Jane Campbell talks about Marketing

Tell us about your mar­ket­ing jour­ney How did you start?

Wow it has been a “jour­ney”! Just a few years ago, which seems like only months, I had no idea what a blog was, –html, a wid­get, etc… It has been quite a learn­ing expe­ri­ence. A whole world I never knew existed. Where as I once worked 9 to 5, I now work some­times 10 to 14 hours a day. I love it so I doesn’t feel like I work that long. Usu­ally it’s only when the fam­ily starts hol­ler­ing that I quit for the day.

When did you dis­cover that you needed to market?

I quickly real­ized that mar­ket­ing is more than 1/2 of the job. To make money, to do this as a busi­ness you have to treat it like a busi­ness and put your­self out there. This was very dif­fi­cult for me at first. I’m basi­cally a shy pri­vate per­son. I also dis­cov­ered that peo­ple don’t just want a piece of your art, they want a lit­tle piece of you too, they want to know who you are, where this art came from. Art is a lit­tle piece of our­selves so we have to share our­selves as well.

Do you have a mar­ket­ing plan or strategy ?

I’m still learn­ing. I like sell­ing online. It’s the largest audi­ence. I have met peo­ple all over the world and my art is now in sev­eral dif­fer­ent coun­tries.
I have been priv­i­leged & hon­ored to be in sev­eral gal­leries in the Sacra­mento area. This is a great boost in moral, helps with mar­ket­ing and I love the inter­ac­tion with other artists & meet­ing the pub­lic, how­ever, it seems to me that the audi­ence in a gallery is lim­ited, there­fore sales are lim­ited, but it is essen­tial to be a part of the gallery experience.

Do you use Social media online alone or do you com­bine it with off-line efforts?

Mostly online medias but I do belong to the Swell Sis­ter Soci­ety which is a won­der­ful group of Sacra­mento women artists. We inspire & encour­age one another, do gallery shows together, keep each other up to date on what’s hap­pen­ing in the art scene. I love being a senior mem­ber in this group and it gets me out of my stu­dio and keeps me from being a total recluse!

What has been the reac­tion to your mak­ing your work avail­able in non-traditional ways, like mugs, jew­elry etc?

I’m proud to say I cur­rently have my art being sold on jew­elry that is in 2 Down­town Dis­ney gal­leries in Florida; Pop Gallery & Hoipoloi. I also have a Cafe­press site. I have had sev­eral sales but not enough to “cash out” the proceeds.

Where do most of your sales come from?

Most of my sales are online sales either from Ebay or Etsy. I have recently joined new online venues such as Blue Can­vas & Art­fire but do not have orig­i­nals or print for sale there yet.