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How To Find Your Target Audience
Depending on how you look at it, selling your art can either be exhilarating or downright discouraging.
Spending hours every week posting on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, writing blog posts, and pinning on Pinterest can feel like a waste of time when sales are not rolling in.
Why do some artists land art sales regularly online while others struggle to get one monthly sale?
The artists selling art weekly know who their ideal customer is, and they put together an art marketing plan that promotes their art to their ideal audience.
Do you want to start getting your art in front of people who want to buy your product or service?
Here is a simple but effective strategy for finding your target audience so you can feel exhilarated and excited to sell more art.
Finding A Target Audience For Art
Only two factors will determine if you sell your artwork online or not, and they are discovering who your target audience is and the ability to drive them to your artist’s website to purchase your art.
Finding your target audience online for your paintings is not rocket science, but it will take work.
The first step is to identify who is interested in your artwork, and the second step is to write interesting and valuable content so they will be inspired to visit your site.
Below are a few posts that will help you discover your target audience.
- Sell Artwork Online By Knowing Who Your Audience Is Part 1
- Sell Artwork Online By Knowing Who Your Audience Is Part 2
After you learn more about who you are trying to reach online, you will want to create a content marketing strategy that will make it easier for them to discover you in search and on social media.
The best way to ensure your content reaches your target audience is to identify their pain points and write information that solves their problems.
Many people are searching online for products and services just like yours. If you do not write content related to the queries they are using search, your potential customers will never know your business exists.
It is one thing to publish content, but it is another thing to write content that your target audience may be interested in.
How do you create content for target audiences?
Find Your Audience
The first step you will want to take is to look at the artwork style you create.
- Is there a specific subject you focus on?
- What medium do you create art with?
- What are the primary colors you use?
- What size is your artwork?
- What is the price range of your artwork?
- What makes your art unique?
- What message are you trying to spread with your creations?
The next step is to identify who is interested in your artistic style.
The easiest way is to consider your potential art collectors as a group of avatars (an icon or figure representing a particular person in video games, Internet forums, etc.).
Creating your group of avatars is easier than you might think. They are people just like you.
If you are an oil painter specializing in floral paintings, those passionate about flowers and oil paintings will be your leading avatar group.
Remember that you do not have to only market to your avatars; they are a great place to start and focus on.
Why is it important to put energy into marketing to your avatar group?
Your target audience (avatar group) will be those with the same passion you do.
Once they get to know you, they will start to support you and share your artwork with their friends. At that point, the group of people you have just created has become larger.
Here is an example of how your audience will grow by focusing on your target audience.
Things you will do:
- Write valuable art blog posts your target audience will enjoy and find value.
- Post your artwork and blog posts on your social media accounts.
- Pin your art and blog posts on your Pinterest Business account.
- Send newsletters to your email group.
The people who have a passion for what you do will find you online because you are creating content they are searching for.
The critical point I am trying to make is that you will have to create a lot of content to attract them to your artist blog and website.
In time they will start to follow your artist blog and share your posts on their social media accounts, and they will start to follow you on your social media business accounts.
Their friends will take note and follow you if they have the same interests.
So if you can gain 2 new people from your group of 100 people, in time, you will have a group of 300 people. Those two hundred people will grow to 900 people and so on.
You can see how easy it will be to grow your audience once you get the ball rolling in the right direction.
How To Write Content Your Audience Is Searching For
Before you start, you will research their demographic information, including age, gender, and location. This information is important because not all customers are alike.
For example, if you lived on the east coast and wrote a post about your favorite soda, you might use keywords (keywords are words and phrases you want to rank for in search) like soda, Coke, or soft drink.
If your customers reside in the west, they will never search for those keywords. Instead, they might use words like pop, soda pop, or cola.
Knowing the age, gender, and where they live will help you incorporate words and phrases your audience may use in the search, increasing the odds of discovering you online.
How Do You Find Information About Your Customer Base?
The easiest way is to visit your Google Analytics.
Google Analytics is a free tool that provides valuable information about your website’s visitors.
Google Analytics will show you the following:
- The average age of your customers
- Gender
- Location
- Likes
- What pages are the most popular on your site and so much more?
Keyword Research
The next step is to research your target audience’s words in search. The important thing is to make a list of phrases more likely to convert.
You don’t want to write content that nobody searches for online or will not turn potential buyers into loyal customers.
The best way to discover keywords people are using in search is to use tools like:
- Google Search Console
- SEMRush
- KeySearch
- Ubersuggest
The tools listed above are a great way to discover the best keywords for your market.
They will show you what your customers use in search and how often the words are being searched monthly.
Final Thoughts On Finding Your Target Audience
Building an audience will take some time, but you will get there a lot quicker if you focus on strategies that will give you the best results.
Define your target audience, find it on social media, and write content they are searching for.
Create a marketing plan that incorporates the strategies you learned in this post, and start publishing content your customers are interested in.
More Selling Art Online Posts
How To Sell More Art By Building Your Tribe
How To Write Art Blog Posts That Sell Art