Art Marketing

Artists and photographers trying to sell online (or even offline) often express frustration about marketing.  The problem usually stems from two things – Firstly, not understanding that marketing as a complete package including the four “Ps” of marketing – Product, Price, Place, Promotion – they usually only focus on the promotion part when they should be evaluating the entire package.

Is the product up to market standards and desirable?  Is it priced accordingly for the market? Is it placed in an appropriate setting?  And then promotion can be considered – where would you be most likely to find the target market for this art?

The second problem is trying to promote something that isn’t very unique, interesting or compelling.  If the art product is another “ho hum” tourist shot of Old Faithful or squirrel in the backyard, another boring sunset or another flower from the garden — you are going to have a tough time finding anyone interested in buying it.

Marketing is easy when you have a unique product.  Something special,  something out of the ordinary, something hard for the buyer to recreate, something never seen before, something compelling and interesting.  Something with a story. Something you can talk about in an interview or gallery talk. Something the local newspaper might be interested in writing about. Something an interest group would be attracted to.

With photography in particular, the buyer needs to A. be interested in the subject B. be interested in hanging photography on their wall and C. not think to themselves – gee I could have taken that.

Art sellers get all caught up in minutia like having the right keywords.  What they forget is creating something special to sell, something that buyers are willing to spend their hard earned money on.

I’ve sold images with bare bones descriptions and seven keywords. Most of the time it is as simple as having the right image people are looking or not having 200 obscure keywords that no one every uses.

My Advice to get started with Art Marketing

My best advice – pick a niche you are passionate about and work the heck out of it. Do something that no one else is doing and get noticed.  We have a lot of old vintage tractors around here in rural New Hampshire and Vermont so one of my niches has been collecting photograph of old tractors.

 

There was a guy on Bored Panda who had the novel idea of photographing washing machines and got all kinds of press and an exhibit.

One of my fellow artists on Fine Art America takes pictures of New York City during snowstorms and got a book deal out of it.

I know someone else who concentrates on flowers. She picked a well worn subject but she works it. She has become known in her social media for always coming up with new flower photos and pushes home decor items like throw pillows — ends up selling a lot of them.

Pick a niche, build it up and then look for another one. Most do the opposite, they have shotgun portfolios with subjects all over the place with seemingly nothing in common. The buyer would have no idea the images were from the same artist.

Look around your own town and find something interesting. No need to book a trip to a national park and line up with a bus load of tourists all snapping away at the same thing that has been photographed to death.

Marketing is much easier if you have a unique story to tell.

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More tractor photography by Edward M. Fielding can be found here:   https://edward-fielding.pixels.com/art/tractor