 Well hello and welcome to today's video where I'm answering that question, what should you be doing to market your art in 2022? Now as we know over the last couple of years things have changed quite dramatically. Should you be marketing online, offline or a mixture of both? Are there some strategies you should be stopping altogether or new ones that you want to be adopting? How can we doing that in a smart and effective way whilst also of course having plenty of time to do all that lovely creative stuff? So that's what we're going to be answering in this video. Now if you're new here, my name's Sophie and I help my fellow artists to build profitable business around their current creative practice. So if that sounds like you, you're in the right place. We discuss all things business related on this channel and if you'd like to learn more don't forget to subscribe and hit the bell to get notified every single time I post a new video. So let's dive into seven things I think you should be doing to market your art this year in 2022. And it all starts number one with having a simple marketing plan. Yes separate to a business plan and you might be saying oh my goodness me Sophie how many plans do I need? But a business plan of course is essential and if you need to learn more things about business then check out this video that's going to walk you through everything you need to know to put together your business plan for this year. But here we're talking about a marketing plan and a marketing plan you'll find that there's quite a bit of crossover but there's some key pieces in there that you're going to go into more detail which are really going to help you flesh out what you should and shouldn't be doing. So areas that you're really going to want to dive deeper into are things like your ideal customer. How are you going to communicate to them? Where are they? How are you going to find them? If you want to get started on that journey then there's a link to a video below where you can watch that afterwards as well. We've also got a free download don't forget to grab our free download which is an ideal customer avatar worksheet. A big part of having a marketing plan is really fleshing out exactly who your customers are and then once you have that information well then making decisions on what strategies you're going to use based on where your audience is already showing up and trust me that's where most of you are going wrong right now because it's super easy to choose a marketing strategy and say I know I'm going to do this but if your audience are not there already looking for what you have then you're going to be wasting your time. A marketing plan, a simple marketing plan is going to help you gain that clarity so that you know which strategies you know exactly how to communicate to your audience and put all of that together in a really effective way. It's also going to help you actually work out what do I want to achieve in terms of a goal for my marketing separate to my business plan. It's really important to have a marketing goal for the year so that you have something you're striving towards. This is something we exclusively teach in our Art Business Academy membership. We have a fantastic marketing plan template and lots of trainings which really help you knuckle down and work out exactly all the pieces you need about your customer, your strategies, what you can be doing, having a budget, having a goal, all the different areas that you need to cover. If that's something that interests you as well as how to build your business then we are going to be opening the doors to the Art Business Academy in March of 2022 and if you're watching this video at time of shooting, time producing then don't forget to check out the link below because I have a waiting list that you can join and then you can be one of the first people to find out all the details about the Art Business Academy before we officially open the doors. All right, so number two things I think you should be focused on to market your art in 2022 is to focus primarily online. Now obviously you're online watching this video to likely you're used to consuming and watching other people's marketing efforts online and maybe you do some yourself as well. Social media is one online strategy but it really only is one small part of it. There's a whole lot of other pieces that you want to be considering. Why should you be doing primarily online? Well, we're still in a difficult world situation with the COVID pandemic. We've no idea how that's going to pan out and in order for you to create a business that's safe and stable and sustainable then you want to be going where you know people are going to be spending time and that is online. No matter what happens people are looking online now more than ever. So if this is something that you put off because you said oh no I really hate all the online stuff I don't want to spend time on my phone I don't want to spend time on my computer I hear you I get it but I can promise you that once you've learnt a few key strategies and you've put the pieces together to build a fantastic online marketing strategy you're going to be able to spend more time in your studio space more time in your creative space doing what you love because you've got some things on autopilot. Focusing online is 100% what you want to be doing this year. Number three of the things that you want to focus on in 2022 to market your art and something I talk about all the time doesn't matter what year we're in and that's building your mailing list and that's a key piece of the one that we've just mentioned focusing online because building your mailing list is easily done online there are lots of strategies to help you build your mailing list if you want to watch a video where I talk about this more at length and check out this one that's going to help you with building the mailing list so building a mailing is something that you own this is part of your business collateral you want to have a list of people who are interested in finding out more or who've maybe been to the website or they've been to something they've seen something they follow on social media you just want that next step you want to be able to build trust and connection with that audience who are interested to hear more from you otherwise you're stuck in that problem of well I've got a product and I need to put it you know I've got something that I've made and I'm going to put it up in my online store and then I'm going to sit and wait and then I'm going to be a little bit upset because maybe I don't get any sales by building a mailing list you have got an easy way to put something on your sales platform a ready warm audience no and say hey I've just posted this item up here wherever you're going to sell your products and services and here's a great offer to go and buy it now and trust me somebody said to me the other day oh by the way 90% of my art sales come from my email that goes out every I think she said fortnight actually we recommend weekly but she said every fortnight that's where her sales are coming from art work sales so there's some real data on the ground alright number four you want to start thinking about upgrading the social media so what do I mean by that have you got an account and a Facebook page or Instagram account maybe you're still on Twitter or you're using LinkedIn and you haven't really done anything with it for a while maybe you're looking at your Instagram bio and you're thinking oh who is that what is that one line I put there when I set it up now is the time to optimise that people are looking online people are searching everywhere there's a video coming up next all about Instagram you're going to want to know well what do I do in 2022 with my Instagram the first thing you're going to do is spruce up the bio so now is the time to be really thinking where can I optimise, where can I improve what could I make more of maybe I haven't been on that Facebook page for a while maybe there's an old header with an old bit of information that dates from a couple of years ago or a previous exhibition so make sure everything is up to date so that's the next thing to be doing to make sure that everything looks fresh and up to date so when somebody lands on it it's like oh yeah that's exactly what you do and number five we're talking social media you want to choose just one core social media and focus on that why? because this is a time thing it's very easy to set yourself up on every platform and be very scattered a few posts over here, a few things over there a three pin over there, a chair over there and actually what can happen is that you're not very effective on any of them so choose one platform and really put all your energy and effort into that make it look as good as it can get into a consistent posting routine making sure you're engaging doing all the things that you need to do one core platform and let everybody know hey I'm on this platform you want to find out about my artwork or online courses or whatever I'm doing you need to come to this platform make it really easy and obvious where you're hanging out and encourage your audience to join you there and number six following on that I think I already said the E word engage remember we said that we want to be focused online one of the key things you need to do when you're focusing your marketing online is to make sure that you're engaging now that might be when you send out an email to your prospects and somebody replies to your email try and get back to them as quickly as you possibly can now sometimes that can be quite a lot sometimes you can get a lot of emails but you know someone's taken the time to email you so respond to that engage with them somebody sent you a direct message on Instagram get back to them have a conversation maybe some people have left some comments under the post comment back thank them start a conversation so it's really important to put engagement right up there now I know we're all super busy so we can only do the best we can do but just by putting maybe a little time or a little reminder in your calendar every day just to say hey have I done the engagement have I been over engaged with my ideal audience have I started some conversations have I connected with people it doesn't need to take a huge amount of time 15 minutes 10 minutes even 10 minutes consistently is going to make a huge difference then 2 weeks passes and you answer a message and then I don't know 6 days passes and you respond to a comment or even worse 20 days passes and you go oh my god I had a comment to better answer that alright engagement is about being more in the moment as best as you can and just keep it all moving forwards and number 7 things that I think you should be doing to market your art in 2022 you're probably wondering why I haven't mentioned it yet it's the V word it's video so here's what I would recommend I would recommend that at a basic minimum 50% of the content that you put out wherever you put it out needs to be video there's endless endless stats that are going to show you that on social media platforms wherever you go video is being promoted the algorithm is pushing and favouring video put any type of video out on Instagram which is quite a lot of varieties you could be doing a reel you could put a video in your feed you could go live there's lots of different things you could do Instagram is going to favour that you're going to be seen by more people if you use video so this is why we're over here on YouTube so if you teach or share or do something consider having a YouTube channel whatever you're doing you want to be putting up a video if you're going to be using Facebook primarily then do live videos put up pre-recorded videos make very small taster videos use videos in your story use videos at least 50% of the time and here's the caveat if you're already doing that see if you can take it up to 75% of your time because I promise you the result are going to show when you can post a video over a static post you will get more engagement and engagement leads to interest leads to sales and that's ultimately what you're all here for how do I make more sales how do I make a living from my art Sophie that is the question I get asked all the time and then the next question is I don't understand marketing what should I be doing so this is what you should be doing for 2022 you need to make a simple marketing plan of what you're going to be doing you want to be focusing primarily online you want to make sure that a big part of that is building the mailing list spruce up those social media accounts you want to focus on just one of them you want to get that engagement really up there and then when you're putting content out you want to be putting out moving content video, video, video so if you're asking yourself what should I post today the answer is video one way or another let me know in the comments what you're going to be doing out of the things I've talked about today because I love to hear from each and every one of you let me know or if you've got any questions about any of these things then shoot me a question in the comments below and I will answer you of course so look out for the next video which is, I'll say, going to be all about Instagram strategy and from there I think we're going into Pinterest strategy so we're focusing online we're focusing with practical things that you can do to really help grow your business in 2022 thank you so much for watching if you've enjoyed the content don't forget to give me a thumbs up that really helps get the video out and seen by more people and look forward to seeing you on the next one bye bye