Promoting Art Online: Strategies That Work

Marketing Yourself As An Artist

Promoting your art is essential for growing an online art business. To successfully sell your art, you will have to get your art seen by the right people (known as your target audience).

Some artists get anxiety about promoting and marketing their art, but promoting art does not have to be overwhelming or make you feel awkward.

The first step is to know what your objectives are and to map out a plan.

Knowing what you are working for and how you will get the job done will eliminate any stress associated with promoting your creations.  

Art Marketing Plan

A digital marketing plan is similar for all businesses selling products and services online, including artists selling art online.

A digital marketing strategy is a plan developed for achieving business goals.

Your marketing strategy will be documented action steps and explain how you will accomplish your goals like selling original artwork and selling reproductions of the originals.

Digital Marketing Plan Overview:

• Establish Your Business Objectives
• Write down your mission and develop your brand
• Decide where you will be funneling your target audience
• Publish high-quality content (blog posts, social media posts, newsletters, and videos) that target your target audience

Establish Business Objectives

• Why do you want to promote your artwork?
• Do you want to sell your art online?
• Do you want to sell more art at local craft shows?
• Do you want to build name recognition?
• Do you want to be represented by a local gallery?
• How much money do you need to earn selling art, products, and services?

The goals you write down will be the blueprint for the action steps you will be taking.

Be as specific as you can with your goals. The more detailed you are, the more effective your marketing plans will be.

For example:

Instead of saying, “I want to sell more art this year,” say, “I want to sell (number) of paintings this year.”

Instead of saying, “I want to make more money selling art this year,” say, I want to earn (a dollar amount) this year.”

To make writing goals easy and more productive, check out this workbook, How To Write Goals You Can Achieve Workbook.

Developing A Brand

Some people have been saying that branding does not matter as much as it did in the past. However, branding allows you to share your mission with your art collectors and a way for you to make a memorable impression and turn potential art collectors into raving fans.

A successful mission highlights the strength of a business and can always be delivered to the consumer.

To learn how to write a mission statement read, How To Write A Mission Statement.

Branding Basics

Here are some key areas you will want to focus on when you are creating your brand:

• Business name
• Slogan
• Logo
• Names of products and services
• Pricing
• Packaging
• Flow or your website
• Online Portfolio

To learn how to brand your art business check out, Create An Artist Brand Workbook.

Sales Funnel

What is a sales funnel?

A digital sales funnel is a digital marketing strategy that brings a potential client to a product or service through a series of marketing actions, including blog posts, social media posts, videos, newsletters, and landing pages. The top of the funnel (the wide part of the funnel) is making people aware of a product or service. The bottom of the funnel (the smallest opening at the bottom of the funnel) is landing a sale.

After you catch a potential buyer’s attention, you will want to direct them to your website where the customer can make a purchase.

If you do not have a selling platform yet, check out all of the options available for you at 16 Best Artist Website Builders.

Publish Content

Everything you publish should be nothing less than the best quality. This includes images, blog posts, social media images, social media posts, newsletters, and videos.

Art Marketing Ideas

There are many ways you can reach your audience online, and depending on your business goals, you might need to only focus on a couple of strategies, or you might need to implement all of the strategies.

Promoting Art Strategies:

• Blogging
• Facebook marketing
• Twitter marketing
• LinkedIn marketing
• Instagram marketing
• Pinterest marketing
• Video marketing
• Email marketing
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
• Keyword Research

As you can see, there are many ways you can promote your art online. The list might seem overwhelming at first.

Take out your business goals before deciding what tools you will be using to promote your artwork.

Write down what tools will be the best fit for your goals and take some time to learn how businesses market on those platforms.

There is a learning curve that is involved with each platform. Remember, you only want to publish your best work so take some time to learn the best marketing strategies before you create accounts on different platforms.

To learn how to market on different platforms, visit Art Marketing Resource.

How To Promote Your Art

Now that you know your business objectives, what platform you will be selling your artwork on, and what media you will be using to reach your target audience, it is time to make a monthly calendar of all the action steps you will need to take for you to reach your goals.

Create a separate calendar for each platform so it will be easier for you to create a daily to-do list.

Start by writing the goals for each platform and fill in what you need to do to achieve the goals.

Share Your Art Online

People need to see your artwork online, but it takes more than just uploading an image on Instagram to sell art online.

To sell your art online, you have to make people aware that you are the artist who created the art they are admiring. To make people aware you are the artist, you have to write content that explains the message behind your creations and what inspired you to create the piece. This can be done by writing blog posts, making videos, and sharing the story on social media.

How To Promote Your Art On Social Media

Blogging will produce the best results when it comes to driving traffic to your artist website. A well-crafted blogging strategy drives more traffic to a site than all of the social media platforms combined.

So we highly recommend creating an art blog to reach your target audience.

Social media is also an important marketing too and excellent for communicating with your fans in real-time.

You can share on social media:

• upcoming events
• art in progress
• new art for sale
• specials
• giveaways
• other information that relates to your art business

How Many Time Should You Post On Social Media

• Facebook 1-2 times a day
• Twitter 12-15 times per day
• Pinterest 10-15 times a day
• LinkedIn 1 time a day
• Instagram 1-2 times a day

These numbers are meant to be used as a guide and will vary. Start with the suggestions, then experiment with different numbers to see what will work best for your unique audience. You might need to post less or more to receive the best results.  

Email Marketing

Do you remember when we mentioned the sales funnel?

The funnel’s top is making people aware you are an artist, and you have art for sale. Getting your art noticed online is done by publishing blog posts related to your art and art business.

Social media channels allow you to connect with your fans and build their trust.

An art collector will sign up for your newsletter after learning more about you.

The people who give you their email address do so because they have a passion for your artwork, and they trust you as a business owner.

Your email list is towards the bottom of the funnel, and they will be the people who will be more like to purchase your artwork.

Start collecting email addresses and develop a strategy for sending out newsletters to your fans.

More Promoting Art Online Strategies

At this point, you know how to build a solid foundation for your online art business. There is a lot involved with operating a company, but the strategies you need to implement are fundamental. 

Promoting Art Basics:

• Build a website where people can purchase your products and services.
• Write blog posts about your business and products so people can discover you on Google, Bing, and other search engines.
• Use social media to build relationships with your fans.
• Develop an email marketing strategy

After you have the above strategies working on autopilot, you can implement other methods to reach a broader audience.

Here are some other ways an artist can have their art noticed online:

Art Competitions: Art competitions are among the most effective ways for a new artist to have their artwork noticed by art fans and other artists. Even if you do not win the competition, you will have your artwork seen by curators, galleries, editors, peers, and art fans.

Networking: Working with other artists and other business people is one of the most effective ways to build your art business and discover new opportunities.

Join Art Organizations – Building name recognition starts close to home. Joining local art organizations will help you to build name recognition in your local area. The people who become familiar with you and your art will share your story online, which will grow your fanbase online.

Community Events: Attending local art shows and craft fairs are another way to build name recognition in your community. The people closest to you will be your biggest advocates.

How To Know If Your Artmaketing Strategy is Working

Sign up to Google Analytics to analyze your marketing efforts.

Google Analytics provides detailed information about the people who visit your site, what pages they visit, how they discovered your site, and how often they return.

Most social media platforms also have analytics for business accounts. Studying each platform’s analytics will allow you to see what types of content produce the best results.

Final Thoughts About Promoting Art

We have covered numerous ways you can promote yourself and your art collection to potential buyers online.

Like we have mentioned earlier, promoting your business is essential to the growth of your art business. The only way marketing your art will become overwhelming is if you do not write your business objectives and create a content calendar.

Your marketing calendar will keep you focused on all of the tasks that need to get done during the day and they will also allow you to look back and see what plans are working and which ones are not.

The information you gather will allow you to make better business decisions in the future.

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