How to Sell Art Online Without Reinventing Anything

Introduction

0:00Coming up on today's edition of the Art Marketing Podcast, I'm calling an audible. I'm just going to go on a rant today, a rant that sums up some of my recent learnings from 12 years in the trenches, I guess. Maybe longer than that now. A number of years in the trenches. But I think it's going to be a good one. So what I wanted to do, because I'm, you know,

0:30I'm aware that I've been back on my like three day a week webinar routine, webinar schedule. And it's been really, really fun. And I like, you know, I've talked in the past on past episodes about my admiration for standup comedians. And, you know, the fact that a standup comedian will go and do all of these shows, one show after another show after another show after another show, and just keep working on their jokes and keep working on their routine. And then end up having that big Netflix or HBO special, whatever, at the end of the year.

1:00And I feel like with webinar presentations, it can kind of be that way when you keep covering the same thing. You try different angles and you try different ways of piecing it together and you find out what works and what doesn't work. And while I'm no standup comedian, you know, the reps and sets, the repetition and the practice, and then getting to see people's faces on Zoom, it's really cool on Zooms and Lives. So I've kind of been working on this rant for, I don't know, maybe since early May, or maybe since, yeah, maybe since like right at the start of May. And I've been getting a ton of good feedback on it.

1:31And I realized, you know, most of you guys will not come to a webinar because you're either already a customer of Hard Storefronts, or you just listen to the podcast and you do your thing, you know, wherever. Or maybe you've come to one and you didn't hear it. Whatever the case may be, I was like, you know what? I've got to just record it. And that's the game plan. I'm just going to let it rip and do it a shot. So a rant, okay? And I'm going to start out with the cautionary tale. And it's going to go from a cautionary tale

2:02to an analogy that I'm going to come at three ways. Those of you that have been listening to the podcast for any length of time will see all of the themes and all of these things being stitched together that I've covered on this podcast going back a long, long time, especially a bunch of the episodes starting this year. But let's not stand on ceremony.

Cautionary Tale

2:19Let's get right into it with the cautionary tale. The ancient history is prior to 2020, to COVID hitting in this company, my face was never on video. I had never really met in person with any of my customers. I'd never met with any of my customers on Zoom. I was not doing any outbound video marketing whatsoever. We had a blog. We had an email list. We had a podcast, sure, which was just audio. Everything changed in 2020 when COVID hit, right? Went from never running webinars at all to running webinars three days a week.

2:50And then those are the outbound facing ones. And then multiple days a week as well, inbound, meaning just facing Art Storefront's customers. And it's been a good six years of that now at varying frequencies, varying cadences, but just a ton of reps and sets, talking to artists and photographers that are in every single solitary season of life all over this country, the United States, all over North America, for that matter, and all over Europe, Oceania as well,

3:21all over the place, just period. And you do enough of that, and it creates a really, really unique situation because you just get to talk to so many creators in so many different niches with so many different subject matter materials from so many different backgrounds. And it really, it gives you this profound opportunity, ability, knowledge to be able to pattern match and certain themes emerge, okay? Which is why I want to start with the cautionary tale,

3:51a cautionary tale that is full of optimism, right? So routinely on these webinars, I get people in their late 70s, in their 80s, occasionally in their 90s, and yes, a few times, even people that were over 100 years old showing up on the webinar, asking like, hey, Patrick, how do I get this art out there? I've got all this art and I need to get it out there. I need to sell it. I want people to see it.

4:23And, you know, it's less about like financial necessity and more about like, they're still at it and they're still going. Let me put it to you a different way. I'm a marketing guy. I enjoy marketing. I'd like to think I'm decent at it. I'm going to enjoy it all the way until the time comes when I am able to retire. And then after I retire, I'm not going to market anymore, okay? I will take up gardening. I will take up fishing. I might even take up golf. There's no way I'm taking up golf.

4:53It takes too much time. Beautiful real estate though. But the point is, most people on planet Earth are like me. You work a job. You work a career. You enjoy it. You do your best. You get fulfillment out of it. You feed your family. And then when it comes time to retire, that's it. I'm done with that. I'm never going back, okay? Where it's different is you guys, wherever you believe you came from, whether it's God created you or it was a big banger, whatever.

5:24That is just not how creatives are wired, okay? What I've learned conclusively from all of these sessions with all of these people spanning all of these years is that you guys will never stop creating. You will be creating, okay? Your creations, your artwork, your photography, your crafts, your sculptures, whatever it is, you will keep creating until your body physically does not allow you to do so.

5:56That is a profound, profound learning and statement. And I think every creator needs to internalize it and come to terms with it, okay? The reason it's so profound is ultimately this desire to create, this desire for that word product to be seen, the desire to get feedback on that word print. And for a great many of you, for that product to be sold will never leave you, okay? It will never leave. It is just the craziest thing ever.

6:27It is something that is so unique to your gifting. It is something that is so not normal to a great many others, okay? And where this gets profound, okay, is that for most of you listening to this podcast, you likely have 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 or 60, 70, 80 years left, okay? If the promise, if the hype of AI in which we all get personalized healthcare and every disease gets old,

6:57you might be listening. There's probably somebody listening to this that's going to live to be like 150 or 160 years old, okay? That's a crazy thing to contemplate. And why do I bring that up? I bring that up to say, you gotta internalize the perspective of how much time you have left as a creator to get the business right, to do the basics, okay? The cautionary tale in all of it is that I don't want you to end up that 90-year-old going,

7:29I've never turned on a computer. I don't know how to use a cell phone. My body's starting to film me. I'm not as mobile as I used to be. I can't do films or shows. I can barely move the artwork. What do I do, right? Nobody wants to be in that position. I don't want them to be in that position, okay? And moreover, I think one of the greatest cancers that befalls creators, okay? And maybe this is all this history or maybe it's something that's been driven by all this nonsense of social media marketing

8:00and constantly showing these big returns and how much money people are making and look at my private plan and all that other nonsense. But there's this notion of like, what's in it for me immediately? Wifty for me immediately. How quickly is my business going to be making $10,000 a month? Or how quickly is your program or your mastermind or your class or your Facebook ads workshop or whatever it is, how quickly is that going to get me ROI, right? It's always this time horizon of like,

8:30how quickly can I get results? Is it going to be a month? Is it going to be three months? Is it going to be six months? Can I get there completely in a year? And da-da, da-da, da-da. It just keeps going on and on and on. And I think it's cancerous. I think it's cancerous. No substantive revenue-driving creative business is created overnight. It's years of grinding in the trenches, okay? Every successful artist and photographer you know has done just that,

9:00has suffered, has been uncomfortable, has gone through the pain, has gone through the ups and downs, the emotional rollercoaster that is being an entrepreneur. It's not easy. It's not supposed to be easy. If it was, everyone would do it. But when you realize that you have the perspective of all of that time, it fundamentally changes how important it is to get that right as young as you can. As young as you can, okay? There's not, stop doing this hopping around

9:31from one platform to another platform to taking some marketing class to all get started when I have a niche. No, okay? You gotta get started. You gotta get going. You wanna do that as young as possible. Momentum is real and it compounds only if you're doing the basics and working on the right stuff. I've got episodes this year published that covers the basics in detail so you can go back and you can listen to those, right? That's the cautionary tale and it's really a cautionary tale and optimism in equal measure.

Art Gallery Analogy

10:02Next, onto my analogy, okay? And you've heard my analogy, I'm sure, unless this is the first episode you've listened to, but you probably haven't heard me come at it three ways. So I'm gonna come at it three ways because I think one analogy utterly, totally, and completely sums up where most artists, photographers, creatives get it wrong, okay? Get it wrong. And this is it, right? Everything that we attempt to do in the online digital world

10:34that we all live in today is just mimic the paradigm of what's worked for centuries in that offline analog real world, right? And the analogy I give, which you've heard me give before, is this notion of what is the paradigm for how art and photography is sold and viewed the worldwide? It's the same. It's the same in every culture. It doesn't matter what continent. It doesn't matter what region.

11:05It doesn't matter what language, okay? The paradigm for how art and photography is viewed and sold is that of an art gallery or a museum, right? And the worldwide, it doesn't matter where you are, what culture, every art gallery and every museum looks the same the world over. Minimalism inside. No distractions. Monochromatic, often monochromatically white walls. The art up on the walls.

11:37A little information about the artist, the piece, the three different ways. The first way, and you've heard me do this, but it bears repeating, the website. Where most artists and photographers go completely wrong is your creative gifting is your greatest enemy. You guys all treat your website, not all, but so many websites I've looked at, like a canvas, like a frame, an unshot frame in your viewfinder, right? You guys understand composition.

12:09You understand color theory. You understand the rule of thirds, right? You understand framing. And as such, you approach your websites, okay, like it's a blank canvas, like it's that image in the viewfinder. And that is where the aforementioned goofy stuff comes in. You've got thoughts and walls of text and colors and slideshows and sometimes music. And Lord knows what other nonsense that it would be a modern day miracle if anyone actually saw the art. Everything that we attempt to do.

12:39in the digital online world is just mimic the paradigm of how art and photography is sold and the analog offline hashtag real world that we all live in, right? And there's alchemy to it. Like do not fight proven, okay? Do not think where your creativity needs to be applied is to reinventing the paradigm, right? That is like those odds are like trying to win the lottery. This is true

13:10in the art world. This is true in the business world. Like stick to proven, right? Just stick to proven what works and the paradigm of how art is viewed or sold is in an art gallery experience. Your website needs to come as close as possible to mimic that experience, right? And do not take this cynically, okay? This is not some sort of a subtle sales pitch for art storefronts. Yes, all of our website themes are minimalist. Yes, all of our website themes are built to mimic the paradigm that is selling art.

13:40But that doesn't mean we're the only game in town. You can go and build one of these on your own. You can figure out a way to do it. Just steer clear of the doggone templates with all the goofy nonsense on it, right? List prices on your doggone website. Do not be one of these mysteriousos, right, that I've ranted on before. Contact me. To get in touch so we can talk about a piece. Yeah, that's what I'm going to do, okay? That's what they do at the art gallery. Go ahead. Could you imagine if you walked into an art gallery and the gallerist is like, are you interested in this piece?

14:12Well, I'm too busy to talk to you about it right now, nor show you the price, so leave and send me an email and I'll be in touch. Give me a break. Stick to the paradigm, right? Stick to the paradigm. So that's the first way that I come with the analogy. Let's come with the analogy a second way, okay? The second way I come with the analogy is let's say it was opening night in that art gallery, okay? And you were having a show. Opening night in the gallery, it's your show. My wife and I walked through

14:43the front door, perused the art. What would we see in there? What would be going on in that gallery opening night? There'd probably be music playing. There'd be wine and cheese on offer. The gallerist would be buzzing around talking to people. You would be in there talking to people. So I walk in. I peruse the art a little bit. I see that you're alone and I come up, my wife and I introduce ourselves and we get into a conversation and I learn a little bit about you and you learn a little bit about me

15:14and I find out where you grew up and whether or not you're married and where did your creative eye come from and you ask about my wife and I and we give you a little detail and oh no way I grew up right you know the connections that inevitably happen when you have a conversation like that right? Then we would talk about the art. I congratulate you on the opening night of your gallery go and see some more art and do whatever I was going to do after right? Every one of you has conversations like that all the time.

15:45You're great at that. You can do them no problem. And yet and yet somehow what works so well in the analog offline real world gets completely blown out. The paradigm changes completely when we move to the online world. I'm coming at this analogy obviously based on how you market your art how you post on the socials

16:15the story that I get on your website to a lesser extent the content of your emails pretty much all artists all photographers all creators they run the art Gatling gun. You've heard me say this before. Here's my art. Here's more of my art. Look at my art. Here's my art on the wall. Here's me in the studio creating my art. Here's what my art looks like. Here's what my art looks like outside. Here's what my art looks like when I reveal it and face backwards and then face forwards and show it to you. Buy one. Get one free on my art.

16:45This is more of my art. Art, art, art, art, art, art, art, art, art, art, art, art, art, art, a machine gun.

16:51The website version would be here's where I went to school. I had an MFA. I was in a show. I was in another juried show. I was featured in this magazine. Here's my art. Here's the art pricing. Here's all the awards I've won on the art. The Gatling gun just goes again and again and again and then what happens? The algorithm is rigged against me. Man, social media marketing doesn't work. Instagram was so cool 15 years ago. All I get now are likes and maybe people asking for NFTs

17:23but no one contacts me and no one engages and I'm not growing any followers and clearly the algorithm the social media sites Google search crawlers are rigged against me. It breaks my heart when I hear that nonsense online and I hear it and I see it all of the time. If that was you opening night in that gallery and I and my wife walked up that conversation with you and you ran the Gatling gun

17:53on me and you welcome to my show. Here's my art. There it is on the wall. If you buy one today I'll take 10% off. That's my gallerist. Here's me doing more of my art. Here's a picture of me. I would be out the door so fast. My wife and I would be like who is this lunatic? Somebody call the asylum and yet that's how everyone approaches their social media marketing. Where did this asinine break down this asinine assumption that that is how you were supposed to market? That is how you're supposed to structure every bit of outbound marketing communication

18:23that you do. Right? The other way

Marketing Approach

18:27that I like to analogize that and it's an important one and this one will sting a little bit but you've got to hear it. Your art, your photography, your creations are the commercials. They're the commercials. When is the last time you or anyone you know went on, turned on the TV and navigated to the channel that just shows commercial after commercial after commercial after commercial after commercial. You would never do that.

18:58I would never do that because that would be extremely boring. Nobody wants to see that and that is where most artists fail on social media. Their entire social media feed is just commercial after commercial after commercial after commercial. Your art is the commercials. I don't care how good it is. It's the commercials. Okay? If you owned a television station and you wanted to make money if you wanted to get people to tune into

19:28your channel you would create programs. The programs are what give you the ability to run commercials. The programs are what give you the ability to run commercials. What is the programming? The programming is you. who you are where you're from where you got your creative eye what kind of a human being are you?

19:59Are you ever vulnerable? Are you dark? Are you witty? Are you funny? Do you have stage fright? Do you tear the side of being on camera? Do you have self-doubt? Do you have a messed up family? Do you have a not so perfect life?

20:15Spoiler alert! None of us have a perfect life. Everyone in our lives have got stuff. When we realize that someone else is being honest with us and they've got stuff in their life like we have in our life immediately the bond happens. You are the programming. It's a profound thing when you hear it that way. You are the programming. Your story is the programming and we need a way to be able to figure that out to consume that to learn that and understand that.

20:45And I would go as far to say that if you somehow get me onto your socials, get me onto your website, get me into your email and you don't give me an opportunity to get to know, like, and trust who you are as a human being that you've lost. The masks say that person is never coming back. And you guys are all so eminently capable of doing this. It's exactly what you do every single solitary time you're engaged in a conversation in the real world.

21:15yet somehow, someway, the minute it goes to online, everything goes out the window. Human beings are wired to make purchasing decisions on people we know, we like, we trust, we find funny, we have a shared cultural heritage with or a shared bond or a shared geographic location or we feel sorry for or we can empathize with. all of those things that are simply just not

21:46possible to convey with the artwork alone. Your art is the commercials. Work on the programming. Second way that I come at that analogy with the art gallery. The third one

Consistency in Marketing

22:01might even have the most teeth. If you own that gallery, okay, it's your art gallery that you just had your opening night in. Your art gallery is in the middle of the best mall in your town. Your art gallery is on Main Street or it's in the Main Street of the Arts District or for my European listeners on the High Street. If you owned that retail art gallery, that would mean you have the expense of the rent on that retail art gallery, which means you would keep that retail

22:31art gallery open probably, let's be honest, four to five days a week if you're European, five to six days a week if you're American, right? You would make sure that someone is down there in the morning to open that shop up, to keep that shop open, to close it down at the end of the night, to follow up and do all of the things that it requires to run a retail art gallery business. What you would not do, okay, what you would not do is you would not walk up

23:01to the glass door in front of the shop, grab the open for business sign, turn it around to close, and say, sorry closed for summer, artist got burnt out. Sorry, closed for the next month, artist had life happen. You would never do that. And yet, that's what you do with your marketing. That's what artists and photographers do with their marketing.

23:32Life happens. They get burnt out. They don't want to do it. They go and work on other things and tell themselves it's progress to avoid the one thing that will actually move the needle. If you had a retail gallery, there would be times where you did not want to get out of bed, that you would drag your butt out of bed and go down and open the doors in that gallery because you know you need to keep it open because you've got rent to pay, right? Your digital art gallery is no

24:03different. It is absolutely no different. It is the same entity. Somewhere along the line, whenever we cross the chasm from real world to digital online world, everyone sort of just lost the plot. That somehow you don't need to be consistent in your marketing. That somehow you can take days and weeks and years and months off. You have to keep the art gallery door open. You would never not keep the art gallery door open if it was in the real world. And again, going back to previous episodes, like, we

24:33all get burnt out. Life happens to all of us. There are times where you can't keep the doors open five and six days a week. All I'm saying is you just can't close it down for months at a time. If you can only keep the doors open on Mondays and Fridays, then do it on Mondays and Fridays, right? There's going to be some times where the gallery is going to be open more than others, but you have to stay consistent in your marketing. And that's it. That analogy, three different ways, perfectly

25:04explains, perfectly bottles up what all creatives go through. And when you look at the time horizon, the sheer number of years you've got left to get this right, and also the facts that, as it turns out, none of us are getting any younger. You want to get to this whenever you can get to this, whenever the message hears you and it sinks in, because the older you get, the harder it gets. But you can still do it no matter what age you're at, because the time horizon is so significant, because you're never going to

25:36stop creating everything that we seek to do. And the online world is just mimic the paradigm of what works in the real world, the analog world, the world that we all live in. And if you think about your art business that way, it is my firm belief that things will change. Yes, you're going to have to suffer. Yes, you're going to have to work on things that you don't want to work on. But that's growing a business, no matter what it is. You talk to any successful artist, you talk to any successful

26:06photographer that's where you want to be, and ask them how many years of grinding it took them. Ask them how many years of being in the trenches, working on the basics, keeping the gallery open, letting people know who they are, getting to know them, having the proper art gallery website out and running, doing all those fundamental basics that I mentioned in episodes previous. And they'll tell you they've been doing it for years and years and years. And guess what? You've got years and years and years left. So nail this now so that

26:38you're never the 90-year-old going on to Zoom calls or whatever we're going to have in the future, saying, can you help me sell this art? What do I do? It's doing the basics and doing them consistently. On that note, thanks for listening. And as always, have a great day.