Some­times it is good to have a for­mula to help remem­ber what you need to do espe­cially when you are start­ing some­thing unfa­mil­iar. Over the years a sim­ple for­mula evolved to help mea­sure the effec­tive­ness of mar­ket­ing efforts and it is still effec­tive now. The for­mula sim­pli­fies a lot of the con­cepts I’ve cov­ered here by sift­ing out the extra­ne­ous and leav­ing only the meat.

Now, of course to really use this for­mula you’ll need to have just a small amount of work already done, like know­ing your buy­ers, your mar­ket, and what you are about. Once have a rea­son­able han­dle on these you can use the for­mula to guide and eval­u­ate your mar­ket­ing progress. The for­mula is:

A=attention
I=interest
D=desire
A=action

Atten­tion

This part of the for­mula is often where you’ll spend the most time and effort, because it involves doing what you need to do to get the atten­tion of your poten­tial buy­ers. Back in the pre– inter­net days of Madi­son Ave. this step took a lot of time, there were few if any tools avail­able that could pro­duce the level fine focus we have today. This lack of both tools and insight pro­duced a mar­ket­ing strat­egy model more akin to com­mer­cial fish­ing, cast­ing a wide net with hopes of catch­ing the right fish.

Today this part of the process still takes time and if you’ve done your home work and know your ideal buy­ers you won’t be cast­ing a net, you will have at least a gen­er­ally dis­cernible idea of who might want your stuff. Armed with the slowly clear­ing image of poten­tial buy­ers you’ll be able to set up bea­cons to light the way to you and your stuff. Turn­ing each of by your sell­ing venues into bright flash­ing guides that both send your mes­sage and guide the buy­ers who are look­ing for you.

Each of your venues should pass muster with at least the fol­low­ing ele­ments which for artists are often visual:

Be bold

In order to gain atten­tion, the intrin­sic or core value of you and your work has to be extremely appar­ent. Bold and strik­ing imagery goes a long way in com­mu­ni­cat­ing what you and your work stands for. If your mes­sage about your work stresses under­stated sim­plic­ity then be boldly under­stated and sim­ple, use sim­ple pho­tographs of your work, design your booth to reflect that sim­plic­ity, but in a bold way in the way a Zen garden’s beauty is sub­tly and sim­ply beautiful.

Make sure that this bold­ness car­ries through in every­thing that you send out, every mes­sage, and every form the mes­sage is con­tained in. Blink­ing lights on your web site hardly say ele­gant sim­plic­ity, on the other hand a rel­a­tively bare site doesn’t say much either. The secret is in design­ing all the con­tain­ers that hold and carry your mes­sage in a way that imme­di­ately con­veys the essence of that message.

Images aren’t the only tools in the box, you can use typog­ra­phy and phras­ing to con­vey your mes­sage. You can also use color and tex­ture to con­vey every­thing from sim­plic­ity to extreme funkiness.

There are also chan­nels you can use to send your mes­sage through, a Face­book page, Twit­ter account and blog can extend your reach to the right peo­ple eas­ier and quicker than ever now. Designed to match the bold­ness of your mes­sage each can be bea­cons to help folks find you.

Inter­est

Once you get the atten­tion of those buy­ers who love ele­gant and under­stated sim­plic­ity, you have to cap­ture their inter­est, you may not have enough of their atten­tion yet for them to see and res­onate with your mes­sage and style of sim­plic­ity. Again, the right amount of bold­ness will make sure you cap­ture and hold their interest.

At this point, those attracted by your bea­con are inter­ested in how your inter­pre­ta­tion of under­stated sim­plic­ity matches with their needs. Use the infor­ma­tion you know about your favored buy­ers to empha­size how your inter­pre­ta­tion is exactly what they are look­ing for. In doing so, you are focus­ing on them which in turn increases the like­li­hood of them see­ing whether your inter­pre­ta­tion suites them best.

Con­sis­tency

Your mes­sage needs to be con­sis­tent through­out every part of a poten­tial buyer’s jour­ney to deci­sion. Con­sis­tency holds their inter­est guid­ing them eas­ily through  your mes­sage uni­fy­ing it into a whole that increases the poten­tial of their con­nect­ing to your style.

Pho­tographs or even sketches of your work fit into and enhance an under­stat­edly sim­ple life style. More often than not, poten­tial buy­ers will need to see how oth­ers hold­ing sim­i­lar val­ues use your work. So, along with pho­tographs of your work by itself you should also have ones show­ing it in use.

Videos show­ing a buyer using your work along with a dia­logue describ­ing how it works so well for them, will go a long way in help­ing poten­tial buy­ers iden­tify with you and your work. Videos work best on the web, how­ever, given recent tech­nol­ogy changes video can also be used in many other venues.

You can also use hang tags that carry your mes­sage and help deepen their aware­ness of the depth of your style.

Next week we’ll check in on the last two let­ters Desire and Action.

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