What is an Art Marketing Plan?

What Is An Art Marketing Plan

Many artists do not know what is an art marketing plan or cringe when they hear the words art marketing. 

Marketing art is not difficult once you know what is involved with promoting fine art.

• Are you interested in selling your art online? 
• Would you like to earn money from your artistic talents? 
• Are you becoming frustrated because nobody is visiting your art website?

If you answered yes to these questions, you must market your art and develop an artist marketing plan to showcase your artwork to your target audience. 

Marketing Plan Definition

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 plans are the goals you set for your business.

Yes, if you are selling art, you are running a business. It does not matter if you sell your art on eBay, an Etsy store, Facebook, a blog, a website, or an art fair. 

Once you have exchanged a product or service for revenue, you are operating a business.

Before developing an art marketing plan, you need to understand the difference between promoting, marketing, and marketing strategy.

Promoting – to encourage the sales, acceptance, etc., of (a product), mainly through advertising or other publicity.

Marketing –  the total of activities involved in transferring goods from the producer or seller to the consumer or buyer, including advertising, shipping, storing, and selling.

(Promoting and marketing definitions courtesy of Dictionary.com)

Marketing Strategy – (defined by Wikipedia) has the fundamental goal of increasing sales and achieving sustainable competitive advantage. A marketing strategy includes all necessary, short-term, and long-term activities in the field of marketing that deal with the analysis of the strategic initial situation of a company and the formulation, evaluation, and selection of market-oriented strategies and therefore contribute to the goals of the company and its marketing objectives.

Develop A Marketing Strategy

Before beginning a marketing plan, you must understand your marketing strategy, goals, and what you want to accomplish with your art business.

A marketing strategy is an explanation of the goals you are hoping to achieve from your marketing.

The marketing strategies need to complement your art business goals.

• Do you have goals? 
• Do you have a clear vision of where you want to be in three years, five years or even ten years?

The goals you write will keep you focused, motivated, and inspired to achieve your vision.

I have met many people who do not like to write goals, only because they are afraid to fail.

There is no such thing as failing. Every plan you put in place will not give you the results you will be hoping for. 

What you learn from the process will be priceless. 

You will be able to identify what marketing strategies are working for you and what and what strategies are not working. 

The art marketing plans that show little results can be tweaked until you are happy with the outcome or discard them entirely and write new ideas. 

Vision

Before you can develop your art marketing strategy, you will want to have a clear vision of where you would like your art business in three, five, and ten years.

• What would you like to be doing in five years?
• Would you like to sell enough art to be able to enjoy a nice vacation every year?
• Would you like to sell enough art to put your children through college?
• Would you like to have an art career?
• Would you like the revenue from your art sales to be put into your retirement funds?
• Would you like to sell art so you can buy things you can not afford?

Everyone has different dreams and visions and will change over time.

The vision you have today will be the start of your journey.

For help on writing a vision statement read, Artist Vision and Mission Online Business.

Goals

Now that you know where you want to be, you will want to write specific goals to guide you towards your vision.

Break down the goals into long-term goals, mid-term goals, and short-term goals.

Each goal needs to be: 

• Specific 
• Measurable 
• Attainable 
• Relevant 
• Timely

If you need help writing goals, download Sell Art Online Basics Setting Goals.

Click image to purchase your How To Write Goals workbook.

Develop A Marketing Plan

If you want to bake a new cake you have never cooked before, would you just grab various stuff from the cabinets and start mixing the ingredients?

No, you would research what you would need for the cake and develop a plan to bake the new cake.

The same goes for your art marketing.

If you start trying different strategies without having a plan, you will become disappointed and frustrated.

One reason artists fail at selling art online is that they are trying to do everything other artists are doing online.

It is an excellent idea to study the competition, but it is more important to develop an art marketing plan that will work for your unique business goals.

The more you plan now, the quicker you will start seeing results.

Specific Objectives

The first step is to write out specific objectives you would like to accomplish.

What would you like to achieve with this plan?

Let’s say you want to sell five new paintings this month. 

Selling five paintings will be your main objective.

Take some time to decide what you would like to accomplish. It can be one, two, or even three different goals.

Having a clear vision of what you are working for will make it easier for you to develop a plan.

Take out your goals and start writing three things you would like to achieve this month.

I do not recommend focusing on three projects at a time. It is easier to put everything you got into a few tasks.

Creating Tasks

After you have listed your objectives, you will want to write specific action plans you will take to achieve your goals.

Here is an example of how to write tasks for the objective of selling five new paintings this month:

1. First, you will need five new paintings to sell. Your first task would be to create new art to sell.
2. Next, you would need to upload images of your original paintings on your online art gallery for people to buy the art.
3. You might write separate blog posts that will tell the story behind each piece of art.
4. You might promote the art and blog posts on your social media sites.
5. You might send an email to your email list.
6. You might have a sale for the art.

Develop action steps to take for the entire month.

Cross off everything you have done and record the outcome of the action steps for future marketing plans.

Review

When you are done writing the tasks, review them with your objectives.

Make sure they complement your goals.

You want to be productive with your time.

Every job you do should lead you closer to completing your objective.

Calendar

The next step is to write all of the tasks on your calendar. Decide what tasks need to be done first. List them by importance.

For example, you would not promote art on your social media sites if they do not exist yet. The first step would be to paint a new original painting.

Be realistic when you are writing tasks down on your calendar. Make sure you give yourself plenty of time to accomplish each job.

The more organized you are, the less time it will take you to carry out particular tasks.

I have found over time writing my plans on a calendar, and notepads work best for me.

You might like to use something different, and that is ok as long as you write your art marketing plan every month and have it logged down to review the progress.

For your art business to promptly reach its fullest potential, you need to write action steps and review the outcome.

Find what works best for you and stick with it.

Assess

The last step is to assess your plan. 

Is everything going as planned?

It is essential to review your daily to-do list every day to ensure you are on track and go over the progress of what has already been done.

Are you getting the results you were hoping for?

If not, what changes can you make to see better results?

Reviewing your progress daily will prevent you from falling behind.

Final Thoughts On What Is An Art Marketing Plan

Now you can answer the question – What is an art marketing plan and the importance of having an art marketing plan it is time to take action.

Take some time every month to write out a plan for the following month.

You will be amazed by the progress you can make if you stay focused and organized.

The bottom line is, if you would like to sell art online, you will need to develop an art marketing plan.

Keep in mind that it takes time to build a thriving art business.

Learn everything about marketing your art online so you can become a marketing guru.

The art business plan you create will dictate if you are landing sales or not selling your artwork.

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