Discover How to Transform Your Art Career into a Marketing Machine One Step at a Time

Overwhelm and dread are what kills many art careers. You overcome these things with knowledge, action, and determination.

Are you ready to achieve greatness and fulfill your highest ambitions? I’m pretty sure I know the answer. I can help you starting with useful tips in this post.

This short video describes how we apply the ten steps to building an art marketing machine in the Art Marketing Toolkit Project (AMTP)

There Are No Secrets. No Magic Bullets. It’s Just Learning What to Do, How to Do It, and Getting It Done!

If you look hard enough, you can discover how things are made and done. Finished art got that way through a sequential process. While each artist will follow a sequence best for them, the final product encompasses all the required steps.

The better and more proficient the artist is at completing the steps determines the outcome, and often the time involved in producing the artwork. This theory of sequential process applies to art marketing. You can look at the careers of successful artists and find they use similar tools and techniques to make their art and to market their art.

That is how we humans learn. We research to find what others have done to create a piece of art, or to employ the best art marketing techniques. Armed with such insights, we can apply the knowledge and actions to develop a successful career.

You Can Build a Marketing Machine Based Around Your Strengths
Join the Art Marketing Mastery Workshop and Start Today!

For 30 years, I have studied art marketing and applied what I’ve learned to help artists succeed. My goal is always the same. Help artists reach their full art marketing potential. Here are my ten steps on how to create an art marketing machine.

Each of the Ten Steps to Art Marketing Success Complement and Strengthen the Next

  1. Make Captivating Art – Empowers and eases your marketing efforts.
  2. Identify Your Ideal Buyer – Focusing on your target audience causes higher conversions, reduces marketing and advertising waste, makes selling art more efficient.
  3. Create Meaningful, Lasting Connections – Making genuine online and in-person connections becomes easy when you follow tried and true formulas.
  4. Build an Email List – Email marketing is king. All you need to know to own your list, your relationships, and the exclusive privilege to market to your contacts.
  5. Send Relevant Messages – Find the best ways to create and use Content Marketing to engage your audience.
  6. Social Media & Digital Marketing – Gain insights and specifics to decide which platforms and how to use to your best advantage.
  7. Turn Buyers into Collectors – Learn how to teach buyers the value and fun of collecting with repeat sales as your bonus.
  8. Develop A Referral Program – Asking for referrals done correctly is easy & fun when you turn to an asking request into giving a simple gift that no one ever rejects.
  9. Add More Distribution Channels – Supplement your direct sales. Discover top tips for how to get into galleries, work with publishers, licensors, agents, art consultants, and more.
  10. Consistent Results – Learning to systematize your marketing, so it all works together creates steady, predictable results with less stress.

When You Get on the Right Path and Take the Right Actions You Will:

  • Sell All the Art You Make
  • Enjoy the Feeling of Confidence in Your Career
  • Stop Relying on Others for Your Sales and Success
  • Own Your Career Outcome and Your Distribution

Sounds Good on Paper, but How’s It Working in Real Life?

I doubt any artist would argue with the benefit of getting these steps working in their business. I also know for most artists the thought of, much less doing all these steps, is daunting and unrealistic. That is, at least, it’s too much to try and do all at once.

I’ve got high-level, professional, done-with-you, and done-for-you art marketing options for a few select artists. If you want to learn more, we should chat. We can Skype, phone, or via my private video chat service. Use this link to book a time convenient for you.

What Is the Solution?

You go back to the process. Just as when you make artworks you start by assembling all your tools, getting your sketches and plans done, pull your materials together, and set aside the necessary time blocks. Then you begin to work on the most basic operations first.

It’s somewhat the same with these ten steps. I put them in what I believe is a logical progression. They are laid out in what will make sense for most artists to follow. I think each one adds strength to the steps above and below it. And, when all put together, you have an art marketing machine masterpiece.

You Can Build a Marketing Machine Based Around Your Strengths
Join the Art Marketing Mastery Workshop and Start Today!

You Can Do It All… Just Not All at Once

There is nothing in the suggested steps that are out of the reach of most artists. You can accomplish each of them on your own with studying and application. Finding help and mentors is simple with the internet as your friend. There is an enormous amount of useful information and of people with skills and knowledge eager to help others.

If you find the items on the list are valuable but don’t do them, look inward. Either you didn’t apply that much value to the step, or it’s something you don’t want to do. That’s okay. Although not recommended, you can skip a step or two and still build a successful career.

My Suggestion for How to Use the Ten Steps to Making an Art Marketing Machine

As the creator, it’s my belief you should do all ten steps. Some you cannot afford to ignore. For instance, if you don’t know who your ideal buyer persona is, you end up marketing to everyone, which doesn’t work. If you don’t build an email list, you can only sell to customers who are not under your control. That’s a dangerous choice. Others are equally important. That’s why I urge you to plan to complete them as you can.

Give Yourself a Break and Some Time

Maybe you’re anxious because you need to make money. Perhaps you’re eager because it feels like you have been spinning your wheels for too long. Or, it’s possible you’re an impatient sort who can’t wait for tomorrow. Regardless, you must give time to learning about and getting these steps working. How long depends on what is going on in your life.

Things like jobs, spouse, kids, and parents, plus other variables unique to you get in the way. They can suck up your free time faster than you wish. You must find a way to deal with that. Look into ways to become more productive. You have more hours in your week if you look and rearrange.

Set Realistic Stretch Goals. Get a Mentor or an Accountability Partner

Striving to reach goals is motivating to some, debilitating to others. Know yourself. Admit to your weaknesses and figure ways to strengthen them or work around them. A mentor or accountability partner will help you stay on course.

Allow for adequate time and resources to get things done on time. If you set unrealistic time frames for accomplishing your goals, you set yourself up for disappointment and failure. Don’t do it. Stretch goals mean something achievable, but only if all things go as planned. Consider you might fail at first. Learn from them and use the knowledge failures bring to get better and stronger.

Bake into your calculations that you probably will have to try more than once to get some things right. Your first opt-in lead magnet might not find favor with your audience. Your first choice of email service provider may not have all the features you eventually realize you need. Events like this are the stuff of life. Things happen. Take the life lesson. Suck it up. Adjust and move on.

A mentor or accountability partner can do wonders for you if you give in to the process and work and trust it. Don’t use a spouse or partner for an accountability partner. You are already accountable to them for enough. If you’re already a member of the Art Marketing Mastery private Facebook group, use it for accountability. We’ll help you stay on track.

Stay the Course. It Is the Only Way You Will Succeed!

You may need a break, but don’t let that deter you from getting back to completing your steps. Get back to full speed ahead as soon as possible. It’s a given you will encounter unexpected obstacles that block your progress. Getting the plates spinning on all ten steps takes time. You got in this for the long haul, so give yourself time to get things done within reason.

Keep in mind and let it motivate you that how you deal with setbacks and blocks will determine how well and how quickly you master each of the ten steps to make your art marketing machine. Make it a quest, a mission you cannot be stopped from completing.

With determination and application, you can achieve mighty things. â€“ Barney  Davey

Accomplishing These Ten Steps Immunizes You from Negative Forces Outside Your Control

Besides selling more art, building a successful art career around these ten steps has the effect of making you impervious to things that happen which you can’t control. Galleries can and will close. Facebook can fail or become too expensive. Publishers and licensors can lose interest in your work. You have no control over such things. When you are selling most are all of your work to patrons directly, these nasty events will have little or no effect on your art business.

Achieving the Ten Steps Is How You Become Independent and Self-Reliant!

As a small business entrepreneur, there is nothing better than being independent. When you sell most of your work to patrons on your list, you no longer need to rely on others to help you earn a living. Imagine how it will feel to know you can choose to work with galleries, agents, or publishers because they offer significant advantages and not just because they are available.

Independent status makes a huge difference in the quality of your life and how you manage your art business.

What I Want for Artists

The things I want for every artist are these. To be independent, to have a steady, reliable income, to make work that makes you proud, and to have enough income to live a good life with enough left over to do good things. If I can help you get to that place, my mission is a success.

Do You Want My Help?

I’ll be frank. There is nothing on the ten steps you can’t learn how to do with no help from me or others. If you are the DIY-type who needs to forge your trail on your schedule and do it your way, I applaud you and say go for it.

If you are the sort who can use the kind of help I offer, I encourage you to join me and hundreds of artists in the Art Marketing Mastery Workshop. You can learn more about the program by going to bdavey.co/mastery. I am here to help you achieve great things in your career. I will do my best to motivate, inform, and inspire you with ideas and accountability.

Whatever you decide, I’m with you all the way!


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