Video Monday 6: Who’s Your Target?

Howdy!

Transcript:
Sings: Video Monday, video Monday, it’s a Monday so here’s a video!

So I’ve been thinking a lot more about artists, and how they can market online. Do some, really just make their market more conversational, and what they can do as far as having a web presence, using social media and things like that. It’s apparently the kick I’m on these days, because I’ve got a few friends I’m just trying to help out really get started in just marketing themselves a little bit more.

So in talking to one of them, we’re just kind of starting the whole process of figuring out how we’re going to do this, so step number one really is who’s your target? So for a lot of artists the most obvious target for them would be gallery owners. They want to be in galleries, that’s the audience they want to attract. But then of course the conversation you have to have is there are only so many galleries, that only have so much space and money, so is that really step number one, the best place to be focusing all your efforts into attracting a gallery? Or could you try to go after the much larger audience of just people out there who want to buy art?

And to really attract that, it’s a lot like a newspaper which I’ve talked a lot about before. Newspapers have all these readers, in fact readership can grow, but the revenue is going down because they’re trying to attract a very small subset of the community, which are large companies who can spend thousands of dollars on an ad. Maybe that’s not their best target.

So that, in a lot of cases that can be about whether it’s, you know, sculptors or musicians, if you’re going after the big person, the small community of people who have tons of money to throw at you, or could you go after the large group of people who have a little bit of money each? Isn’t that potentially a better target to be going after?

So if we get to that point how do we get those people to want to give you money? So you’re going to need two things if you’re going after this large group of just the art buying crowd. Number one, you’re really going to need to have an interesting presence to spark conversations about you online. If you follow my story, content, offer blog platform, if you get people buying into the story of your blog, eventually they’re going to want to buy part of your story. If they bought into you they want to buy part of you, that is your art.

If they’re invested in the story, your journey, what you’re doing, your ideas, they’re going to want to own a souvenir of that, which is what you’re trying to sell, the offer portion is the art that you can sell to them.

So basically you need a story, and you need a good web presence, you need to have that blog. You need to be having conversations with people, you need to be getting your story out there. So those are really two crucial things you need to think about first of all. If you’re going to be doing that.

So of course, you know what if your dream is to be in a gallery? You’re an artist and that’s – you’ve grown up just hoping that you’d get to that point, where you know you can be in a gallery. Okay that makes sense. I definitely I know lots of writers, there are lots of these people online, who could make a living off of selling their writing, doing freelance online, that sort of thing, but lets face it, their dream is to be able to go into a book store and pick up their book off the shelf. I get that.

Is a gallery going to be more interested in someone who’s already got a built in audience, who will want to come to the shows, who will want to buy your art through them? Are they more interested in that over some unknown that they’ve just discovered? Potentially they’ll want to buy that audience from you essentially.

The fact that you’ve got a built in audience is like those MySpace bands who showed the labels that they already had people willing to give them their money, who love their music. So you’re more valuable if you already have a built in community. So in a lot of cases your best option is still to go after the larger group of people who are just interested in buying art. So I hope that was useful to you, and posts throughout the week. Bye!