Artists: Find Your “Warm Market”
Finding your “warm market” applies to marketing any kind of product or service, including art (the terms “warm market” describes a market for which one’s work is a good fit), It may seem complicated to figure out how to sell your art, but remember the saying “The way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.”
We all know how hard it can be to get your work out there in front of buying customers. However, once you begin devoting a few hours a week to “marketing” it becomes much easier to sell your art. And don’t worry about the payment side: it’s easy to set up a business Paypal account which will allow you to take online payments.
The foundation of any artist’s marketing should be research. Believe it or not, research can actually be interesting and rewarding (especially when you start to see results). Set aside some time each week for those marketing activities that you may have known were important but have put off.
Those important art marketing activities include reading art magazines, visiting people in their studios, organizing your inventory, writing a new artist statement, compiling your submission list, making follow-up phone calls or researching the advantages/disadvantages of making giclees of your artwork. Remember: your marketing research time is not “wasted time”. On the contrary, marketing research time is key to building your art career.
What does it mean to find your “warm market”? The phrase describes a market for which one’s work is a fit. But how exactly does an artist find the warm markets? Where does one look and how does one recognize these markets? Again, research is the answer, when word-of-mouth networking or manifestation on a spiritual level falls short. Someone may see the right place for you and pass on the name, but research allows you to make the most of that contact or lead. Before following up, some investigation into the opportunity will help you know what you may be walking into, and to make the most of it.
For anyone with a healthy curiosity, as most artists possess, information gathering or espionage can be fun. The best sales people in any field are often those who take the research time to learn about their customers, so that they can help the customer make the best purchase. Your advance research will help you sell your art and possibly establish a long-term relationship with the art collector.
It may seem daunting to figure out how sell your art, but if you do your research you’ll soon have a plan to sell your art.. Check here for free reprint license: Artists: Find Your “Warm Market”.
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