Learning more about your audience will help you to provide value for your collectors. Providing value will turn buyers into collectors. In this article, Online Art Marketing Basics Know Your Audience, you will discover different tactics that will help you to learn more about your target audience.
Online Art Marketing Basics Know Your Audience
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What is Art Marketing?
Most artists that I meet and work with say, “I am an artist, not a salesperson. I don’t want to waste time marketing. I would rather spend my time in the studio.”
I must explain to them there are only two ways to sell art. One way is to hire someone to market their art or they can save money by marketing their art themselves. The common word between the two solutions is, “marketing.”
If you want to sell art online you will have to make a presence online. People will need to learn about you as an artist. It takes more than just uploading an image to your online art gallery to be noticed on the crowded internet.
Art marketing is simply sharing your story and explaining to people what you have to offer. If you tell your friend about a new painting you have just completed, you are marketing your art. If you show a picture of your art to a family member, you are marketing your art. If you have told someone you create art or you sell art you have already started your art marketing program.
How to Market Your Artwork
You have hundreds or even thousands of different ways you can market your art.
You can blog, collect emails, send tweets, post on Facebook, pin on Pinterest, spend money on pay-per-click ads, use an affiliate program and the list goes on and on.
To get the most out of your time and efforts you must learn what will give you the best results.
Should you outsource your social media marketing?
What images should you use for your blog and social media posts?
What call-to-action should you use?
What apps should you use for social sharing?
How many time should you send newsletters?
How many posts a week should you post to your blog?
These questions can become overwhelming and start to make your day spin like a top.
You will be more productive focusing on your goals and fundamentals.
Marketing is strategic and you will need to spend time developing action plans that target your main goals.
It doesn’t matter if this is the first time you are selling art online or if you have been selling art for years. You need to have goals and develop action plans that compliment your goals.
Why Knowing Your Audience Matters?
Anyone who is starting a business needs to focus on the fundamentals.
The fundamentals of any business are addressing a customer’s needs or solving a customer’s problem.
You also want to learn who your target audience is.
Your target audience is the people who will be interested in what you offer.
You can quickly define who your target audience is by understanding who will purchase your art, products or services.
For example, if you paint Clydesdale horses, your target audience will be people who love animals or even better people who love horses.
You can even take it a step further by saying your target audience are people who have horses, or even better people who own a Clydesdale.
Now that you have your target audience you will be able to provide them with value. You will be able to produce content, services, and artwork that will support their wants and needs.
Know Your Audience
Many artists do not take the time to learn about their audience. They will just post their paintings online and hope someone notices it.
After a while, they will become frustrated because no one is purchasing their artwork.
They learn that content marketing is an important strategy for online businesses.
They start a blog and start writing about anything and everything, even if it has nothing to do with their art or their target audience.
If you want to generate traffic to your art blog and art gallery, you need to produce content your buyers are interested in.
Yes, you might have a cute dog that takes great videos, but writing about that will not help you land a sale. Keep that stuff for your personal blog or social media networks.
Your business blog and online art galleries must focus on one thing and one thing only – providing value to your collectors.
Learn About Your Audience Basics
For you to start learning who your target audience is, you will need to know what you are selling.
- What do you paint or draw?
- What medium do you work with?
- How much do you charge for your art?
- What size is your art?
- Do you ship your artwork?
- Do you offer commissions?
- Do you provide classes or one on one tutoring?
Why would you need to know what medium you work with or the primary size of your work?
This information will provide basic information about your target audience.
The more you know the more you will be able to spend time marketing to people who will be interested in your art.
Why would you want to spend time marketing to people who collect graphite drawings if you are an oil painter?
Why would you waste your time marketing oil paintings of sailboats to people in Chicago?
What you offer and create will attract a unique crowd. You want to have a clear vision of who your customers are.
Now that you have a clear vision of what you will be selling you will want to know more about the people who will be interested in what you offer.
- What gender does my art attract?
- What age group does my art attract?
- What is the average household income of my collectors?
- Where does my audience live?
Every question you can answer will help you with your marketing strategy.
You will market differently to male or females.
You can be more personal if you know where your target audience lives.
You can talk about things your audience can relate to if you know their age.
Are you ready to take your art blog to the next level?
Take the challenge.
28 Day Blogging Challenge for Visual Artists eBook by Dave Nevue available on Amazon.
Or download today.
How to Learn More About Your Audience?
Learning about your audience takes a lot of time and effort.
The easiest way to start learning about your audience is to just ask them questions that could help you learn more about them.
When you meet new people, what do you do when you want to learn more about them?
You ask them a series of questions. The information they give you will determine your next question.
The same tactic will work with your customers.
Ask them:
How did they find your art?
What attracted them to your art?
What is their favorite social media sites to visit?
Would they follow you on their favorite social media sites?
What would they like to learn more about your business?
What problems could you help them solve?
The percentage of feedback you will receive will be low. Do not take it personally, people are busy and they often do not have time to answer questionnaires. Other people do not feel comfortable providing personal information.
There will be a few people who will answer your questions.
Gather all the information and put it on a spreadsheet.
Respond back to the people who reached out to you, in time you will build a relationship with them.
Social Media
Many businesses use social media to learn about their customers.
One way is by asking specific questions or posting surveys.
Another way is to read all the comments on your following posts.
Learn what verbiage they use and what topics they comment on.
Take some time learning what the greats are doing. You can learn a lot from large businesses.
Large businesses spend a lot of money on research to find out what tactics work best. Study what they are doing and implement any strategy that will be appropriate for your business.
Most social media platforms provide analytics. Use this free tool to learn more about your audience.
Most social media analytics will tell you where your audience lives, age, what time they are on the site and what content they engage with most.
This is valuable information you will not want to overlook.
Take all the information and add it to your spreadsheet.
All of the information you gather will help you to grow your business.
Google Analytics
Another tool to learn more about your audience is with Google Analytics. This is a free powerful tool provided by Google to help you learn more about your audience.
This software can easily become overwhelming, but you can learn a ton just by sticking to the basics.
To learn about Google Analytics’ basics read, Google Analytics 101.
Google Search Results
Another terrific way to learn more about your audience is to go to Google’s search and type in keywords that relate to your niche.
When you type in a keyword or phrase a list of suggestions will appear.
These are common queries people are searching for on Google.
You can gather more information by scrolling down to the bottom of the page to the “Searches Related To.”
Quora
Quora is a popular site where people ask questions and other people respond to the questions.
You can use this to find out what your audience is interested in learning about.
When your audience realizes you have the answers they are searching for, they will go to you first.
Just type into Quora’s search a keyword phrase and questions related to your phrase will appear.
How will this help you?
You will learn what your audiences struggles are and what they are interested in learning. You will be able to create content that will be specific to your audience’s needs. This will help you to build authority and a larger following.
Conclusion:
The nucleus of your business or any business is customers.
Take the time to learn about your audience.
The information you gather will help you to provide value for your audience and attract new people to your site.
Online Art Marketing Basics Know Your Audience article will help you to build a solid foundation for your business.
You might also be interested in:
- How to Find Your Target Audience
- Art Marketing Basics – Keep Your Plan Simple
- What is an Art Marketing Plan?
- How to Write a Content Marketing Plan That Increases Art Sales
- Art Marketing Resource
28 Day Blogging Challenge for Visual Artists
Are you ready to start building an online presence?
Download your copy today, or Purchase on Amazon.
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