Jan Blencowe talks about business and marketing

Tell us about your mar­ket­ing jour­ney. How did you start?

I began a blog for my daily paint­ings in 2005, inspired by the cre­ator of the paint­ing a day move­ment Duane Keiser. After being fea­tured in an arti­cle in Domino Mag­a­zine with Keiser and sev­eral other “daily painters” sales took off and many more oppor­tu­ni­ties came because of that expo­sure. The fol­low­ing year I launched a web­site to show­case my land­scapes and larger works.

I researched and learned every­thing I could about blog­ging, and cre­at­ing a strong on-line pres­ence. I had lots of other artists e-mail me ask­ing for infor­ma­tion and help with blog­ging and other related on-line mar­ket­ing ques­tions, Even­tu­ally I put together a sem­i­nar and began teach­ing it at art cen­ters and art asso­ci­a­tions in my local area,

When did you dis­cover that you needed to market?

The Domino Mag­a­zine arti­cle was a light bulb moment for me. It came out of the blue and took me by sur­prise. I didn’t have a hi-res image of the paint­ing they wanted to fea­ture, and I didn’t have any­thing ready and at my fin­ger tips like a bio or artists state­ment. I was able to scram­ble and get every­thing together but I learned an impor­tant les­son. You never know when an oppor­tu­nity will present itself and you have to be ready.

The month the Domino arti­cle ran I sold 40 paint­ings and sales con­tin­ued to be very good for months and months after that. Other pub­li­ca­tions picked up the story and con­tacted me or included my name and blog in their sto­ries includ­ing the NY Times and USA Today Week-End.

It was then that I real­ized that “mar­ket­ing”, get­ting your work out there in front of as many eyes as pos­si­ble was extremely impor­tant. The next les­son I learned was the impor­tance of iden­ti­fy­ing your ideal cus­tomer and find­ing him or her.

Do you have a mar­ket­ing plan/strategy if so please summarize?

I believe in the value of my work 100%

I care­fully select and weigh the value of the venues I use.

I actively blog about my work and cre­ative process.

I main­tain a pro­fes­sional, attrac­tive, easy to nav­i­gate website.

I always make sure my con­tact infor­ma­tion is easy to find.

I share my work far & wide through social media like Twit­ter & Face­book

I par­tic­i­pate in the great con­ver­sa­tion by respond­ing to com­ments on my web­site or blog, visit other rel­e­vant sites and leave com­ments, share links, join groups that will help con­nect me to artists, art lovers and collectors.

I’ve iden­tify my ideal cus­tomer and I actively build rela­tion­ships with them.

I main­tain an email list and send a monthly newsletter.

I have pro­fes­sional mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als ready at all times, busi­ness cards, brochures, event postcards.

I keep an up to date biog­ra­phy, resume and artists state­ment ready at all times.

I adver­tise as my bud­get allows in qual­ity art magazines.

I just share, and don’t try to “sell”.

What is your great­est chal­lenge as an artist/business person?

The biggest chal­lenge is try­ing to find the bal­ance between paint­ing and busi­ness. The busi­ness aspect can be as fun and cre­ative as paint­ing but it can take up an awful lot of your time and cut into the time you need to paint.

It can be daunt­ing to invest money in the busi­ness side when sales are slow or you’re just start­ing out. It’s also dif­fi­cult to say “no” (politely of course) when peo­ple ask you to donate art, use your art for free, or ask for a dis­count. Occa­sion­ally you may want to do those things for spe­cific peo­ple or orga­ni­za­tions but good busi­ness peo­ple know you can’t give away the farm! Artists are gen­er­ally gen­er­ous peo­ple who love to share their pas­sion and it can be chal­leng­ing to wear the head bean counter’s hat and keep an eye on the  bot­tom line.

What do you wish some­one had told you when you started out?

If some­one had passed on to me the age old adage that you have to paint 125–150 bad paint­ings before you begin to know how to paint good paint­ings it would have elim­i­nated a lot of early frus­tra­tion. Also, if I had any clue about how to approach gal­leries or mar­ket my work early on it would have saved me a lot of time. On the other hand learn­ing it myself from scratch has been a valu­able experience.

Is there a par­tic­u­lar mar­ket­ing chan­nel you have found use­ful more than others?

Real rela­tion­ships have always been the best venue for me. This could be peo­ple I already know, peo­ple I meet at open­ings or peo­ple I form rela­tion­ships with through the inter­net.  Rela­tion­ships take time but they are the only way I can really know if my paint­ings are some­thing they are going to love and will enrich their lives.

Who buys your work?

First of all, peo­ple who buy my work must love and value the place of art in our lives. More specif­i­cally they are peo­ple who love nature, are in touch with their own spir­i­tu­al­ity. If they love beauty and find peace in nature they col­lect my paintings.

How do you keep con­nected with your buyers?

I pub­lish a monthly e-newsletter, Palette Paper, which peo­ple sign up for and that allows me to keep peo­ple up to date with shows, new work and news about awards etc. I also pub­lish blog posts Mon­day through Fri­day at www.ThePoeticLandscape.com which allows peo­ple to fol­low along with what I’m doing on a daily basis. I also update my web­site reg­u­larly. Beyond that I send peri­odic post­cards and notes to exist­ing col­lec­tors to inform them of upcom­ing shows and events and some­times just to say hello.