Creative Cogitation

One job that I really stink at and I think I could improve upon is mar­ket­ing me.  This blog is an exten­sion of that effort, at least as far as adding vis­i­ble, search-able, timely con­tent online.

But what have I learned over the years?

No. 1 — Always be ready with the 30-second com­mer­cial.  When­ever you meet new peo­ple you need to be able to con­vey who you are and what you do in 30 sec­onds or less.  Prac­tice it in front of the mir­ror and get it nailed down.

• Mine depends on whether I am mar­ket­ing my day job as a knowl­edge­able small busi­ness tax accoun­tant, OR my acrylic abstract rep­re­sen­ta­tional art & mag­i­cal real­ism to my prospec­tive clients.  I don’t bring up both unless it hap­pens to come up in sub­se­quent conversation.
• If price point is an issue then I also have tai­lored com­men­tary aimed at sell­ing trin­kets, such as greet­ing cards, refrig­er­a­tor mag­nets and greet­ing cards based on my orig­i­nal art designs as well.
• The point is to know your audi­ence and what mes­sage you are try­ing to con­vey to them before you open your mouth and be pre­pared with a short spiel that addresses this concern.
• Toward this end look for cues from you cus­tomers about what they are inter­ested in — fol­low their eyes, ask them what they want, then lis­ten to their answers and get them engaged in conversation.

No. 2 — He who quotes price first loses.  When it comes to sell­ing my art I try to get my con­sumers to tell me what they think my art is worth rather than the other way around.  For trin­kets though I am will­ing to lose as my time also has value.

No. 3 — Always have mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als on hand.  I usu­ally carry around glossy busi­ness cards with an image of my art on the front and my con­tact infor­ma­tion on the back. (I have account­ing busi­ness cards too…) On the back of my art busi­ness cards, I have left a space on the back so I can make notes for my prospects on the card I give them if required.  I have sev­eral ver­sions and I usu­ally let my poten­tial patrons select from among my jew­els.  It is also a great way to find out which of my images is more pop­u­lar at the moment as well.

• In addi­tion to the busi­ness card, I also carry post­cards and full-sized glossy brochures around with me too. Whether you actu­ally need these kinds of mate­ri­als is another ques­tion, but I do think that busi­ness cards are a min­i­mum require­ment.
• When­ever I sell art, a print, or my trin­kets, etc. the buyer always gets another busi­ness card.  If I sell some­thing major I will likely throw in a “gift” of a post­card too.
• Mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als should be up-to-date.  So rather than get­ting 1000 of a sin­gle card, which may be dated in a short period of time, spend a lit­tle bit extra on the upload fees and buy lesser amounts.
• I use Adobe Pho­to­shop and a dig­i­tal cam­era to cre­ate my mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als, I have found that the time and money I spent on get­ting good pho­tographs and pro­duc­ing good mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als is worth the effort.
  • Dig­i­tal cam­eras facil­i­tate the trans­fer of images directly to your com­puter; you won’t have to scan them in. When I pur­chased my high-resolution dig­i­tal SLR cam­era — it paid for itself with the first 20 images I took.  I have used it to cre­ate hun­dreds of images since then.
  • If you are a do-it-yourselfer, then you will want to learn how to take good pic­tures, learn basic image manip­u­la­tion skills such as resiz­ing, set­ting up dif­fer­ent file types (.tif, .jpg, .gif), and learn how to place text on your mar­ket­ing images.

I have no affil­i­a­tion with Adobe, I just hap­pen to have used their prod­ucts for more than a decade.

• Most print­ers, online or oth­er­wise will sup­ply a tem­plate of what is required in order for them to print what you want.    Get these tem­plates and use them to help you with your lay­out.  I use VistaPrint.com, which will allow you to upload images & place text for cus­tomiz­ing your brochure or what­ever.  I have never designed a prod­uct online at VistaPrint.com, but merely have uploaded my com­pleted designs so I don’t know how well the online stuff works.  I have no affil­i­a­tion with VistaPrint.com; I have just used their ser­vices for sev­eral years.  I have found them rea­son­ably priced and sat­is­fac­tory; YMMV.
• You may print your own busi­ness cards etc to good effect, but most home-printed jobs do lack the appeal of pro­fes­sion­ally printed mate­ri­als.  Of course I under­stand that you may be oper­at­ing on a lim­ited bud­get, but if pos­si­ble splurge on the glossy, full-color, card stock materials.

No. 4 — Know when to shut up.  Observe shop­pers and learn the cues about when they are ready to buy and then let it hap­pen.  If some­one comes to you as a refer­ral and already has an object in mind the sale may already be made, but you can kill it by talk­ing the buyer to death.

No. 5 — The cus­tomer is not always right.  20% of your cus­tomers will take up 80% of your time.  If an eighty-percenter is also extremely budget-conscious you really should eval­u­ate whether you want to do busi­ness with them.  Often times these eighty-percenters will be the same buy­ers who will cre­ate headaches after the sale, express­ing con­tin­u­ing dis­sat­is­fac­tion with their pur­chase.  On tip-off is a shop­per who does not know what they really want.  Be on the look­out for high-maintenance clien­tele and then fig­ure out a way to diplo­mat­i­cally tell them to shove off.

To have a web­site or not? I have one and I think they are a good idea for any busi­ness.  Some­times peo­ple will just want to be able to go some­where and find out more about you.  If you do not have an online pres­ence then you may be miss­ing out on would-be con­tacts who may shop else­where if they per­ceive they have more knowl­edge about your com­peti­tors than you.

• There are venues where you can post your cur­rent designs and talk about your­self and have a link­able online address, such as MySpace.com, so there is no require­ment to actu­ally pay for a web­site if you are will­ing to work with what is out there.  I am not affil­i­ated with MySpace.com, but I do have a MySpace.com page as jakebeckman.
• But for a lit­tle bit of money you can cre­ate a 1 to 5 page web­site at many places for a rea­son­able price – many of these ser­vices have prepack­aged designs you can just plug your mate­r­ial into.  I don’t do that, but I do under­stand that many peo­ple do not pos­sess the skill set to
• If you want to have a domain all your own then I rec­om­mend get­ting it sep­a­rately from some­place like GoDaddy.com then point­ing it to your web­site – why? Because some unscrupu­lous “free” web­hosts will gladly set up a domain for you, but if you decide to change web­hosts they may decide not to release your domain to you and any brand­ing you may have devel­oped with your domain goes out the win­dow.  I am not affil­i­ated with Godaddy.com but I have sev­eral domains listed with them.

Those are a few of the things I have learned over the years. Now it’s your turn to speak up. What have you learned? I would love to hear some other ideas about how you pro­mote your­self as an artist.

Yours in Art,

-Jake

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

PS. I am still look­ing for Spon­sors & Con­tribut­ing Patrons to help me pay the esti­mated $8000 it is going to cost me to attend this event.  Every lit­tle bit helps.