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Whether you are new to selling your art online or you have been selling art for years, you will want to be prepared for this years holiday rush so you do not lose any sales. In this post, you will discover how to sell your art with these 10 Holiday Season marketing strategies.

Sell Your Art With These 10 Holiday Season Marketing Strategies

Disclaimer: Please note that some of the links on this post are affiliate links and will be clearly marked as so. I will earn a small commission when you purchase a product or service from an affiliate link at no extra cost to you which helps with the costs of operating Nevue Fine Art Marketing. I will only recommend products I have used, found helpful to my business and are companies I trust.

Angelica LaVito, a news associate for CNBC talks about the increase in holiday shopping for 2017 in a post she wrote for CNBC.

Online shopping sales hit a record $108.2 billion this holiday season, a 14.7 percent increase from last year, according to Adobe Analytics.

The National Retail Federation previously said total sales for November and December were $691.9 billion, a 5.5 percent jump from last year.

Mobile was a big driver on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, with $7 billion spent on tablets or smartphones between the two shopping holidays.

More and more people are enjoying the convenience of online shopping and this is a big win for artists like you.

You have the opportunity to reach a larger audience who are interested in purchasing your artwork online.

You might have already noticed that your local businesses are already displaying holiday products.

Are you prepared for the holiday season?

Think like your local businesses and start preparing now so you do not miss out on this profitable opportunity.

Below are 10 holiday season marketing strategies that will help you to increase your art sales this year.

Successful Holiday Marketing Strategies Start With Goals

Before you can start developing a holiday marketing strategy you need to have a clear vision of what your objectives are.

How much money would you like to generate this holiday season?
How much art would you have to sell to achieve your goals?
Do you have enough artwork prepared? If not how many pieces will you have to create and how will you get the job done?
How much will you have to charge to achieve your goals?
Are you going to sell prints of your artwork?
Are you going to offer pints on merchandise and greeting cards?

Goal Setting Resources:

How to Write Goals You Can Achieve Workbook

Annual Art Business Review Workbook

Artist Goal Planners in Light Blue

Artist Goal Planners in Light Pink

Now that you have a clear vision of what your objectives are let's go over some strategies that will help you to achieve your goals.

Create A Shipping Calendar For Your Art Collectors

I have learned over the years that people start to think about holiday gifts right around the time children go back to school.

My first couple of years of selling my art online I didn't have a shipping calendar for my shoppers which caused many headaches. I was spending more time answering emails than I was creating art.

Every day I would have to stop what I was doing so I could answer the same questions over and over. I started to feel like I was an employee of the United States Post Office.

I knew that I had to do something different so I could be more productive with my time so I created a holiday shipping calendar and displayed it on my site and posted it on social media.

This saved me many hours during the week answering emails and it created a better shopping experience for my art collectors.

Your shipping calendar should include:

A link to the shipping service you use
Holiday shipping cut off date
How long it takes for you to process and ship the item
How many days it takes for an item to be delivered

Showing when a purchase will arrive during the holiday season will eliminate guesswork and lead to a quicker purchase decision from your shoppers.

Return Policies

Take some time to review your return policies and include a special note for the months of September, October, November, and December that explains how long it will take for a buyer to receive a refund.

The information you provide will make a first-time buyer feel more confident purchasing from you.

Keep your policies simple and consider accepting returns through January 30th.

Post clear instructions on all of the steps a buyer will need to take in order to receive a refund.

Don't forget to revise your return policies in February.

Holiday Gift Ideas

How many times have you stresses out over finding the perfect gift for someone?

You will increase your art sales by going back to the basics and solving a buyer’s problem.

Make it easy for your customers to find the perfect gift.

Create blog posts that highlight some great gift ideas. Publish the blog posts on Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram and all of the other social media platforms you market on.

Below are some tips on how you can make holiday shopping less stressful for your audience:

Review recent trends.

Take some time to research what is selling well on sites like Amazon, Etsy, and Fine Art America.

Take note of what colors, sizes, and subjects are popular and make a list of the art you have in stock that is similar to what people are purchasing.

Review what you sold last year.

I hope that you have kept records of what sold for you last year.

Take out your records and review what the hot items were.

Did you sell original art online? If so what sizes were they? What were the primary colors and what subjects sold the best?

Did you sell greeting cards, fine art prints or offer your art on merchandise through a POD site?

Related Post:

POD Websites How To Increase Art Sales

Social Media Engagement

Take note of what is popular on your social media channels.

What posts are receiving the most likes, comments, and shares?

The information you gather will make a great blog post for gift ideas you can feature on Pinterest.

Related Post:

How to Start Selling Art on Pinterest

Create Gifts Ideas by Themes.

Below are some gift receiver ideas that will help you to group your artwork into specific themes:

Gifts for wife/girlfriend
Gifts for Husband/boyfriend
Gifts for male friends
Gifts for female friends
Gifts for mom/ Grandma
Gift for Dad/grandpa
Gifts for teachers
Gifts for Coworkers

Create A Gift Board For Pinterest

In order for you to sell original art online, you will have to promote your art on all of your social channels, art blog, newsletters, etc. The more places the better.

Pinterest is a platform you will want to take advantage of.

87% of Pinners have purchased a product because of Pinterest. (Source: Omnicore )

Creating a Gift Board for Pinterest that is SEO friendly will help you to reach a new audience.

Create A Gift Idea Page For Your Website

Make it easy for your audience to find the perfect gift on your artist website.

You can create a category or subcategory that will link to posts you have written about the perfect gift.

Related Post:

How to Create a WordPress Category

Some Post examples might be:

Gift ideas for...
Bestselling art
New artwork
Bestselling art prints

Mobile Responsive Website

Are your artist website and art blog mobile responsive?

Responsive Web design (RWD) is a Web design approach aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from mobile phones to desktop computer monitors) (Source: StackExchange)

Mobile was a big driver on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, with $7 billion spent on tablets or smartphones between the two shopping holidays. (Source: CNBC)

Having a mobile responsive website is one way you can increase the odds of landing more sales this holiday season.

If your site is not responsive, take the time now to find a responsive theme.

Recommended WordPress Responsive Themes:

StudioPress Themes (affiliate link)

Update Pinterest Product Descriptions

Spend a few minutes every week to revise your Pinterest descriptions.

Use gift specific keywords that relate to your artwork. This will help shoppers on Pinterest to find your products.

For example, "great gifts for nautical lovers" or "great gifts for horse lovers."

Host Giveaways Or Contests

This is the perfect time to give back to your loyal art collectors who have joined your email list and follow you on your social media channels.

Be creative and make it an exciting event that your followers will want to share with their friends and family.

A free tool you can use that will create viral giveaways is KingSumo.

Record Your Sales

The best way to grow your art business every year is to keep accurate records of your art marketing strategies and your art sales.

The information you gather will help you to develop better marketing strategies for next year.

Don't think that you will be able to remember what strategies worked for you next year.

It only takes a few minutes to write some keynotes that will help you to sell more art next year.

Related Resource:

Annual Art Business Review Workbook

Conclusion:

Preparing now for the holiday season will help you to increase your art sales during the busiest online shopping season.

It does not matter if you want to sell fine art online or if you want to sell art prints online, the strategies listed above will help you to increase the odds of you landing more sales this holiday season.

Don't forget to take notes so you can develop a better marketing strategy for next year.

Sell Your Art With These 10 Holiday Season Marketing Strategies Overview: