How to use your winter to help your sales

Mar­ket­ing Monday

begins today, born from con­ver­sa­tions with a cou­ple of artists over the week­end. They  asked me if I had an thoughts about how they could use the win­ter down time to help build their busi­nesses and their sales. The cons­esus was a win­ter long series focused on dif­fer­ent aspects of mar­ket­ing would be help­ful. Here is a ten­ta­tive list of sub­jects we came up with:

• Begin­ning the brand­ing process- a brief out­line to help give direc­tion to the process along with some homework.
• Learn­ing to use the 80/20 rule to get more pro­duc­tiv­ity and sales.
• Get­ting famil­iar with the inter­net — Learn­ing how to use the inter­net to increase your vis­i­bil­ity and build con­nec­tions with your following.
• Devel­op­ing a show strat­egy- Find­ing the right shows with the right buy­ers and lever­ag­ing your exist­ing con­tacts to bring you more sales.
• Devel­op­ing a stay in touch strat­egy - learn how to build a keep in touch strat­egy that works on vitual auto pilot.
• Iden­tify and develop other income streams — Rely­ing com­pletely on art fair or gallery sales greatly increases your vul­ner­a­bil­ity to eco­nomic shifts, find out if this strat­egy is for you.

There will be more as I think of them and please feel free to request expan­sion of a sub­ject or even a dif­fer­ent one.

Today’s Mon­day  Mar­ket­ing tips start with Branding

Start the brand­ing process
Now is a per­fect time to step back and take a look at how your buy­ers see your and eval­u­ate if it matches with how you want to be seen. A brand is not a logo or col­lec­tion of graphic sym­bols instead it is the sum total of who you are, your val­ues, your ideas, your per­son­al­ity. Brand­ing is all about trans­fer­ring value from your prod­ucts to you, so that YOU are the value asso­ci­ated with attract­ing  buy­ers instead of your prod­ucts. If done right your buy­ers will think of you first when they have a need or prob­lem that you can solve because you will be fore­most in their minds.

Briefly the steps to brand­ing are:

• Know your vision and claim your vision. I wrote about this in an ear­lier arti­cle.
• Know your com­pe­ti­tion and claim your dif­fer­ence- As an artist your com­pe­ti­tion can range from other home dec­o­rat­ing prod­ucts to other artists. You need to not only exam­ine who would buy from you but also who would best be served by going to your com­pe­ti­tion and why.
• Know your tar­get mar­ket and claim your per­fect cus­tomer - Suc­cess­ful small busi­nesses know who their best buy­ers are, how they spend their time, how they make their buy­ing deci­sions and where they hang out. They also have taken time to develop a pro­file of who they like most to work with. Refin­ing all this infor­ma­tion is impor­tant because it helps you develop a fol­low­ing of peo­ple you don’t have to sell to, who instead are eager to buy what­ever you offer in short they are your .…Tribe.
• Know what makes you unique and claim it- As an artist your unique­ness is per­sonal and emo­tional and in large part seated in your own value. Your unique­ness sets you apart whether you are vying for a gallery rep­re­sen­ta­tion or to stand out among other artists at an art fair. It is the value you pro­vide to your buy­ers above and beyond what oth­ers offer.
• Know how to spread the word about what you have to offer and claim your happy tribe– Know­ing how you will attract the per­fect buy­ers you described ear­lier is very impor­tant to your suc­cess. You will need to know which of the myr­iad of choices will work best for you and you must know that dis­cov­ery of the right com­bi­na­tion will take time and testing.