t forget, there is some gold in that name Barnum, because you want something that people remember because everyday names like Jones and Smith and so on are not very memorable. But if you say you introduce yourself or your website says, Hey, you know, it’s Linda Barnum, like PT Barnum, and then they’re trying to remember who you are, they’re going to remember that.

Here’s the next question from Adam. In Los Angeles, Adam says, I’ve noticed everybody’s moved over to Instagram from Facebook. How can I get a lot of followers so I can sell more art?

And Adam? Well, you’re asking the wrong question, not to embarrass you. But the question should be How can I sell more art, Instagram as a tactic? Just like a magazine ad, or an Email as a tactic. You want to start with a strategy. How are you going to differentiate? Who is going to be your audience? What is the avatar of your audience? The Avatar is like, Who’s the average person who buys your art? And what do they like? Explain and understand that avatar, you know, like, we know the avatar of the people who come to the planner convention, and there’s a lot of the similar type of people, so we tend to talk to them. So think about that, because you want to think about who you’re trying to sell art to. Now, most people on Instagram and Facebook are misusing it. And they’re really talking about themselves a lot. And they’re not really talking about the business aspects. And so you want to think about that, and I’m going to do something very special with plein air convention this year. I’m going to do a morning on Instagram in my art marketing boot camp. And that’ll be worth the price of admission alone, believe me, so I went to the world’s top experts. I got their tips. I’m going to explain them Plus, I’m going to share some of my own. And there’s not enough time here because I’m going to spend about an hour just on that. And probably an hour isn’t enough. But the bottom line with Instagram is it’s about engaging people. It’s about commenting, often smart commenting, and those kinds of things engagement and commenting will help people follow you also liking other people, but there’s a whole lot more to it a lot of strategy behind it. So I didn’t mean to be snide by saying it’s around question, but you want to be thinking about multiple pillars. You don’t want all of your business relying on one thing like Facebook has lost 60 million people recently. So what if your business was based on Facebook? You know, would it affect you? It might so if your business is affected by Instagram at one time, and then you have to reinvent yourself another time, you should be doing multiple pillars Anyway, you should be having a lot of different variations on the way that you You, you market yourself? Well, this has been the art marketing minute with me Eric Rhoads. My goal in life is to eliminate the idea of the starving artist and to help your dreams actually come true. So if you want to submit questions, simply email [email protected]. And to learn more about marketing ideas, you can visit Artmarketing.com Thanks for listening.

Remember to Submit Your Question: What questions do you have about selling your art? Email Eric today at [email protected] (include your name and where you’re from) to hear your question answered on an upcoming Art Marketing Minute Podcast.

By |2022-12-14T16:50:10-05:00March 16th, 2020|Art Marketing Minute Podcast|0 Comments
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