There are so many ways for creative people to express themselves via art: dancing, painting, sketching, singing, photography, jewelry making, handicrafts or composing music.
Art isn’t just something people love to spend time on, but also something artists do to tell their story. For some artists, these can be also a way to make their living.
In the modern world, there are now thousands of ways for a creative person to make a living through their art. Selling or renting your artwork, making things for other people, holding exhibitions and shows – there’s no limit to what artists can do now!
However, to make your art sellable, any creative person needs to know how to market them.
How to Market your Art Projects
Ideally, a separate team of workers can help market the art projects created by the artist; if you are, however, a new artist or a struggling one, it is entirely possible to market your own art projects effectively.
Making anything artistic isn’t hard for most creative people, but marketing them can be tough – especially if you don’t have any experience about the process.
Marketing something you’ve created cannot be easy even when you are good at it, or when you wholeheartedly believe in your work.
However, it is not impossible either; what you need to do is to follow some simple and systematic steps for marketing your art projects, and getting your potential clientele to notice.
These are the steps you need to follow to start marketing your own art projects to potential clients and customers.
1. Make Samples
Whatever you know you can do or make, create a sample piece. It’s not enough to simply announce what you are able to for your clients unless they have something concrete to see.
It is always a good idea to create some sample pieces to photograph or show your clients. If you are a painter, for example, your clients would always love to see past paintings to judge your skills.
Even when you want to create your projects based on the customer’s preferences, it is important that your potential clientele has something to judge your skills and style by.
2. Take Good Photographs
Most people prefer to shop online these days, and they decide on their purchases based on one thing: photographs. The better photographs you can take of your art projects, the more clients they would attract potential customers.
Even when your work is extraordinary, you won’t be able to get customers unless you can photograph them well.
Good pictures are what’s going to make any client stop scrolling and spend a few precious seconds on your product; if your photographs come out dark and dull, no one will be interested to learn more about your skill.
Whether you make paintings or jewelry, T-shirts or tapestries – your projects need to be photographed perfectly before marketing. This is something you can do yourself if you have a good camera, or have a professional photographer do for you.
Professional photographers know the best ways to enhance the look of your projects so that they easily attract potential customers.
3. Create a Portfolio
Your next step would be to create a good portfolio so that your potential clients know exactly what you can give them.
A decent portfolio is more than just a few photographs of your past art projects; a portfolio will contain all the information a client needs to know to hire you, rent your services or buy your products.
A portfolio can be physical or virtual. If you are a painter, a sculptor or a jewelry designer, you can carry around pictures of your art in a folder, or you can build your very own website to show them off.
Portfolios are visual representations of your work that you can show your potential clients, critics, collaborators and other kinds of representatives.
A good portfolio won’t just have pictures of your art, but everything else clients need to know about them: price, time taken to create them, where they were created, why you created them, materials or mediums used in the art, their specialty, stories behind your art, and more. At a glance, an art portfolio will have everything potential clients want to know before they buy your art projects.
Websites or blogs are great ways to create your own portfolio, since you won’t have to worry about space.
A single website can hold thousands of photographs and information; even when you create giant sculptures or art installments, their photographs can be easily showcased on your website.
4. Share your Story
As mentioned before, portfolios are great ways to not just show your art, but also to explain the thoughts behind them.
People might come to your website or Social Media page following stunning photographs of your art, but the right descriptions can keep them captivated. It’s not just pieces of art that makes clients interested enough to spend their hard-earned money on them, but also the artist behind the art.
Behind every painting, embroidery or sculpture, there is a story and clients would want to know them. The way that artists and creative people think interests customers and they like to know the background behind something they are buying; it is very important that you share the story behind your creations with people interested in your work.
A solid and descriptive biography is also something potential clients are interested in. If they are interested in your work, they’ll also want to know where you learned everything, who you trained with, what made you want to work with your art, and what your background is.
5. Join Social Media
Social media is the fastest way to connect to potential clients and customers from all around the world. When you’ve got your work in a portfolio or uploaded on your website, the power of Social Media sites can be used to spread the word around.
It is especially Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and Instagram that work to share the visual representation of your art to potential customers and clients. These sites can be used for free or paid for to gain followers and subscribers, and even build a clientele.
Painters, artists, writers, singers, weavers, knitters, dancers, bakers and designers – everyone has accounts on all the Social Media sites these days. They happen to be the fastest, the easiest and the most direct way to connect to not just clients, but also fans and followers.
6. Be Regular
Fans, followers, subscribers and clients love to hear from their favorite artists regularly, so it is important to constantly reach out to them. Updating your website every now and then is a good way to stay connected to your followers, so is emailing them monthly newsletters to keep them updated with your work.
If you work with clothes, hand-made gifts or similar art projects, emailing your subscribers before the holidays or special days could transform your reach into prospective sales.
Even when you don’t have a lot of followers, you can start by sending your regular updates and monthly newsletters to your friends and family members, and anyone else you had ever communicated with via email.
Pretty soon, people who are interested in your work or wishes you well will share the information with potential customers.
7. Connect to Blogs
A lot of people prefer to get their knowledge and news from blogs, so it will be a great idea to expand your work via blogs. You can start your own blog to talk about your art, or you can connect to other artists via their already existing and popular blogs.
If popular and widely circulated blogs belonging to writers and experts proficient in your art mention you and your work in their blog, your websites will eventually get more traffic than before.
Most of the time, artists promote each other in their blogs; if you promote another artist in your blogs, websites or Social Media pages, they will do the same for you.
8. Make it Easy
It is important to make it possible, and easy, for clients to be able to directly order or buy from your websites, blogs and Social Media accounts. The easier it is for clients to go through the process, the more sales and orders you’ll get.
Everyone prefers to shop online these days because the process is simple and hassle-free, even when they are shopping for something artistic.
If getting through to you, ordering their preferred objects or buying from you is an easy process, your website will get more visitors and the visitors will turn into clients.
9. Impose your Personality
When you are a creative person, your personality is actually a huge selling point for your art.
Therefore, it is crucial that you present your personality alongside your art projects in every single way possible: through your pieces, through the description, in your website, in your blogs and social media posts, through your newsletters, via your communication method to clients and subscribers.
10. Stay in the News
Whenever possible, try to stay in focus of both your followers and the artistic community.
Enter every single competition and exhibitions you can, just so that your work gets seen by the right people. Even when you don’t win, it is very important that you connect to other members of your community and that your work is shown everywhere.
If you don’t win any of the competitions, honorable mentions in newspapers, magazines and blogs can also work for your art projects and business.
When you are a creative person, terms like “sales” and “marketing” can seem foreign and scary. However, if you can follow the steps mentioned above, anyone can successfully market their own art projects or even themselves, and make their living from their art.