 Are you an artist struggling with this question? Which marketing strategies should I use for my art? With so many choices out there right now, it can be really overwhelming. What do I do? Online? Offline? Paid? Not paid? This latest thing over here? This latest thing over there? Well, don't worry. In today's video, I've got you covered. I'm going to walk you through 10 strategies that I think are brilliant to market your art and then stay right to the end to find out how to choose which ones are right for you. Well hello and welcome or welcome back to my channel. My name's Sophie and I love to help artists just like you to set up and grow a highly profitable successful art business doing what you love. And if learning more tips and tricks on how to build that successful art business is what you're looking for and you're in the right place. On this channel, I share all things art business related, so don't forget to subscribe and hit that bell to get notified every time I post a new video. So back to this question. Which marketing strategies should I use to market my art? Well, I'm so pleased you asked, here are my 10 faves coming up right now. Number one, it's that good old email marketing. Now as far as I'm concerned, email marketing and building your mailing list are the number one marketing strategy you should be doing no matter what. If you only do one thing, you need to be building your mailing list and sending emails out regularly to that list. That really is the fundamental marketing thing that you need to be doing in order to grow your business successfully. Because let's face it, if all you're doing is posting on good old social media, social media is not owned by you, it's owned by other people. And at any point that could go down and you're left with nothing. The only thing you own as an art business is your list of prospects, your mailing list. So number one, and these are not really in any order apart from this one. This one's top of the list. Email marketing as part of growing your mailing list. Now I have a few videos on that very topic. I'm going to put my favorite one up here where you can get started. And I'm also going to put links below to other videos where you can find out more about exactly how to set up and grow your mailing list and how to email effectively to that list. Number two, and that's ads. You know, how many of you want to spend hours and hours of your time doing lots of lovely organic marketing? I know that I don't. And one of the most effective ways to get to an audience that you perhaps don't have any contact with yet is to send an ad. So there are lots and lots of varieties of online ads. So anything from Facebook and Instagram ads to Google ads, which are great if you operate in a specific geographic location to, of course, ads that are platform specific. So YouTube ads on YouTube and Pinterest ads on Pinterest and Etsy ads on Etsy. Don't forget to watch all the Etsy videos that I've been doing recently. And again, links to those below the video. The benefit of running ads, you set it up once and it's running along in the background while you are in the studio painting more product or creating more of what you love to do. So, yes, there's one consideration, of course, with ads, and that's your budget. So you might say to me, Sophie, I'm just starting out. I have zero marketing budget. I'm not going to be able to run ads right now. And I'm going to say to you, that's fine. That's OK. But put it on your marketing plan to be doing in six months time because it's going to be really hard work to do lots of free organic marketing. It's possible to do, but it's going to take up your most precious resource, your time, and sometimes just working out how you can get together a marketing budget and getting some ads up and going straight away. It's going to fast track your results like nothing else. All right. So number one, email marketing to your mailing list. Number two, ads online ads. Number three, this is online. This is to do with your website and to do with other platforms as well. And that is SEO. And you might just recoil in the horror and think, oh, my God, I don't know anything about that, Sophie. I don't even know how to get started. In fact, I don't even know what it is. SEO stands for search engine optimization. And really what that is, it's using what we call a key word or a key phrase to help somebody find what they're looking for. So we all go searching, right? You go to Google, you type something in when you're looking for something and results pop up. So it's understanding what somebody, i.e. your ideal customer is typing into Google or to Pinterest or YouTube or whatever search platform they're on in order to find exactly what they're looking for, which we hope is your product. So once you understand what your audience is searching for, those phrases can be added into your listings, your website, your description on your Pinterest pin, your descriptions and titles and all things Etsy, wherever it is you're selling your products or services by using search engine optimization that doesn't cost you anything. If you do it yourself, there'll be a bit of an outlay. If you get a third party company, if you say, I don't want to do anything to do with search engine optimization. So if you pay someone to do it, that's fine. Then that at least will get it up and running. Honestly, for me, search engine optimization has been really, really, really integral part of growing my business. So maybe consider it if you haven't considered it before. Let's ask this question. How many artists do you think are using SEO right now to sell their work? I'm thinking not so many. So if you decide for all of you watching this video to decide, you know, I'm going to use that. Then maybe you have just that little bit of a head start. Number four, PR. Listen, there's nothing better than a bit of PR when you're an artist, especially if you're starting out, you have an exhibition, a show, you're doing something new, you've created a new collection. You want to get a bit of a buzz around what you're doing. Getting some free PR is absolutely invaluable. That's anything from press release out to the papers article in a magazine, perhaps gets you suddenly in front of way bigger audience than you had before. Maybe some radio, some TV, any of those good things are going to be absolutely fundamental to growing your business. Number five, a personal favorite, and that is networking. Now, I built up my first business by networking. I went to loads of local networking events and I worked really hard to get to know people and put them into my network. You may have heard that phrase, your network is your net worth. In other words, when you can build a collection of people that you know, like and trust, that you refer to and they refer to you, that's invaluable for growing your business. Supposing you went to a local networking event and you met somebody and they said, oh, my brother runs a gallery. I'm sure I can put you in touch. Oh, my friend over here has an SEO company. I'm sure they'd give you a great deal and look after your website. Who you know is really important. And if you're somebody that likes to get out of the studio, out of the working space, then going networking again, but like PR can give you a bit of a fast track when you meet some super influential people. So ask yourself the question, are you somebody that likes to get out and about? Do you like to chit chat? Is that something that you like to do? And if it is, networking is going to be great for you. Number six, referrals. This is such a traditional marketing strategy that we sometimes forget about somebody's bought a piece. They really love it. What if you said to them, hey, if you've got five friends that you think might be interested in coming along to my exhibition, I'll give you 10 percent of whatever they purchase, or I'll give you 20 percent off another piece for yourself or something that might be of value to that customer. Now, if you have small items online, that's really easy to do. It's really easy to give an existing customer a referral percentage. So they've bought a print that they really love. They tell 10 friends about that print. Some of their friends say, oh, actually, I'd like a print like that. They use their little referral thing to get a percentage off. Suddenly, you've got more customers. And of course, what do we do when we buy something or we go somewhere and we enjoy what we like? So if we go out for a meal, we're going to tell what, oh, we went to this amazing restaurant. We tell everybody, right? We went to see a movie we really liked. And we say, oh, we went to this amazing movie, or I love this book. So sometimes the easiest way to get more customers is to ask your existing fans, hey, who do you know that you think might really like what I've got on offer? And how about we give them a percentage off when they first purchase? Pretty easy stuff, right? Referrals. Number seven, blogging. Perfect for you if you like to share content or you're building an online brand and you want to drive traffic to your website. What better way than creating a blog with some images in, a good amount of text, and of course, using a keyword or two so that you can fulfill what people are actually looking for. How do I use or the best way to hang artwork in my room, the best way to look after? If you teach a course, it's perfect. Five ways with watercolors. And you've written a blog about that. Somebody finds that blog, reads that blog. You happen to have a course. They read the blog. They love it. They get on your mailing list, they buy your course. Right, it's not an overnight strategy. It's a medium to long burn. But it's great for your website. It's great for your authority as you keep writing blogs. But not only that, you can also promote them on other platforms, social media platforms. So, blogging, really, really good, safe for building the brand. And specifically, if you teach, for example, you have art services. Number eight, what you're watching this video on, YouTube, all right? Fundamental, if you teach your art, you create something that people can really follow and buy in the how-to videos. So, for example, you're watching this. We're building the channel on how to build an art business. If you sell courses on watercolor painting, then you want to create a YouTube channel with lots of little tip bits and how-tos and videos all around watercolor painting. Because that way, people who wanna learn will come in via your YouTube channel and then they can do exactly what I offer. Freebies below the video, links up here, over to the website. And before you know it, they're on your mailing list and they're purchasing that watercolor course that you happen to have handy. So, YouTube, phenomenal. The other bonus about YouTube, bit linked with SEO, it is a primary search engine. So, people are already on the platform looking for things. For me, it's the number one reason why I'm here. So, people are already searching for information. If you can then provide videos around that information that they're looking for, it's a win-win, right? Number nine, Pinterest. Who just doesn't love using that search engine platform? That's another great reason why to be on there because there's already people using it searching for content. Great again, if you're a content creator, you make that video or you write that blog. Really, really good if you're teaching or you have services, easy to make pins around those. But more importantly, it's essential if you're selling your artwork online and you have perhaps lots and lots of listings on Shopify or on Etsy or on any other online gallery site. You want to make multiple pins leading back to each one of those products. So, Pinterest is great for two things. It is a search engine and not only that, it's a massive traffic source. So, what does that mean? That means it's a massive way of people going from Pinterest to wherever you direct them, your website or your sales platform. So, brilliant, brilliant way. And of course, a lot of these strategies that I've talked about work really well for online or offline. Some of them are more specific offline and others are more specific online. Number 10 on that list. Number 10 strategy, probably in the right order too, is social media. So, social media primarily is great to build your brand awareness. And of course, we have got tagging product tools in Instagram and on your Facebook page. But there's also, of course, things like Twitter and TikTok. There are lots of other platforms and there are always new social media platforms. So again, it completely depends on how you feel comfortable, where you feel best, the best use of your time is. A lot of artists use Instagram because it's easy to run stories and reels and post out pictures and videos of what you're doing. Other people hate Instagram and they say, no, I wanna come off it all together. Perhaps I'm just gonna be on Facebook. Other people feel more comfortable. You're perhaps making short videos on TikTok. It's still a marketing strategy but as far as I'm concerned, you don't own those platforms, like I said. And I prefer to put all my focus on actually getting people onto the mailing list because I own that. Okay, that's the overview of the 10 strategies. Now I hear you saying, well, Sophie, how on earth do I make a choice? Well, I'm glad you asked that because I've got three simple questions for you to consider so that you can make the best choice possible. Question number one, who and where are your target audience? All right, if you're not sure about your target audience, don't forget to check out this video after you've watched this one. It's also linked in the description below. Understanding who your audience is and where they are right now is absolutely essential. So for example, if you've done a whole audience sort of break down and you've done an ideal customer avatar profile, all things that I talk about a lot in these videos, again, links are all below that. Don't forget to get your free worksheet so that you can fill out that as well, your ideal customer avatar. If you've discovered they spend hours and hours of their time searching for things on YouTube, you run the famous watercolour course but you think, oh, I think I'm just gonna blog because I prefer writing over making YouTube videos. Then you've got an audience searching for what you offer over here and you've got what you're writing over here. All right, and it's a mismatch and it's going to be a huge waste of your time. So you want to make sure to understand your audience. Well, where are they? Perhaps your audience is spending hours and hours on Instagram and you've made a big decision that you wanna come on social media, which by the way, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. But if you discovered that your audience, that's their primary place for searching. They spend hours engaging, looking, saving, posting things to their stories that they love and ultimately shopping through Instagram and you've said, oh no, I don't wanna be on Instagram. Then again, you've got this mismatch. So you've gotta understand who your audience is, the ideal customer and where they're already hanging out. Number two, what's your marketing budget? So you might say, oh my God, I love the idea of ads, because I said you can set them up once and they run in the background while you're doing things, but you have zero budget. That's not really gonna be a win for you. So you might be further down the track, you might be a little bit further along with your business and you say, do you know what? Actually, I'd forgotten that I could be running ads and right now, the primary thing I'm gonna be doing is running ads because I can reach my audience wherever they are in the world while I'm getting on into the studio and I'm happy to allocate a few hundred dollars a month to do that, right? That's gonna be massively impactful for your business. You can run ads to grow your mailing list. You can run ads direct to your shop. You can run ads to a promotion that you've got running on one specific product. You can run ads anywhere, but it comes down to at the end of whether you've got the budget to do it. So have you got a marketing budget? And then really number three, how much time can you make available? Notice I didn't say how much time have you got because we've all got the same 24 hours. Totally depends how we chop up those 24 hours or how we chop up the sort of eight working hours we might be using. How much time could you allocate to your marketing? If you said to me, okay, I've got two hours a day, five days a week to do marketing, I'm gonna say, great, that's probably about what you should be doing when you're starting out. Then you could do something like blogging because you have the time to write the blog. So if you've discovered your audience really reads a lot, they're readers and they love to read a blog when they find the right one, they find it really inspiring, then why not do blogging? So again, Pinterest, that's another bit of a time that takes quite a bit of time, even YouTube takes time. So these are the three strategies that really take quite a bit of time to do on an ongoing basis. And with those two hours a day, you can definitely do those strategies. But if you say, look, I'm in a full-time job, my art business is kind of being squeezed in in the evenings and weekends, then I'm probably gonna say to you, you're probably in a good position to use ads because you likely have the budget, you haven't got the time, so maybe you're gonna look at that. So it all depends on those three criteria. Okay, so you've looked at the 10 strategies, you've mulled over those three questions and presumably come up with your answers. So the next thing you might say to me is, well, how many do I choose, Sophie? And my answer to that is three to five maximum. Three, really prime one, primary, it's gonna be your email list. And then really two others that are gonna work well in terms of building that email list. And then five, you might add some more in, especially while you launch something or running a specific campaign, you might use some different strategies. So overall, think of it in terms of three to five strategies. And I have lots of other videos on marketing and all the topics that I've mentioned on YouTube, on Pinterest, on Instagram, on Facebook, on all the things. So I will put links to those below this video as well. Okay, that's all for now. Don't forget to check out my Marketing Your Art playlist that's a link below this video so you can get some deeper insights into exactly how to do some of these marketing strategies. And if you'd like me to make any specific video on any of the things that I've talked about today, then don't forget to leave a comment below and say, oh, could you really do a video on this particular topic? So there will be some future topics coming up. I feel like SEO is one that's bubbling to the surface. So if you're watching this at time of posting, then look out for an SEO video. If you're watching it later in the day, then I guess you're gonna find a link to it below this video. All right, thank you so much for watching and I'll see you on the next one.