The internet has changed the way businesses conduct business and how people search for products and services. The days of catchy jingles and flashing signs have come and gone. Learn how to write a content marketing plan for artists will help you to build a striving art business.
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How to Write a Content Marketing Plan For Artists
The internet has changed the way businesses conduct business and how people search for products and services.
The days of catchy jingles and flashing signs have come and gone.
According to Khalid Saleh, word of mouth marketing drives $6 trillion of annual consumer spending and is estimated to account for 13% of consumer sales. Word of Mouth marketing impression results in 5x more sales than a paid media impression, and people are 90% more likely to trust and buy from a brand recommended by a friend.
What do these statistics mean to you as an artist selling fine art?
The new way to advertise your artwork without bombarding your buyers will advertisements that don’t work, and images of art for sale that produce no results is content marketing.
In this post, I am going to talk about the importance of developing a content marketing plan and how to produce valuable content that will turn your potential buyers into raving fans of your art.
What Is A Content Marketing Plan For Artists
Wikipedia defines a marketing plan as,
“A marketing plan is a comprehensive document or blueprint that outlines a company’s advertising and marketing efforts for the coming year. It describes business activities involved in accomplishing specific marketing objectives within a set time frame.”
Your art marketing plan will be the blueprint for your art business.
Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action. (Source: Content Marketing Institute)
Content marketing simply promotes your art business with valuable, entertaining, and engaging content that will attract your target audience.
This means publishing more blog posts, more images, more videos, and less traditional advertisements.
What Should Be Included In An Art Marketing Plan
It does not matter if you are selling your art online, at craft shows, or even an art gallery.
You need to build brand awareness and make a presence.
Today’s marketing is so much different from fifteen or twenty years ago.
In the past, businesses would spend money on advertisements. This was done with different mediums such as television commercials, newspaper ads, bulletin boards, and radio advertisements.
It was a gamble for businesses. There was no guarantee that the money spent on advertisements would generate revenue.
Today businesses small and large do not have to spend a large amount of money on advertisements that are not guaranteed to show results.
The internet has changed the way people shop.
Anyone can instantly get reviews on a product, learn more about a particular business, and shop for the best prices.
According to Nielsen:
77% of consumers are more likely to buy a new product when learning about it from friends or family. READ ARTICLE
84% of consumers say they either completely or somewhat trust recommendations from family and friends. READ ARTICLE
43% of consumers are more likely to buy a new product when learning about it on social media. READ ARTICLE
68% trust online opinions from other consumers, which is up 7% from 2007 and places online opinions as to the third most trusted source of product information. READ ARTICLE
People do not have to rely on the words from businesses anymore.
Like I mentioned earlier, people make more purchases from word of mouth than any other marketing strategy.
There are four marketing strategies you will want to focus on to separate yourself from all of the other artists selling art online.
- Online Gallery – Your online gallery is a platform you will use to showcase and sell your art. There are many different options you have, but I strongly recommend owning a WordPress website to sell your artwork. You can launch a WordPress website with just a couple of clicks of a button with BlueHost. For more options, visit 16 Best Websites To Sell Art Online.
- Content marketing strategy – A well-designed content marketing strategy is to produce and publish content that will attract your target audience and drive them to your artist website.
- Social Media Marketing – Social media is used to connect and build relationships with your raving fans so that they will recommend your art to all of their friends.
- Email marketing – Email marketing is used to keep your art collectors informed with all of the new news about your art business.
By developing an art marketing plan for each of the categories you will watch your art business grow larger than you could have ever imagined.
Keep in mind everyone will see different results, based on the amount of effort put into marketing, artistic style, and audience.
What Is Content Marketing
Content marketing is defined by Wikipedia as:
“A form of marketing focused on creating, publishing and distributing content for a target audience online.
It is often used by businesses in order to:
- Attract attention and generate leads
- Expand their customer base
- Generate or increase online sales
- Engage an online community of users
Many artists think creating content is just about blogging.
Content marketing is much more than writing a description for your artwork or writing a blog post about the tools and mediums you use.
Content marketing is sharing your story and getting your message across to your target audience. This can be accomplished by text, video, audio, or images on multiple platforms. The platforms include newsletters, blogs, online art galleries, social media sites, podcasts, video channels, and eBooks.
For you to sell art online and separate yourself from your competition you will need to produce and publish content with text, videos, audio, and images.
The more people you can attract to your online art gallery, the higher your chance will be to land a sale.
At first, you might be thinking, “There is no way I will have enough time to produce all of this content.”
I will be the first one to tell you, “It is a lot of work and at first it does seem overwhelming.”
I also want to say, “It can be done. Once you find your rhythm you will soon realize it is possible.”
A good portion of my eBook, The Productive Artist – How to live your Dreams goes over the importance of time management.
When you can get organized and work smarter you will realize you can get a lot of work done in a little amount of time.
Not only do you need to be an artist, but you will also need to be a business person.
Enhancing your time management skills will help you to achieve everything that is involved with operating a thriving art business.
An important part of your art marketing plan will be to create content and a lot of it. Let me tell you through years of experience, quality content is more important than quantity. And writing quality content takes time just like creating beautiful artwork.
If you are willing to work hard and do whatever it takes to sell your art online, then start writing content.
Do you want to learn how to manage your time better so you can achieve more?
If you do, check out Time Management 101 by Mike Vardy
Start Creating Content Today
All of the successful artists you admire online have taken the time to develop a content marketing plan for artists.
Start designing your marketing plan today.
The longer you wait, the more time your competition has to write articles and attract people who are interested in buying art online.
Here is a great video to explain how John Deer used content marketing to build an epic business.
What Is A Content Marketing Plan
Now that you know the importance of a content marketing plan for artists, let’s talk about how to get started.
You must have a clear vision of what your objectives are. If you fail to do so, you will be wasting a lot of time writing blog posts that nobody will ever read.
Before you can even start to create your content marketing plan you will need to know the “why.”
- Why are you going to start a content marketing plan?
- What would you like to accomplish?
- What do you have to offer the reader?
Once you have a clear vision of what you are trying to accomplish you will be ready to start writing your plan.
Think of your plan as a map that will guide you toward your destination.
When you go on vacation, you know where you are going, when you are going, and what you will be doing once you get there. You have a vision and your plans will support your vision. The same concept applies to creating a content marketing plan.
How To Write A Content Marketing Plan
There are six categories you will need to focus on when you are developing your content marketing plan for artists.
The six categories are:
- Objectives
- Who is Your Audience
- What is Your Story
- What Medium Will You Use?
- Engagement
- Assess
Objectives – Your objectives are your goals. What you would like to accomplish. You should write yearly goals, quarterly goals, and monthly goals. All of your efforts will be directed towards your goals and have a purpose.
Here are some articles to help you with your goals:
Sell Art Online Basics Setting Goals
How To Set Business Goals For Artists
Review Your Art Goals To Increase Sales
Who is Your Audience – Take time to learn who your audience is. You will be writing content for them. You do not want to be talking about your favorite wine if your audience is beer drinkers.
Ask yourself these questions:
- Who likes the style of art you create?
- Who can afford the art you sell?
- What is the gender and age of your target audience?
- Where do they live?
- What are their interests?
You will be able to communicate your story better if you understand your audience.
Here are some articles to help you learm more about your audience:
Sell More Art By Learning Who Your Audience Is
How To Find Your Target Audience
What Is Your Target Audience Searching For
What is Your Story –
- What will you be sharing with your audience?
- What is the purpose of your blog?
- Do you want to sell original art online?
- Do you want to generate more traffic to your site?
- Are you trying to have more people signup for your newsletter?
- Are you interested in teaching your art style?
- What is your story?
- What makes you unique?
- What separates you from all of the other artists?
Knowing your “why” and “what” will help you to write content your audience will enjoy.
The content you write will attract a specific group of people so make sure your story compliments your goals.
You do not want to attract people who will never be interested in purchasing your art.
The right people are out there.
Take the time to find your target audience and provide them content they will enjoy.
What Medium Will You Use – There are many ways you will be able to get your story across. You can use text, audio, or video.
Text – Text (blog posts) will be one of the best ways to generate free organic traffic from search engines. The more content you post the more ways people will be able to find you.
The content you write will attract your target audience as long as you stick to your content marketing plan.
You can share your text articles via your blog, online art gallery, newsletters, and social media.
Post a link to your article on Facebook and Twitter.
Create a beautiful image and link your post to Pinterest.
One post you write can be shared in many ways. Like I said at the beginning of this post, content marketing is easier than you think.
Video – YouTube is the second largest search engine just under Google. Videos are becoming more and more popular.
You might be thinking, I don’t have time to create content for a blog post and a video.
I want to tell you it is easier than you think.
All you have to do is refurbish the article you wrote. You already have great content. Create a video with it.
Take sections of the article and create helpful short videos.
Audio – You can also do the same thing with audio if you are interested in producing a podcast. You already have the content needed for a podcast show. All you have to do is record the content you have already spent time writing
Engagement – The next step for creating a productive content marketing plan is to engage with your audience. If your audience is reaching out to you, acknowledge them, and build a relationship with them. When you build their trust they will become loyal followers and will be more willing to spend their money on your art.
You will learn more about your audience just by spending a few minutes engaging with them. Ask them questions. Learn what their interests are. Doing this will help you to provide content they will enjoy and share with their friends.
Assess – This is the last and final step. Assess the outcome of your efforts. Learn what is working and what is not working. People who are successful become successful because they assess everything they do. They know exactly what is working and what is not working. They spend their time on projects that will produce results.
You can achieve anything as long as you have a plan, work for your audience, and assess everything you do.
What To Write About
The objective for each post you write is to rank high in Google’s search so that potential buyers will discover you.
Every post that you publish that ranks high in Google’s search will drive traffic to your artist website.
The more posts you publish, the more traffic your site will receive.
The objective for each post you write is to rank high in Google’s search so that potential buyers will discover you.
Every post that you publish that ranks high in Google’s search will drive traffic to your artist website.
The more posts you publish, the more traffic your site will receive.
So what should you write about?
Every artist will have different objectives and a different artistic style.
All of the content you publish should reflect your objectives.
For example, if you paint horses with oil paints, you would not want to write about drawing carrots with colored pencils.
You would want to write about the tools you use, the horses you paint, and anything else that relates to your art business.
For a list of art content ideas visit 110 Art Blogging Ideas.
Marketing For Artists
There is a lot that is involved with marketing for artists, and today we are talking about one of the best marketing strategies you should be focusing on, content marketing.
But to be successful with your content marketing strategy, you will want to write posts that include keywords your target audience is searching.
The words that you type in Google’s search are called keywords.
Google takes your keywords and filters through millions of articles and suggests the best content for your keywords.
You will want to know what your potential buyers are searching for online so you can include those words in your posts.
How can you find what words people are using in search?
There are many tools available like SEMrush, Google Search Console, Moz Keyword Explorer, and Ahrefs.
Tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs provide a lot of information, but they have a high monthly fee.
I have tried both of them, and I found that most of the information they provided I did not use or need.
So I found a less expensive alternative and I could not be happier.
I now use KeySearch for all of my keyword SEO strategies.
KeySearch has helped me to double my traffic.
KeySearch Features:
- Most Reliable keyword difficulty checker tools available
- Keyword Difficulty Score
- Deep Analysis
- My List Module
- YouTube Research Module
- Page Analyzer
- Backlink Checker
- URL Metrics
- Rank Tracking
Content Marketing Challenge
Would you like to learn more about content marketing and have the first 28 days mapped out for you so you can learn how to develop a schedule and a plan?
28-Day Blogging Challenge for Visual Artists eBook
- Day 1 Vision and Goals
- Day 2 Create a List Post
- Day 3 Research Your Niche
- Day 4 Promote Your Blog Post
- Day 5 Comment on Blog Posts
- Day 6 Showcase Your Art on a Blog Post
- Day 7 How to Write an Outbound Link Post
- Day 8 Choose One Social Media Platform
- Day 9 How to Create a Social Media Calendar
- Day 10 How to Write a Review Post Part 1
- Day 11 How to Write a Review Post Part 2
- Day 12 How to Brainstorm Post Ideas for Art Blogs
- Day 13 How to Create a Blog Editorial Calendar
- Day 14 How to Monitor Your Niche
- Day 15 Revise Your Top Blog Pages
- Day 16 Write an Instructional Post
- Day 17 Create Headlines That Attract Readers
- Day 18 Keyword Research Introduction
- Day 19 Write a FAQ Page
- Day 20 Solve a Readers Problem
- Day 21 Email Marketing
- Day 22 Call-to-Action Strategy
- Day 23 Revise an Old Post
- Day 24 Analyze Other Blogs
- Day 25 SEO Basics
- Day 27 Google Analytics Basics
- Day 28 Schedule Next Months Blog Posts
Conclusion:
If you want to make a presence online you will have to tell your story. The only way to tell your story is by producing content. A content marketing plan is an important piece of your art marketing plan.
28 Day Blogging Challenge for Visual Artists
Are you ready to start building an online presence?
Download your copy today, or Purchase on Amazon.
The Productive Artist How to Live Your Dreams The right mindset and time management skills are essential for any business. These topics are often not talked about but are key elements for your success. You will learn how to have a winning mindset and time management skills necessary for operating a successful art business. Available at Amazon or Download today.
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