One more letter for artists

Orig­i­nally, the mar­ket­ing for­mula talked about over the last cou­ple of weeks was lim­ited to these four word Attention,Interest, Desire and Action. How­ever, in the past decade,especially since the Internet’s evo­lu­tion to its’ cur­rent level of inter­ac­tiv­ity, many have re-evaluated the AIDA for­mula and adapted it to their own mar­ket niche’.

One of the bar­ri­ers artists have tra­di­tion­ally expe­ri­enced was the abil­ity to grow beyond geo­graphic bound­aries and build con­nec­tions with buy­ers. The Internet’s  ever improv­ing inter­ac­tiv­ity and the rapid spread of broad­band has all but elim­i­nated geog­ra­phy as a bar­rier and in doing so gave artists far bet­ter tools to develop a net­work of buy­ers through reg­u­lar and easy communication.

This easy com­mu­ni­ca­tion allows for con­nec­tions between buyer and seller in much the same way the cor­ner gro­cery used to. Con­nec­tions are impor­tant to artists, it’s pri­mar­ily through con­nec­tion that an artist can build her own mar­ket and in doing so ele­vate the vis­i­bil­ity of her unique­ness. Ulti­mately, she is able to posi­tion her­self high in her buyer’s minds because of the strength of her con­nec­tion to them…buyers see her and her work as one effec­tively elim­i­nat­ing the com­mod­ity factor.

Con­nec­tion

Con­nec­tion is all about, engage­ment, much in the same way you keep your fam­ily up to date. While, the nature of most fam­i­lies is a pre­sump­tive accep­tance for stay­ing in touch, engage­ment may not feel as nat­ural in the buyer/seller inter­ac­tion. How­ever, engage­ment with poten­tial buy­ers espe­cially those who are drawn to your work may often lead to both repeat sales and new buy­ers cour­tesy of an exist­ing buyer.

This process may not be easy for some, espe­cially those who see their buy­ers as the enemy, how­ever, they will soon be left behind by those who are will­ing take the risk and start engag­ing their poten­tial buy­ers. So, here are a few tricks to start your engagement.

If you sell your work at venues that give you face time, make sure you can spot  poten­tial buy­ers who are rep­re­sen­ta­tive your favorite buy­ers. Engage them and help them learn the story you’re telling through your work, when the time is right talk to them about stay­ing in touch with you and make it easy for them to do so.

When you do get their con­tact infor­ma­tion fol­low up, with a note, thank­ing them and let them know once again what they can expect from you, remind them again of all the ways they can con­tact you and let them know of the ways you’ll con­nect with them. This sim­ple tech­nique has been a valu­able prac­tice among pro­fes­sion­als for years, savvy busi­ness peo­ple would cull busi­ness cards col­lected at net­work­ing events and send a fol­lowup reminder of their con­ver­sa­tion and an invi­ta­tion to meet down the road.

While talk­ing with poten­tial buy­ers find out how best to con­tact them whether through e-mail, newslet­ter or post­card. Don’t worry about those folks who walk away or are not will­ing to con­nect with you, thank them and send them on their way, you want to be free to engage those folks who are excited about you and gen­uinely want to know about you and your work.

Some final thoughts

The Atten­tion part of this for­mula will take the great­est amount of time and effort espe­cially if you haven’t begun iden­ti­fy­ing your buy­ers. In fact, I’d say not to even bother if you have no idea who your work is for, because you’ll put time and  energy into some­thing that will not return results that can help you.

If, on the other hand, you have a pretty good pro­file of the folks your work is best suited for, then focused time spent on the Atten­tion part of the for­mula will be time well spent. Remem­ber, the pri­mary point of this step is to sift out those peo­ple who are unlikely to have any inter­est in your work. Make sure the bea­cons you put out really spell out who you are and what your work is about, remem­ber, you are tak­ing the focus off your work as a com­mod­ity, so don’t send out mes­sages describ­ing your work in any other way than what you made to evoke.

So, if you are a wood fired pot­ter, and even though your work may look the same to the unsea­soned eye, you know it that it does some­thing spe­cial for those you allow to have stew­ard­ship of it, that spe­cial­ness com­bined with your pas­sion needs to be the core of your mes­sage. The more you empha­size those two fac­tors, the more you’ll be found by the folks look­ing for you and the more you’ll stand out from every other potter.

Make sure you have have a clear path to becom­ing a stew­ard of your work, when they real­ize their desire to bring your work into their lives they need to know clearly how to do so. Since each person’s deci­sion point is dif­fer­ent your best strat­egy, espe­cially on line, is to have many points along their path to make a deci­sion to buy.

Remem­ber…

This for­mula is sim­ply a guide or stan­dard that is effec­tive to help you remem­ber the process when you need to and mea­sure your efforts against as you develop mar­ket­ing strate­gies. Apply it to each point of con­tact between a poten­tial buyer and your work.