Having an Art Show Who Should I Publicize With?
Fine art marketing 101: How to promote your fine art.
March 24th, 2022 
Making art is the fun part, just getting it out at that place can exist a bit more challenging. Non certain how to market place artwork online? No problem—we have all the tips and tricks to aid you learn how to promote yourself as an artist. By the end of this article, y'all'll love lots of actionable ideas to get your art noticed by a wider audition.
Start fine art marketing with an amazing online portfolio.
Building an online art portfolio is a crucial first step in constructive art marketing. Whether you lot're networking with a new contact, applying for a project, or submitting your piece of work for an art competition, you must accept a identify where y'all tin direct people to see your all-time work.
It doesn't matter if you lot're marketing fine art, your tattoo portfolio, or anything in between: if you want your piece of work to be seen, an online portfolio is a must.
Since your portfolio often serves as your showtime impression, it's important to put some thought into information technology. Hither are some key features that volition make your portfolio shine—and take your art marketing to the next level.
Use a fourth dimension-saving website builder.
Salve yourself fourth dimension and money and use an online portfolio platform that allows y'all to build your site in minutes. Cull i that gives y'all a gratis trial, so you can encounter if it's the right fit for your needs.
Choose a layout and template that are attractive and easy to navigate; when it comes to fine art marketing, you want something that reflects your brand and immerses visitors in your digital world. You can do this by maintaining consequent apply of fonts, colors, and other brand avails.
Curate that content.
While it can exist tempting to show off all your work on your online portfolio website, you lot should exist a little picky when choosing what to include.
Visitors are less likely to sift through a portfolio with too many examples. If your portfolio has too many examples, some of those stunning pieces in your portfolio may never be seen, leaving visitors overwhelmed. For virtually portfolios, 20 to 30 of your very best images is the perfect amount.
Yous can undermine your art promotion efforts by including pieces that don't represent your best work. Plan to review your portfolio once or twice a year to go on information technology fresh.
Ace your creative person argument and well-nigh me folio.
Make sure to add your artist statement to your website. An artist statement describes how you piece of work and what your art means.
Learning how to write an artist statement is another important aspect of art marketing since yous'll exist asked to do information technology many times throughout your career. Y'all'll need information technology to submit your piece of work to fine art competitions, and to provide to whatever media outlets writing about your art. It'due south too a cornerstone of creating your brand identity equally an artist.
The Near Me section on your portfolio is a good identify to put it. Make certain to fill up out the rest of your Well-nigh Me folio with engaging content about yourself and your exercise; prospective clients desire to get to know the creative person behind the fine art.
Start blogging.
Adding a weblog to your online portfolio will become a long manner in marketing your art, since creating unique content for your site regularly will help improve its search rankings.
Weblog posts also allow you to show off your artistry. Data-packed web log posts demonstrate your expertise and position y'all as an industry leader.
Sell fine art online.
Wondering how to market artwork online in one case visitors take landed on your portfolio website? Selling your pieces or prints is an excellent style to boost your revenue.
You've already got your visitors interested in your fine art, then setting upward an online store ensures you lot don't miss out on potential sales. Once these pieces are on the walls of collectors and clients, they tin can spark interest in other buyers, effectively doing more fine art marketing for you.
Pick an online portfolio platform that offers online store functionality and a way to sell your prints. By selling directly to clients, you can avoid archaic finder fees (derived from in-person gallery fee structures) that are typical of some online marketplaces.
Entering competitions is excellent for artist promotion. If you manage to win, not only will you earn some attention for your fine art, merely having the award nether your belt can help y'all get-go edifice a reputation as a great artist.
Even if you don't win the contest, entering can all the same help with marketing your art, as many competitions volition testify off some runner-ups, honorable mentions, or recently submitted entries on their art promotion websites.
Some almanac fine art competitions worth checking out include:
- The Creative person'south Magazine'due south Annual Art Competition
- Chelsea International Fine Art Competition
- Tallahassee International Juried Competition
- ArtPrize
While promoting your art online can exist very constructive, don't forget the ability of art promotion in real life. People who interact with your work in the real globe are more likely to remember it than something they scrolled by online.
Organizing your ain art show is a wonderful style to learn the art marketing ropes—and it may be easier than you recall. Hither are some tips to help your bear witness go smoothly:
- Remember of a theme to tie the whole show together. While information technology's not required, a theme can give a sense of focus to an art evidence and assist you lot decide if at that place are other artists who yous want to feature.
- Consider making it a grouping prove. More artists mean more art marketing for the show! Each artist will be able to put the word out to their networks of friends and fans, increasing the attain of your artist promotion.
- Don't stick to the traditional options for venues. Sure, if it'south in your budget, renting a formal gallery is great. Just any identify that is open up and accessible could piece of work. Some examples include hotel lobbies, restaurants, and music halls. In that location may even be opportunities for public art installations, but you will need to coordinate with your local city hall to obtain the required permits.
- A neat testify poster will go a long way in marketing your art. Here are our best tips on how to make a poster that will capture your futurity clients' attention.
Marketing your art by networking.
When information technology comes to promotion for art, ane of the main skills to primary is networking. Here are some of the best ways to build those art-world relationships:
Attend art exhibitions and fairs.
You lot'll be able to see art lovers, professional artists, gallery owners, and agents. Making these contacts is extremely important. People you meet can keep yous informed well-nigh new opportunities – like which fine art galleries are accepting submissions – and help you market place your fine art by sharing your artwork on their social feeds or by suggesting popular artists you could collaborate with.
Don't forget to bring your business cards, and hand them out to everyone you see. It sounds like a small thing, just something every bit simple as a well-designed card can really assist with artist promotion.
Join artist organizations.
Likewise offering tons of networking opportunities, these organizations can often provide workshops, artist promotion and advocacy, resources, and more.
There are many creative person organizations based in specific states or cities, so have a expect at whatsoever local organizations you lot might like to bring together. In that location are also a variety of national organizations.
Some examples include:
- The Portrait Club of America
- Oil Painters of America
This is an awesome way to go your art out there and exercise a trivial good for your fellow artists at the same time.
Some community-based art marketing ideas include providing artwork for charity auctions, participating in community art projects like murals, and volunteering to teach at customs centers.
New to the city? There are still lots of ways to get involved in the artist customs and get-go building that network—and marketing your art.
How to get art noticed when y'all're new: Interact on an art project.
Information technology'due south a common question for new artists: how to get my art out at that place when I'thou just starting out and take no connections? Finding other artists to collaborate with is a smashing artist promotion strategy for new artists.
Having another artist involved means more people will be aware of your collaborative work. All new artists face the trouble of how to become their art out in that location, and information technology'south easy to forget that you don't have to navigate the art world completely alone.
While finding other artists who work in the same medium as you is a reasonable place to start, if you think outside the box, the opportunities are countless. For example, you could find a ring that needs cover art for their side by side album.
Use for grants.
An art grant tin can aid you proceeds recognition as an artist. Some art grant organizations like to promote the great artwork they've supported, and so it may result in some media coverage.
There are a lot of art grants available; look for ones that are the best fit for your work, and become to writing a killer grant application.
Identify your art in film and Television receiver projects.
Some artists make a living creating artwork that appears in movie and Goggle box. This artwork can range from a painting that will be hanging in the groundwork to a business logo or a storefront.
If yous're successful in getting your fine art into a moving picture or Television set show, it will effect in a lot of eyes on your work and your name in the projection's credits.
Start by contacting local production companies or, failing that, local movie and TV students. While having your piece of work in a pupil production likely won't launch you into stardom, information technology is a manner to start demonstrating your ability to run across the unique requirements involved with moving picture and Boob tube production.
Submit your piece of work to fine art posting websites.
We've talked well-nigh submitting your work to competitions and grants, but another way to promote your artwork online more regularly is to submit it to fine art websites. Even when there aren't active competitions going on, sites similar these tin can still display your piece of work to a new audition:
- Colossal
- Hello Fructose
- Creative person A Mean solar day
Before submitting, make sure you cheque out if they're looking for any special themes or types of art.
To get the most out of your social media presence you need a solid content strategy, an understanding of your account analytics, and techniques to regularly reach a wider audience.
When learning how to market place fine art online, become through each of the steps outlined here to brand sure you're beingness strategic and constructive. Social platforms have get the key to artist promotion, and while you lot don't have to use every single social aqueduct, effort a few to find out which ones get you the most traction.
Create a strategy for marketing art online.
Before you showtime marketing your art on social media, make sure you create a strategy. If you don't accept physical goals in mind, it'south harder to assess your progress and place areas where your creative person self-promotion isn't delivering results.
This is why you should beginning by creating a social media strategy for how to promote your artwork online. Information technology should include things similar what you desire to get out of your artist promotion campaign, what blazon of audience you desire to target, and which platforms you are going to use.
Gear up upwards business accounts on Facebook and Instagram.
Use concern pages on Facebook and Instagram instead of personal social media pages to promote your art online. Your artist promotion will look more than professional person, and you'll have access to more analytics tools to improve your social media marketing. With information, you'll be able to see exactly which pieces of content were most effective in the past.
For example, once you lot have a business page, you lot'll be able to utilize more analytics tools and create Facebook ads. You should beginning with setting up your Facebook business page, since it's required to create a business business relationship on Instagram.
Become your followers to promote for you.
Peer-to-peer promotion is one of the cornerstones of a good social media strategy. That means finding ways to go your followers to promote on your behalf.
One way to do that is with contests. For instance, some companies offer free products as prizes and ask participants to enter the contest by making a postal service that mentions the company or product.
As an independent creative person, you likely won't be able to offer an expensive grand prize. However, if you go creative, there are plenty of ways you lot could entice people to participate.
For example, you could job the participants with creating a mail about their favorite slice from your portfolio, and offering one of your artworks as a prize. Participants volition be able to marketplace artwork online to their networks. This is a simple artist cocky-promotion idea that you can use on a regular ground.
Cross-promote with other artists.
At that place are lots of artists out in that location in the aforementioned position as you: they're likewise looking for means to promote their work. And then, one like shooting fish in a barrel way to get some artist promotion is to agree to cross-promote with another creative person. Information technology tin exist equally unproblematic as making some posts that highlight the artist's piece of work and what y'all like near it, with an agreement that they volition practise the same.
It's an art marketing win-win: you'll both get some more eyes on your work. And since everyone'southward gustation in art is different, you tin cross-promote without worrying most sending potential clients to a competitor.
Rails your progress with analytics tools.
Tools such as Facebook Insights and Instagram Analytics can help you run into how well your social media promotions are working. These tools can tell you things like how many views each of your posts attract, and how many of those visitors clicked through to meet your online portfolio. By comparison the performance of your various posts and social media strategies, you tin go a better sense of which art marketing efforts work and which don't.
While the tools that are congenital into Facebook and Instagram provide enough info to become started, when you're ready, there are many third-party analytics tools that become further.
Be inspired past your fellow artists online.
Study the social media accounts of the artists yous look up to – or whatever artists that have mastered artist cocky-promotion. Y'all should examine everything about them; from the types of images they mail to their posting schedule. By learning what makes these social media accounts so successful, you'll gain some insight into what you can practice better.
Utilise post-scheduling tools.
Consistently posting fresh content to your social media is important. It's a great way to go along your followers engaged and attract new ones. Nonetheless, it tin can be a pain to stay on top of it day subsequently day.
Luckily, in that location are a variety of scheduling tools that can have the stress out of information technology. These tools volition let you lot create your posts at your own stride, and so schedule them to exist automatically uploaded at specific times.
These tools make it easy to postal service at the best times. As your analytics will probable evidence you, fourth dimension of twenty-four hours can be a major determining factor in whether or non your fine art marketing is seen by your audition.
So, if yous're interested in learning more well-nigh the scheduling tools that are out in that location, hither'south a list of the best Instagram scheduling tools.
You lot might assume y'all'd have to spend a lot of money to get any return from advertizement on Facebook. But that'south not the example. You can commencement by spending as picayune as $i! (mind you, $1 won't get yous very far, but we all take to start somewhere.)
Facebook Ads offer a lot of flexibility. Yous can start small and scale upwards as needed. You tin also test unlike art promotion formats using Facebook Ads, such every bit photo and video ads, to see which ones pique your audience's interest. Another great feature with Facebook Ads is that y'all can get very detailed with the audience y'all want to target, based on everything from age group, to geographic location, to their particular interests.
Now what?
Congrats—you're on your way to mastering how to promote your art. If you put these methods into exercise, you'll detect your reputation growing and new opportunities arising.
Skillful artist promotion and fine art marketing tin even help you get your art into an fine art gallery. Once you start marketing your art the right way, anything can happen, from gallery representation to booming sales. Information technology's time to go out there and share your work with the globe!
Eliina has an all-encompassing groundwork in illustration and design. She has been working at Zenfolio for the last 2 years helping photographers meet their business organisation and website needs.
*Promotion valid until May 31, 2022 at 11:59 p.m. PST. Promotional discount off the subscription toll of a new ProSuite, PortfolioPlus or Portfolio annual programme will be automatically applied at checkout with code SPRING2022. Discount applies to the start year only. Cannot be combined with whatsoever other promotion. Portfolio, Portfolio Plus and ProSuite plans are currently available to customers in the United States, Britain and Australia simply.
Source: https://zenfolio.com/blog/how-to-promote-your-art/