 Are you stuck with a studio full of artwork, website listings, overflowing, and after initially making some sales, all those artwork sales have now dried up. You're in the art sales desert if you like, where it's dry and dusty and you just can't see that water on the horizon. I hope you like the desert analogy. Well, don't feel bad because, quite honestly, this happens to a lot of artists. If not most artists, you start out enthusiastically, you've built up a collection of work, you've got your website up, you've got all your listings up, and chances are you've had a little launch of some sort and you started to make some sales. Now, a couple of things can happen here. One is if you're relatively new to all this and you haven't got a very clear marketing and sales strategy, then obviously that initial burst of enthusiasm is going to run dry without some constant activity from yourself. Or perhaps you've been doing this for a long time and you've reached that kind of business plateau, which happens to everybody, right? It's going well, it's going well, you've taken a lot for granted, you perhaps haven't made the changes and updates on things that you know you should do and you hit that plateau. And from that plateau, if you don't make the changes, guess what's going to happen is you are just going to end up down in the desert. Get excited because in this video, I'm going to share seven steps to get your art sales back on track so that you can get yourself out of the desert and you can get the water flowing again as art sales coming in on a regular basis. In case we haven't met, I'm Sophie, Artist, Entrepreneur and Art Business Coach, helping you to make a profitable business from your creative passion. Now if you love these videos, don't forget to give them a thumbs up, maybe leave me a comment below this video as well and even consider subscribing so that you don't miss out on any future content. No matter where you are on your journey, whether you've just started out, you've had those initial sales and then nothing's happened after that or you're further down the track and you're in that kind of art sales desert, these seven steps are going to get you back on track immediately. All right, so let's start out with number one, step number one. So number one, of course, is having a saleable product. Might sound obvious, probably is, but let's just ask ourselves a few questions here. So the first thing to think about is are you a competitor selling something similar? So IE, there's a lot of the same sort of thing out there right now and you are really wanting to make sales but perhaps surrounded by, I don't know, 10 or 20 other artists who are doing the same thing, which means that your audience, of course, suddenly has an awful lot of choice and that naturally is going to make things harder for you. Is your work on trend right now? Now, I'm absolutely not an advocate of you needing to produce work that's on trend and keep up with the trends, unless that's something that you want to do and that's an active strategy for you. But it's definitely information that you want to bear in mind. If what you're doing right now is really sought after, then that's definitely going to help your sales process for sure, right? Do you have a clear niche? So when somebody lands on your website, on your social media, are they absolutely clear what it is you do? Or does it look like you do 10 or 20 different things and immediately they're a bit confused? And as we know, confused potential customers tend to leave and go somewhere else. So perhaps a little bit of thinking over whether what you do is very obvious to your customer. I have a video on finding your niche as an artist, so check that out. I'll pop a card up here and a link below this video. It's super important that we make it easy for your customers to find you, understand what it is that you do and then go on to purchase from you. And the last thing to think about here is are you 100% happy with what you're making? What can sometimes happen is you're creating a collection of work, a body of work, and you're really happy with, say, 50% of it. And the other 50%, it's kind of okay, but it's not great. And you know that you could do better. And in that desire to make lots of sales, you've popped them all up on your website or you're having an exhibition and you want to sell all of them, even though you know that a few of them are perhaps not as good as they could be. So there's a few things to consider, a few things for you to work through. How can you optimize what you're doing? Have you got a lot of competition, in which case, how do you need to stand out? What could you just tweak so that you're doing something different? You have a slightly different take on that subject matter, for example. So having a saleable product is going to get you out of the gate faster, right? If you've got something that people don't really want, then making sales is going to be really, really hard. Step number two is you want to have your completed artist business plan. Now, I talk about this a lot on the channel. There's even a whole playlist on your business plan for artists. So don't forget, again, I'll link through to my key video here and I'll put a link to the whole playlist below. Once you've gone through the process of completing your artist business plan, then you're going to be 100% clear on what it is that you want to achieve. That vision for your future, that piece that we're moving towards, and a clear step-by-step plan of how you're going to get there, how you are going to get there, what's important for you as an artist and your business. And that's going to be different for everybody watching this video. And that's why the plan is so powerful. There's no one type fits all, all right? Here, you need to make your own bespoke plan with your own strategies of how you're going to get to where you want to go. And I'm here to help you with that process. And it all starts with the actual plan. In there, you're going to be very clear on what you're choosing to offer, your kind of key products, as I call them, or key services. You're going to be clear also on to whom you'd like to sell them. Who is that audience? Who is that ideal customer? I get asked this question so many times. Sophie, how do I know who my audience are? Where are they? How do I find them? Like I've mentioned a lot of times, before you can find them, you have to decide who they are. Who is it that you would like to buy your artwork or your art services? You define that. Now, I've got video on how to find the target market and I'll link that up there and down below this video as well. It's really, really important that you understand what it is that you have to offer and the audience that's going to buy it. Then, of course, you want to decide how much money you want to make because that's the key piece of the business plan. How much money do you want to turn over in the year? What's the price point of your products? Therefore, how many do you need to sell at any one time? Per week, per month, all of these things are super important and you need to find that out. You're not going to make sales if you don't have a plan to follow. Then, of course, you're going to need a clear strategy as to how you're going to do that. So you say, I'm going to offer original paintings. This is how much money I want to make in the year. This is my typical price range for this artwork. I get the calculator out and I work out that I need to sell, I don't know, four, five, six large paintings per month. Then I need a strategy. How are we going to do that? How are you then going to do that? That's the marketing piece and the sales piece. And I can promise you, without all of these steps that are included in your business plan, you're just not going to make consistent sales. Will you make occasional surprising, well, that's nice sales for sure. This, you've got some work out there, but who wants to sit there waiting? Six months might go past before you get one of those, right? You're building an art business here, we presume, which is why you're on this channel. So you want to build up consistent sales. So therefore you need to know how many do you need to sell? How are you going to make that happen, right? I also have a little course. So this is something you're thinking, oh, God, I really, really need this. I have a little course that can help you build your artist business plan. And it walks you through my seven steps to the business plan and helps you fill out your own template, cash flow forecast, all the finances, all the bits and bobs. So if you would like to take that course, then there's a link directly below this video where you can click through, get all the information and purchase that course. But once you've completed your artist business plan, it's time to move on to step number three. And that pulls something out of that plan and takes it to a whole other level. And that is really understanding that target audience and ideal customer. And I have to say that most artists don't really have a clear enough picture of who their audience really are and who that ideal customer is. So very often I'll ask people, oh, yeah, yeah, no, I kind of, I have an idea who they are. Now I'm not talking about having an idea who they are. Really, I want to stress that you have several pages of writing around who that person is. The more information that you can decide about your customer, the more that you have to help with your marketing, the more clarity they have, the easier it will be to send that email because you're speaking directly to that customer. The easier it will be to make a social media post if that's what you do. It'll, it easier it'll be to write a press release or get some PR. No matter how you decide to market your business, understanding who that customer is right to the core is a vital, vital part of that. So if you don't have a clear enough idea of your ideal customer, then likely you're just not showing up in the right places. So if you skip this step, like I said before, it's like throwing darts into the dark, right? And hoping that something's gonna stick. That really is a huge waste of your time and your resources. So you 100% want to get clear on who that audience. Like I say, I've got the video. So that's linked below there. I've also got a free resource ideal, my ideal customer avatar worksheet. So if you're ready to really kind of roll up your sleeves, roll up your sleeves, do it safely and get stuck in, then there's a link below the video to take you to that free worksheet and you can get stuck in there as well. So step number four now is pricing your artwork for that audience. So make sure that you have a super clear pricing list. I like to make this really easy. What are the sizes that you're gonna be offering and what is the price point for those sizes? I have a six step to pricing formula that's a video that again, as I've said before, will be linked below this video. So if you're a little worried about pricing, go check that out after as well. So you don't want to fall in that trap of thinking, I'm not making the sales, therefore I must have to drop my prices, right? There's a huge difference between having a sale of perhaps old stock that you perhaps like to get rid of. I used to use that strategy at Open Studio. I would always have a little bit at the back that was dramatically reduced because I really wanted to move them on. They were part of previous collections and weren't relevant to the current work. That's a whole different strategy than you taking your current work, saying I'm not making the sales, I'll just drop the prices. That is not gonna work. That's absolutely not what you're gonna do. Now I'm sure as you're working through this video, you're beginning to realize that there's quite a few reasons why the art sales have dried up, right? Like we said at the beginning, it is all down to strategy. There's also down to having that product that's ready for selling. It's also down to having that business plan completed the understanding of the audience and what we're talking about right now, which is the pricing correct. So let's go ahead and look at the next step that you're gonna need to start making all those sales again. Step number five is focusing on building your artist mailing list. Yes, that good old email marketing that I talk about a lot and just recently I've made a little series of updated videos on setting up and building your mailing list and of course a bit on email marketing as well. So this is where most artists go wrong actually. So if you don't focus on this now, you're gonna waste so much time having to market to a cold audience over and over and over again. Imagine if you will, you've just created a new collection. So this is how it looks if you don't have a mailing list. You've got to start from the very beginning. You've got to put some marketing out there. You've got to find that audience. You've got to get in front of them. You've got to warm them up. You've got to let them know about the new collection and then you've got to find some way for them to start purchasing that. Or on the other hand, you've already got a mailing list and then all you need to do is send a series of emails out to that list letting them know that you have a brand new collection and maybe making an offer saying the next 48 hours. Here's a 10%, 15% code just for you on the mailing list because you're my VIPs before I release the collection out to the public. And I can tell you that is a sure-fire winner. I have clients doing that all the time and it works really easily. So if that's not getting you excited about building the mailing list, I don't know what is. So step six is that communicating clearly to the audience. So that's the habit of sending the regular emails. So the setting up the mailing list is one thing but building that trust, that likability, that trust and connection with the audience so that when you have that new collection, you can send out those emails and they are readily received. So I like to advocate a weekly email. This is about the right period of time. It's not too long, it's not too short. If you only send out say a monthly email, most people will have forgotten who you are in the month and it's like, oh, who's that email from? Don't know, delete. It's too big a period of time. That's 12 emails a year, that's just not enough. If you send daily emails, it's probably not gonna be great. Either period of time, oh my God, that's that person again. A lot of hard work for you. Can't see anybody here sending daily emails. Weekly's just nice, all right? This week in the studio, this is about the new collection or here's a bit about my inspiration or here's behind the scenes, the materials that I use. Oh, here's my new collection open and ready. It's just enough to keep people in the loop, get them excited so they find it a little bit more about you each week as you go forward. Make sure that you use language that they understand, avoid that art jargon. That's great amongst us artists, but your audience likely are not artists themselves and if you start using RT speak, that's gonna put them off. So you wanna think about, once you've profiled them, you'll have a clear idea of who they are. Speak in language and words and communicate to them in a way that you know is gonna land well. So imagine that that ideal customer is kind of your best friend. How would you write an email if that person was your best friend? Just be natural, be authentic, be you. And remember that that communication is also not just for emails. You want to communicate clearly on your website and in your social media posts as well. Step number seven is of course, building a consistent marketing routine. So one of the main reasons why your sales might have dried up is because there's a huge lack of marketing, all right? And the other reason it might have dried up, of course, is if you're marketing to the wrong audience. So you're doing some marketing and say, Sophie, I'm doing consistent marketing. Here I'm doing marketing over here, but your audience is over there. And so therefore you're wasting again a lot of time and effort. Do you see how all these pieces fit together? I hope you get excited about these. This is just a set number of pieces that are all part of building your arts business, right? And if you are not paying attention to all of them, it doesn't all flow together and you will end up in that desert, right? Where it's dry and dusty and dirty, hot and smelly probably, and not a place that you want to linger. You want to make sure that you have all of these pieces going and flowing together and then you will make the art sales. It's not rocket science folks, but unfortunately it might mean you're doing some things that you're not particularly excited about. It might mean doing some things that you don't want to do. It might mean that you're just gonna say, right, for the next six months I'm gonna knuckle down. I'm gonna get this working. I'm gonna start making sales and then I'm gonna outsource the bits that I don't like doing. Because ultimately that's really how you're gonna build things anyway, right? So remember that Rome wasn't built in a day. Don't expect to make millions of sales after two weeks of marketing, all right? When I said build a consistent marketing routine, I meant it. You're gonna find something that works and keep doing it week in, week out. And that consistency is key, all right? If you've got yourself a weekly routine and you just don't manage to do a bit of it that week, don't beat yourself up, right? Next week you start again. It's almost like you say, okay, week one, here I am, week one, here are the things I said I was gonna do. I've done most of them, but oh no, I didn't do this bit. Therefore, oh, you know, I've fallen off the wagon, that's it, I won't bother anymore. No, no, no. If you just didn't manage to do it all, that's okay. Monday resets the whole thing and you get to start again for the next week. Now, you might not see immediate results, okay? So you make the routine, you start out on week one, and you might just think, oh no, okay, that post hasn't landed very well. So marketing really is the medium and long game, all right? It's not gonna be an immediate win, but you might find that even within the month you get a sale because you started doing things consistently. So everything is possible, but just remember that it is about doing it over time. It's about keep doing the marketing activity. So in conclusion, leaving all of this to chance is going to leave you very frustrated and with an empty bank account. So if the sales have dried up, it's time to initiate these seven steps to get them flowing again. And if, like you said, you're right at the beginning and you just had those few initial sales, then get excited because these are the pieces you need to build your art business. Or look out for my next video too, because that's five steps to selling more art online, all right? So specifically an online process, get excited for that video, make sure you have subscribed so that you'll get a notification when that video comes out. And for now, why not check out this one, which is that business planning video? Because chances are you're watching this, your sales have dried up because you probably don't have the plan. So let's get planning together. If you've got any questions, post them below this video. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you on the next one. Bye-bye.