Marketing Your Art

I received this great question from Chantal Fournier, who asks:

I was wondering if you have any advice to offer on paying for advertising, online or offline. Have you or Jeff ever tried it, and was it worth it?

Since advertising falls into the larger scope of “marketing” in my mind, I’d like to address marketing as a whole.  It can be a  tricky subject, especially depending on what specific niche of the art industry you are interested in pursuing, and how you are planning on growing your business.

First off, to answer the question straight away, Jeff and I have paid for a bunch of marketing tools, but never gone directly for buying ads in a magazine or on a website.  Part of this is because the market that we’re in is not very sensitive to advertising, and relies more on brand recognition and word-of-mouth advertising.  The idea is that after building up a body of work for certain companies and on certain products, the art sells itself to collectors/fans.  We don’t need to sink money into advertising to art directors, because the art is either good, or it’s not.  A quick review of Jeff’s website will tell an AD if they want to hire him, and we can maintain and update his portfolio there for very little cost.

Some pay-services are great, and some are a huge waste of time.  People interested in children’s illustration would do well to get an agent, since the industry is hard to break into without one.  Some marketing/advertising expenses that are just plain necessary to the modern artist are:

• A website
• Business cards
• Submission fees to industry-specific publications

The business savvy artist can find ways to get many marketing tools for free (use those social media and networking tools!), but you are best off paying for assets like a quality website and nice, professional business cards.

Website

Having a good, easily navigable, attractive website is absolutely, unequivocally essential. It is the first thing that many art directors or potential clients will see of your work, and if it is sloppy or hard to figure out, they will leave with a bad taste in their mouth, or worse, not even bother to wade through the muck to get to the good stuff.  It doesn’t matter how great your art is if they can’t find it or if they give up.

Some rules for making a good website:

1. Get your own domain. Preferably yourname.com, or yournameart.com.  It looks more professional and serious to have your own domain name, and it’s easier to remember one name than two.  Registering a domain name can be done very cheaply (here and here).  Plus, once you own it, it’s an asset!  Which means it goes on your balance sheet.  A domain is a must, but I really recommend getting a comprehensive hosting package.  There are many good hosts on the market to choose from, I prefer hostgator, myself.
2. Make your gallery page (or some of your best work) your FIRST page.   The people coming to your website want to see your your art, so show them your art!  Not your blog, not your bio, not even a cover page!  I’m paraphrasing, but I believe that credit goes to the incomparable Irene Gallo, who said something along the lines of, “If I have to click more than twice to see your art, I’m already annoyed.”  Don’t annoy art directors, it’s bad.
3. Make it easy to understand and view.  An awesome example of an easily navigable website is Mike Sass’s site.  Using it is a no-brainer!  Another site that has great click-thru capability is Joshua Middleton’s.   Setting up a click-thru gallery like this can be done simply with wordpress gallery plugins, or the very user-friendly squarespace.

Get help!  If you cannot program or manage your own website, you should tap your contacts to see if there is any poor webslave out there who will do it for you.  It is really best if you can do your own content management, which is why a self-hosted wordpress or the regular squarespace package can be so great for artists who aren’t code-savvy.

Business Cards

Oh yes, that old essential.  The business card will never die.

Lots of people I’ve met recently have gotten these neat little half sized cards, or over-sized cards.  These can be great for quick contact info or for a bigger image that highlights a great piece.

Me, though?  I prefer the standard-sized business card.  My card-holder is made to fit the standard 3.5″ by 2″ card, and as long as it has a website, an email, and a phone number on it, I’m good to go.  There are many places where you can get business cards printed and shipped to you for very little cost.  I’ve used both VistaPrint and Overnight Prints, and honestly haven’t seen a huge difference in the quality of the cards.  Another site friends have recommended is Moo. To be very cost effective, you can print your own cards with the right paper and a good paper cutter, but the cost of the online cards is pretty comparable to what you’d spend on supplies and time, anyway.

Submission Fees

Books

I wouldn’t pay to get your artwork into a book that isn’t judged.  There are look-books out there that are carried in art stores for AD’s to find potential hire-ees, but the things are huge, there is no barrier to entry but payment (meaning there is awful work alongside your good work), they aren’t industry specific.

There are books that are very industry specific and some charge a submission fee, with no guarantee of getting published.  Books I know of are Spectrum, Exposé.

Magazines

A lot of times magazine submissions are free, so just do a bit of research.  Find artistic genres that fit your style, and submit to those publications.  There are magazines for every niche of artist out there, ImagineFX, 3×3, Illustration, Illo… the list goes on and on.  Figure where you want your art seen (scene?)  and go from there.  Submitting to online magazines is also a great idea.  The more places you can display your art for free, the better, because you’re maximizing your exposure.

Free Exposure

Competitions

There are always competitions going on somewhere on the internet for artists.  These competitions are great ways to get a foot in the door, get your art seen by a good number of people, as well as practice your craft.  Many competitions have no entry fee, some have a nominal fee.  Just be careful about what competition you take part in: make sure your style matches the acceptable styles for the genre that you are submitting to. You wouldn’t want to see painterly art in a graphic design competition, or children’s illustration style art in a painterly competition.  Assess the audience, and play to your strengths.

Podcasts

Interestingly enough, although people listening to a podcast don’t see your art directly, they will often go look you up if they hear you on a podcast somewhere.  Podcasts can be great marketing tools because of the exposure factor, and are just plain fun to do.  Plus, when you put out a podcast you’re giving something to the world, which is just cool.

As I develop my marketing tools, I’ll probably have a lot more to say on this subject, but for now, I hope this is helpful!