Recently I was delivering an Artists Who THRIVE Marketing Seminar here in San Francisco and one of the participants really wanted to discuss art sales.
Although I love discussing art sales, art marketing was the focus promised to the participants.
And if you are shaping a new creative enterprise it is your art marketing strategies that will have to be established before your art sales strategies.
That doesn’t mean that art sales are not important. Actually, art sales are vitally important.
Without the sales department every other department within a company ceases to exist.
Yet if you are a business major it is unlikely that you will be studying sales. The subject of practical sales is often considered an unworthy academic discipline.
So why is it that we must focus on marketing our art first? Because you have to know what you are selling, and to whom, before you can be effective.
If I have a 30-foot luxury yacht is it worth my effort to try to sell it to a wheat farmer in Kansas? Well. I might get lucky.
Or it might be better to network at the St. Francis Yacht Club here in San Francisco.
I know that differentiating art sales and art marketing may sound like an obvious simplification but I’m pointing it out because sales and marketing require separate consideration and written strategies.
Why written strategies? Because when you commit a plan to writing you can carefully think it through. And when you commit a plan to writing it is much more likely to yield results.
The moral of the story? All artists, including myself, have a lot to learn about business so that they can be free to contribute their vision and get paid.
But it’s best to study the book of a thriving art enterprise one chapter at a time.
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