 Well hello and welcome to this video. Now I think there's a big misconception that you have to be on social media as an artist and it's the only way to successfully market yourself and sell your art. Well in this video I'm going to be sharing how to market your art without social media. So get excited as I reveal 10 ways that you can effectively market and sell your products and services without having to show up on social media. Now if you're the introvert a bit like me you're going to absolutely love this video and don't forget to stay right to the end because I've got a bonus extra kind of 11th way to market your art without social media and I thought I'd throw it in because it kind of sits in its own category so make sure you stay right to the end so you don't miss out on that one. Now in case we haven't met I'm Sophie, artist, coach and entrepreneur helping artists just like you to make more sales by building a profitable business. So please do consider subscribing to my channel so you don't miss out on any of my future videos and give this one a bit of love as well if you're enjoying the content as it really does help me build my channel and be found by more artists. Okay let's dive right into those 10 plus the extra bonus ways to market your art without social media. Okay number one way that you can market your art without social media is of course email marketing. Now we remember that building a mailing list full of people who are interested and want to hear more from you is central to growing your business. You don't own those platforms on social media and they could shut down at any time and they keep changing the rules and just as you've got the hang of one thing suddenly it changes. What if all you've done is put all your energy and effort into growing followers on social media and that platform closed tomorrow what would you do? You wouldn't have any of those followers you wouldn't be able to send them an email and say hey this is me this is what I'm doing it's absolutely critical that you do this. You can also do things like segment that list as you go forward so people who are particularly just starting and they're interested in finding out a little bit more from you can get one email but people who've already bought from you could get a different email that you segment and you speak differently to that audience of people who are really buying from you. You're going to send out weekly emails so that you build trust and connection and then of course periodically well fairly regularly really you're going to be offering them the opportunity to buy from you so this is absolutely critical. So number two way you can market your art without social media is of course SEO. What does that stand for? Search engine optimization. Now I think we're often put off by something that we don't really understand so we disregard it and say that's too hard it's not for me but in fact SEO can absolutely work for you and you know what the best bit about it is as a marketing strategy the cost zero it's free to do. Now obviously you're likely paying for your website platform that's fine you're going to be doing that valid part of building your business but the actual SEO part is actually free unless of course you pay somebody to do it for you and you can use it on your own website on third-party sites it's particularly useful and critical actually if you're building an Etsy store it's Pinterest it's YouTube it's Amazon it's all the platforms really and now it's also Instagram as well it's all the platforms use SEO. So in other words somebody's going to put in a search term to look for something that they want and what you've got to do is make a guess and work out which search terms your audience might be putting in to YouTube to Pinterest to Google to look for the product or service that you offer and then you are going I mean this is very very kind of kindergarten level and you're going to make sure that all those keywords are put into your content your listings etc so that you are more easily found. Now it can be quite a daunting topic to learn there are lots of videos on YouTube on SEO but if you're interested in learning more and you'd like to join my membership then I have a training on SEO in there where to use it how to use it the kind of basics to get going and everything and there's links below this video to the Art Business Academy membership that you can join if you're serious about building your art business this year. Number three ways that you can market your art without social media is running ads Google or other ads now if you have a marketing budget and you can start fairly small then ads are a brilliant source of what we call traffic that's people not people in the cars but just people looking at what you have on offer sending your audience straight to your listings right if it's online or your workshop or wherever things are registered you send people straight there now you can either use Google ads and Google has three billion searches per minute I'm just going to say that again on Google there are at this point of shooting three billion searches per minute or you could run Facebook and Instagram ads that have approximately three billion monthly users so it's up to you which platform you use these days they offer very similar capabilities and on Google you're more likely to pay when somebody actually clicks through to your listing whereas Facebook you very often pay when it's shown to people so I usually would prefer to use Google ads over Facebook ads but these days they pretty much merged and you have all sorts of options you can target really well with Facebook and Instagram ads you can really get down to exactly who your target audience are and how to get in front of them now you can dramatically scale your business with ads but here's a word of caution I wouldn't suggest this for a total beginner you've just listed your first 20 prints online you've had nobody look at them before you've had no sales and you decide to send a load of traffic via paid for ads I really wouldn't recommend doing that's probably the fastest way to flush your money what I would be doing is sending organic traffic to make sure that you get the sales first once you start making sales then you scale it up with ads number fourth way that you can market your art without the old socials is of course PR public relations you know it's a great way to reach a much larger audience quicker kind of in one hit think newspaper think magazine articles think radio interviews podcast TV these are brilliant if you have a great story and by the way every one of you has a story it's just about working out what it is and kind of pulling it out and pushing it together and it could be simply that you have a story about your latest collection of work and if you can share that story and get that story out to many many more people via various PR channels this is particularly useful of course if you have a show coming up or you have some sort of event and you want to get in front of many many more eyes just prior to that event number five this is one that really often get forgotten referrals think about this for a moment if you go out for dinner and you go to a restaurant you have a really nice meal do you go home and tell nobody about it or do you go home and tell your friends is hell my god you've totally got to go to this restaurant we had the best meal ever there we had amazing service it was fantastic you might even go on to Google and give them a Google review right why is it that we forget that actually the good old person to person is a brilliant way to build your business they often tell the story of my partner now at ex-partner very sadly has a building company and he's never ever done any traditional marketing the only way he's built a multi-million turnover building company is from referrals right somebody sees the house they tell their friends oh my god we have this amazing builder he did an incredible job and when you're ready to build your house or you know someone who wants to extend the house or renovate or whatever you should totally use this builder now they could go out and give more referral slips but actually they're falling over work so in there in a lucky position but imagine now as an artist every time you had a customer buy something you said hey if you really love it and you happen to tell your friends here are five referral cards so that your friends can get a discount off or to get free delivery or something that you can offer that's appealing to the audience you know when they buy from me and don't forget that you can also do things imagine for example you sell original art large pieces and you sell a large piece to somebody and a lovely big house and you say oh have you got any friends and they say yes loads and you say you know just in case your friends might like a piece like this here are five referral cards they're going to get 20% off original art and you're going to get a special gift and they might go that's really exciting they hand out the cards you sell more art and you could have look around and see perhaps something that they might really like or treasure or value I may even just be a beautiful bottle of champagne a gorgeous bunch of flowers makes them feel special makes you realize that you are just making that slight extra effort and they might start to tell even more friends so guess this amazing local artist I bought this painting from I think you're getting the idea business is about people and I know as artists we're quite often recluses but if you can just get out of the shell a little bit and start to think about well if you don't want to be on social media you know you think about it like this you're going to make some reels where you're going to stand in front of the video and do some something stupid and make yourself I feel like an idiot or you can actually go and talk to a customer when they're buying something and offer them the chance to give a discount to their friends for example which one would you rather do so you can weigh it up like that referrals is an amazing strategy if you sell original art and you deliver it specifically to your customers it can also work online as well there are multiple ways that you can do it so have a think about how you could run the referral strategy in your art business number six ways you can market your art without the old socials is of course networking so here we going to keep the theme of business being about people so it makes sense to grow a network of people who know what you offer who know what you're about now I used to attend business networking events on a regular basis what I mean by regular weekly and it's a really powerful strategy you're not going to the event to sell something you're going to the event to meet other people and those other people might be my friend runs a chain of boutique hotels they're looking for an artist to furnish those hotels with with wall art let's have a look at what you do this could absolutely work let me refer you onto that person and arrange a meeting all right you might have spent I don't know 20 30 dollars pounds going to the event you might mix and mingle and meet these people and you just meet that one person whose body and owns a chain of boutique hotels you just don't know it's not about the people in the room it's about who they know so just think about that from numbers there might be 20 people at the event each of those people probably know another 20 people right that's a lot of people that you could potentially reach so again this is might be a little bit awkward for those of you who are a little bit shy but I promise you you can start off with small local events grow your confidence and start to go out to bigger events it's an absolutely amazing way to grow your business number seven I'm giving up on the fingers now number seven ways to market your art without social media is events now if you're a service-based art business and you're using events is kind of a brilliant way so imagine you run workshops or classes the obvious way is you run a free event first and then you offer at that free event you offer the paid for workshops and classes by the way this is the easiest way to fill your workshops have you haven't watched my workshop videos I'll put a link to those below it really is a super super easy strategy but imagine that you have products so you could attend and I don't generally recommend this for those offering fine art but at the beginning of your career you could go to local craft or art markets and then great places especially if there's high football to meet people meet your potential audience get a little bit feedback on what you're doing get seen and also build the mailing list right all of these strategies also will build the mailing list by the way but this one is particularly good you know if you've got a thousand people come through and a percentage of those sign up to win a print at your stand you're growing your mailing list all right so it's a brilliant strategy events and it works the same online by the way if you are running online courses then you offer a free training super free training that wets people's appetite and then you offer them the course afterwards number eight YouTube you're watching it you're on it this platform is brilliant for so many reasons the first of which is that it's a search engine people are already looking for content on this platform which means you don't have to work quite so hard to promote it you still do but you don't have to work quite so hard so there are people already looking for things now whether that's learning how to paint learning how to make what you're doing or learning how to build an art business right it doesn't matter people are looking for things so by creating high volume content making videos on this platform you have the opportunity to reach a wider audience build the mailing list I get people join my mailing list every single day while I'm sitting in the studio while I'm going for a walk where I'm having a coffee because it's there look watching the videos and then they're signing up for free things below the videos I have a few free things by the way below here you're signing up for that they're joining the mailing list and all because I've just set that up and because I'm consistently putting content onto this channel you could do exactly the same right specifically brilliant if you teach right you're making these workshops classes courses you run a little YouTube channel and suddenly before you know it you've got your mailing list growing and then you're emailing the mailing list saying hey I've got a class running would you like to you know get a special offer discount easy right it all sounds easy I know exactly what you're thinking of course you have to put some energy and effort in but that's about business right you're going to put energy and effort in to build your business because you do want to make a living from your art I'm assuming and for some of you you do want to leave that full-time job or part-time job so therefore we have to be prepared to do a bit of work it's just a choice of which one of these strategies you think is going to work for you right okay we're on the last two and then don't forget to hang in for the bonus one because I think this is a gem alright number nine blogging now if you hate the thought of making videos but you quite like writing then blogging could be your thing you create a weekly blog article on different topics that are of interest to your audience there is so much more to this topic but I feel like I could talk for hours on all of this and then you publish this to your website and of course you make sure that you have a clear call to action in the blog hey join my mailing list here where you're going to get X Y and Z watch the video over here so you want to send them on to different places when you're publishing the blog now the critical part of blog and also YouTube is that SEO we mentioned right back at the beginning right you've got to work out what your audience is looking for and you build a blog around one of those topics I build my videos around topics that I know from my research are being looked for on YouTube and I don't just randomly think I know I'll just make a video on this and put it out I've spent a long time researching to find out a video that is being looked for and one that I can kind of fill a gap in and it's the same with blogging number 10 I can get with the hands again now number 10 joint ventures this is back to being with people all right there's so much variety in in marketing without social media number 10 joint ventures so one of the most powerful and overlooked marketing strategies working with another business who has the same target audience but offers something different to that audience and complimentary as well obviously and it needs to be ideally it's a reciprocal arrangement so think about this if you do run your art classes you teach online you run workshops you have a lot of people coming through needing art materials you think about an art store that you buy your materials for you love it could be a local store could be an online and you say okay let's do something reciprocal I will send everybody from my workshop to your site to buy the materials likely they going to give them a bit of a discount if you then send an email out to your list about my courses and then you might say for everybody that buys my course or workshop I'm going to give you 20 30% of that ticket even up to 50% of that ticket price so they're getting they're getting money they're also getting sales from the store you're getting more people on your workshops and you're also getting happy customers and there's loads and loads of ways of doing it if you're selling original art hmm who else has that serves the same audience what about an interior designer interior designer needs to bring artwork very often in to a house why don't you get to know some interior designers in your area and see if you can work out a reciprocal agreement there's so many ways of doing it now I'm going to say this is not an overnight so you're not suddenly next month going to set this up you want to get to know these people foster the relationships build them up over time and make sure that they're really committed to helping you build the business now you might meet these people while you're networking and build a bit of a friendship and then after a while you could say hey do you want to do a joint venture it's definitely not something you want to do with somebody you don't feel happy with but it can work really well I know businesses who've totally built their mailing list only from joint ventures no social media no YouTube that she this is a friend of mine knows that she not on social media not on YouTube not on various other online platforms I'm going to mention in a minute nowhere really apart from joint ventures networking and all the sales come from the email list that's it right so it's absolutely possible to do it and do it really really well so we're now at the bonus item number 11 and I have made videos on this and so it won't be really a surprise but again I think it's underrated it looks like a lot of work a lot of people don't want to do it but I'm gonna say Pinterest plus Pinterest ads alright so the thing is Pinterest is also a massive search engine there are people looking for stuff saving stuff then there are people shopping through that platform more and more and more as every day goes past so they look for inspiration they look for products they look for things to put in their home they look for information how to learn something how to do something they pin it to a board they pin things they might want to buy to a board and then very often they look at the pin and they go through and they buy that thing so not only is it a way to market the business but it's a way to make direct sales as well and it totally relies on number two and I should really test you all now number two was SEO it's all about the search terms right so you can create multiple pins and send traffic that's people remember directly to your listings they go across and go oh my god I want this print actually I'll have these two prints purchase and all you did was create some pins on something like Canva and you posted them on to Pinterest pretty simple right I've obviously there's a little bit more to it than that but there's a little bit more to all of these I hope you can see that they're all take some what we call work they put effort in you're going to need to put effort in you're going to need to take consistent action but like I said you do want to build a business right you do want to make money you can't just put something online sit back and wait for the phone to ring look at your phone and go there's no money in my bank account refreshing it it doesn't work like that you have got to do the marketing thing it's more a case of do I go with social media because I love it plus some of these other things or do I say you know what I don't want to do that I'm going to do this strategy followed by that strategy right so some of them will need learning and practice before you doing them but I figure that's like anything none of us picked up a paintbrush age two and became a genius right we all put in hours we put practice we went maybe to art school we learn we did more courses so we got to do the same thing with building the business so I think you agree we have some really clear different options completely different variety of options some and 10 well 11 ways to market your art without social media so you have really lots of food for choice perhaps watch the video again and then write down okay with these are the ones that I think are going to be good I always recommend to my membership peeps to look at three to five marketing strategies overall three of the ones you're going to do consistently and the others are ones you're going to use for exhibitions events that sort of thing so look out for the next video that I'm you making that's going to be the top five mistakes the artists are making while marketing their art look out for that video in the meantime why not catch up with my previous video here on screen alright thank you so much for staying right to the end you're amazing if you're still watching leave a comment and let me know I watched to the very end Sophie thank you so much and I'll see you on the next one take care bye bye