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We’re continuing our members-only series outlining our Circles of Art Marketing framework. Since marketing will not work unless all elements are understood and practiced you need to think about all six circles as a holistic system. One circle alone won’t accomplish anything for you. Therefore, if you’re a new member, or missed what we covered previously, I recommend you catch up on the series at the following links:
Art Marketing Circle I - The Sovereign Artist
Art Marketing Circle II - Your Art
Art Marketing Circle III - Turn Your Art Into a Product
Art Marketing Circle IV - Sales
Art Marketing Circle VI - Your True Fans
Art Marketing Circle VI - Audience
If you missed the previous articles about this circle, you may catch up here:
The Lifetime Value of a Single Contact
OK, let’s look at channels through which you communicate with your audience…
Your Newsletter
Once you’ve gotten organized, and started to build your audience, let’s look at how this works.
Imagine your sitting at home with nothing to do. Or perhaps you're going out, and you're waiting for your spouse to finish getting ready. Perhaps there's nothing good you haven’t already seen on Netflix. Perhaps you're simply bored. What do you do?
If you're like a lot of people, you grab your smartphone....check email, check Facebook, check Twitter....check email again.....
It's not a great habit, but it's a powerful one (and one that tech companies have carefully cultivated in their users).
So while we lament the brilliant minds who are wasting time staring at their phones, we can also ask ourselves, "can this help us market art?"
In fact, as this entire book shows, it represents a huge opportunity for artists. You see, more and more people seem to be pulling out their phones and staring at those screens and, like the slot machine player who just keeps pulling the lever, they keep desperately checking email and social media...hoping to hit the jackpot.
And your art could be that jackpot.
When people pull out their phones, most of them check email. In fact, the latest number I saw said that 56% of all email opens happen on a mobile device.
And, if you've been following my advice and building a real audience, you now have a nice email list built up. And the shifting demographics of technology has added a tailwind to your efforts. Not only is email still the most effective marketing channel, in the years since I first recommended you build an email list, the tech companies have put a device in every person's pocket so that everyone carries their email with them everywhere they go. Moreover, those same companies have cultivated addicted their users to using that device all the time.
If you've built your list correctly, your subscribers want to hear from you. They love your art. They're craving for interesting, beautiful, human connections. And they're so bored and, sometimes, desperate, that they'll pull out their phone and "pull the slot machine lever."
Imagine, at that very moment, your beautifully mobile formatted newsletter arrives, presenting your fan with your wonderful art and a great story about why you created it that draws them in. If you've got an easy call to action, you might just have a sale. Or you might have simply inspired a follower and made someone's day better, which is a noble achievement in and of itself.
Your newsletter, properly known as email marketing. And email is the perfect channel to reach your audience. In fact, if you don’t have an email list and a newsletter, I’m not sure you really have an audience.
If you’re not sure how important email marketing is, keep the following idea in mind:
Social media makes headlines, but email makes money
It's one of the most important ways to build trust with your audience. Your long-term success depends, essentially, upon two factors: building an audience of true fans and building trust with that audience.
In marketing, we like to think in terms of marketing "channels."
You can think of email marketing as simply marketing using the "email channel."
Other channels would include Facebook posts, Facebook Ads, Instagram posts and ads, Google - both paid and organic, real-world galleries, magazines articles and ads, direct "snail" mail invitations and postcards, and art festivals.
As you can see, your marketing channels include a mix of both online and "real world" venues.
But email is the most important channel because it's "owned media."
Owned media means that it's a channel (unlike Facebook, Instagram, Google or others) over which you have control: Control over when you send a marketing message, control over the platform you use, and a near guarantee that your messages will get in front of your prospects. You don't have anywhere near this type of control with most other media channels.
Owned media is the holy grail of marketing, and, if you do it right, it will serve as your biggest marketing asset and will serve as "insurance" if any of your other channels disappear (an art gallery going out of business, for example).
The power of owned media is one reason we, at BoldBrush, have spent over a decade building The BoldBrush Letter into one of the largest email "ezines" in the art industry. Other examples of owned media are your website, a physical snail mail list of fans, a list of collector phone numbers (so you can call your collectors directly), and, of course, an open studio event. (By the way, the other types of media are paid media, such as magazine ads and earned media, such as being featured in an article.).
Building a strong, engaged audience that you can reach via email is the most important piece of your marketing plan. This is the pillar around which you can build everything else.
We cover email marketing in depth in the email marketing appendix of this book.
In the journey your customers take, being on your email list is often the last step before they indicate interest in one of your works and contact you (at which point you or your salesperson has the opportunity to make a sale and hopefully move them into your true fans circle.)
Social Media
We’re going to cover social media in more depth in our next series about the last circle: Awareness. However, social media is also a channel for you to communicate with your audience. Not everyone who becomes interested in you will join your email list. Some may choose simply to follow you on social media, at least at first. So, while your social media posting will be aimed at generating awareness, you will also post for your existing audience. This will likely include direct messages with people who are interested in your work in the same way, for those who move to the email channel, you would email back and forth. We will cover social media strategies more in upcoming issues.
Next week we’re going to shift gears and move out to the last circle of art marketing (the first in your customers’ journeys) - Awareness.
See you then!
Creatively,
Clint Watson
BoldBrush/FASO Founder
Art Fanatic
Apostle of Creativity
PS - May your life be filled with peace, love, and joy!
PPS - What do you think? Please let us know in the comments or at least help us out by clicking “Like” on this article. Thanks so much:
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