It is easy to think of selling online as totally different than selling offline (as in a store or gallery). The truth is, there are more similarities than differences. You can definitely do far more online than you can offline, but you have to begin with the offline mentality.
Start by planning a brand new gallery that you are going to open, the Gallery of You. This will be a gallery that you open on your favorite street in your favorite town, only it will hold only your art and it will be designed by your own specifications. (This planning/dreaming is actually a lot of fun, in addition to being practical.) What would you do to get customers to your gallery? How would you treat them once they came? Here are some ideas that come to mind:
- Create your USP. Here are some previous articles to help get you going:
- Advertise locally - get your name/brand/image out there in front of people.
- Make it easy to buy from you.
- Collect the names and addresses of EVERYONE that comes into your gallery.
- Communicate often and personally with every one.
- Network like crazy.
This is just a short list to get you started, the real benefit of this exercise comes when YOU do it. This is YOUR gallery, the Gallery of You. You can run it anyway you want! What will you do to create your own true fans?
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Chris O’Byrne
OnlineArtsMarketing.com
www.YourArtMarketing.com
8 comments ↓
Thanks for this, Chris. I’d think that for art it might be helpful to emphasize the emotional experience the owner will have. For in instance, if you made a painting that conveyed a sense of peacefulness, it would probably be helpful to a potential buyer if you made that a usp.
Barbara… good point!
and my oh my how networking has changed during the course of my career. I remember going to the post office with 200 envelopes 4 times per year to show my client list new work.
Lesson 1 is a dead link for me, Chris - is it just me??
Great post….
@Judith: Boy oh boy how things have changed! I still have books that talk about using one of those new mimeograph machines!!
@Michelle: Thanks for letting me know, it should be fixed now. Glad you like the post!
Hi Chris,
Great post … your work on USP was very helpful to me in taking things to another level!
~ Diane Clancy
http://www.DianeClancy.com/blog
http://www.YourArtMarketing.com
Thanks, Diane. Next week’s article is going to take a step back and be more all-encompassing. I’ve had lots of ideas running through my head!
Great post Chris, and I will now have to think about this in my work. I mean I’ve intuitively been doing this as I went along, but with a thought process and understanding of the True Fan idea…this will help me to think in a practical way about what the next steps are. You know…you are helping us all to plan for success, and that my friend, is magic. Thanks for that.
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