Marketing Your Creative Business: How to Sell Your Art Without Selling Out

1. Introduction: So, you're making cool art, and you're ready to start making money from it. That means it's time to face the M Word. Marketing. Lots of artists dread marketing because they think selling is sleazy, but we're going to show you how you can get customers for your art without feeling gross. And while staying true to yourself the whole time. Mana, and I'm here with Katie to teach you how to create a marketing strategy for your business that actually feels really good. We run good type a community of over 1 million creatives, and we've learned a lot about marketing over the years from running our own art businesses, as well as helping our students to do the same. Great marketing comes down to storytelling and connection. It's about communicating who you are and what makes you unique to the people who will really appreciate it. It's about finding the people who really get you and who will be better off after they find you. Selling your art starts with understanding that you're giving people something good, something they want and something they need. You're not tricking them. Once you start to believe that, you can concentrate on the actual actions you need to take to get in front of the audience you're helping. In this class, we'll help you do exactly that. After determining who your people are, we'll walk you through all the options for marketing to them and we'll share strategies to make each one more effective. From your website to social media, to e mail marketing, and outreach, we'll show you how to make a marketing plan that fits you, and doesn't make you feel like a used car salesman. Alright, let's get started. 2. Understanding Your Audience: You have the basic foundations figured out for your business, you've identified your niche. You understand your artistic voice, and you've set up your business to be legal and legit, it's time to get into marketing. If you're saying, Oh, crap, I haven't done any of those things. Well, don't worry. Press pause on this class and go check out the two other classes we created as precursors to this one. We've linked them in the about section below this video. And those classes will help you identify the things that make you unique as an artist, which is hugely important to marketing. And then we'll make sure your business is set up to operate successfully. If you're all set and ready to move on, awesome. Let's get into it. If you've done the exercises in our previous classes, you'll have an artist statement and a good understanding of your niche. We're going to use those as the foundation of our marketing plan today. If you need a refresher, your niche is the unique space you occupy in the art world, based on the distinctive traits that make you and your work stand apart. In other words, who are you as an artist, and why will I remember you? Your niche can be really specific or fairly broad, as long as there's a unifying story or unique style to tie it all together. So your niche could be as narrow as the artist who makes giant portraits of cats. If you want to really specialize, or your niche could be the artist who plays with proportion and distorts reality in their illustrations, which opens you up to apply that style in different ways and across different mediums. The main thing we're after is that your niche is something unique, memorable, and it's something you can own. When we start with the niche that's based on what makes you special as a human, which is very personal. It can be scary to introduce the word marketing into the mix. We know that marketing is often associated with gross feelings. You may think of selling or manipulation, papa bads that you just want to scroll past. All the things you didn't sign up for when you decided to make art, but we want to challenge that perception today and rework how you think about marketing. Good marketing isn't manipulative or scammy or uncomfortable. Good marketing is based on authentic storytelling, and it's not about hurting people. It's about helping them. Your work can solve a problem for people. Maybe it's bringing life to a blank space on their wall, or it could be helping their products sell because your gorgeous art is on it, or maybe you're bringing their brand voice to life and helping them express themselves with a logo. Those are all things people need and want, and you're making their life better when you give it to them. You just need to get in front of that right group of people who will really benefit from whatever it is you do. How do we identify the right people? How do we find that perfect audience? Well, first, you think about your niche and your offerings. What are you putting into the world for people to buy? Is it fine art? Is it greeting cards that companies can license? Is it pet portraits? Go ahead and grab the workbook we've included in this class and list out your offerings, so they're right in front of you? Then the next step is to ask yourself a few questions. What kind of people need my product or service. What kind of people might resonate with my story or style? What kind of people might my price point attract? Now, I have to take a moment to say you can do this process in a different order. You can identify your audience first and then research them to figure out how to price your product or you can even find your audience first and then adjust your service or product to meet their needs. However, we find that as artists, it's so important that we stay true to ourselves first? Then consider the audience. Our type of business is so much more personal than others, and if we aren't centered around making the art that we love, it's really easy to end up in burnout city. And for the pricing of your product or service, while you can always adjust this, it's important to think about it sooner than later. Imagine that your type of work is super detailed and each piece takes you 100 hours to complete. So you simply have to sell that for a premium price, which means your customer needs to be able to afford that. So think through these questions and try to identify one or several groups of people who need what you offer. The more specific you can get, the better focused you can be on finding your exact right target customer. So let's think through a couple of examples. An audience for an artist who creates dark supernatural illustrations might be people who like Tim Burton and Stephen King. Maybe they are into old scary Canty movies, or they collect vintage comic books. Imagine that you've opened your customers old school Facebook profile, where they've listed out all the stuff that they're into. And what's on there? What music do they like? What other visual artists? What movies, what activities? These are all important pieces of information that will help us find out more about where you can find them. Let's imagine a graphic designer who specializes in luxury branding. Their audience is going to be premium brands that want a sophisticated look. You're probably not going to reach out to Hot Topic or McDonalds, if you're this designer. In your workbook, start writing down traits and preferences that your customers may have, as well as where they spend their time. Are they on Reddit or Linked in? Do they browse design annuals regularly? We want to know We are the places where they're already engaged so we can show up there too? One thing you may encounter, especially if you're an artist who creates work in different categories is that you might have multiple audiences. For example, I'm a lettering artist who specializes in embellished lettering. That gives me the opportunity to work with lots of different kinds of clients. I may license my work for a company to put on their greeting cards in one project, and then create a custom logo for someone else? These are two different groups of customers with two completely different needs. When artists find themselves in this situation, they tend to confuse themselves and start to overthink it. They might think, if I make stuff for multiple audiences, do I have to do multiple marketing plans? Do I have to do five times the work? If I have five different audiences? Do I have to have separate Instagram accounts and separate websites for everything that I do? Take a deep breath. It's not as scary as it sounds. While you may change up a few things when you're trying to target one potential type of client over another. They're going to be attracted to your work for the same reasons. Remember, you and your artistic voice is what's going to make them want to work with you. So the most important thing for artists who fall into this, I can do multiple things category is to show that consistency and those through lines in your work that we've been harping on. Show clients that you do different kinds of work, but it all has your vibe, no matter what. And represent the stuff you can do in your portfolio if you want logo work. Include logos. If you want packaging, show packaging. As far as how to get your portfolio in front of all these different audiences, we're going to talk about specific strategies more in depth than a moment. But first, we suggest to find the places where your audience overlap and target those. It's pretty likely that the brand who needs a logo and the client who needs art for their greeting card will both search Pinterest or Google looking for a lettering artist. So once you've tackled those overlap spots, then you can start to concentrate on more custom marketing approaches. Maybe you spend a month focusing on targeting art licensing gigs, and then the next month, you're focusing on attracting branding clients. Once you've identified your audience or audiences, one really helpful way to get to know them better is by gently and politely stalking them. Don't worry. It's not creepy. It is for their own good. Find them on the Internet, whether it's Instagram or a red a thread or YouTube comments and see what they're talking about, especially what they're complaining about. Take that imaginary artist who makes the supernatural illustrations from earlier. Maybe their audiences in a red a thread about vintage horror movie posters, and they're saying how nice it would be to have the posters come in a different color way that better matches their home decor, or maybe they're searching for a specific subject matter on the posters, but they just can't find it. Knowing that stuff is so valuable because then you can solve those problems and meet your audience's needs even better. Go ahead and list some of the problems your audience may have in your workbook now. Okay, so now that you've listed your audience's qualities, likes, problems, and the spaces where you can find them, let's head along to the next lesson. 3. Your Brand & Website: May have found an awesome Niche, and you may be an incredibly talented artist, but none of that will help you make money unless you communicate it to your audience. An artist brand is really just that simple. How do you actually go out into the world and tell your story? What words and images and videos are you putting out there and how are they perceived by other people? What's the lasting impression people walk away with when they see your Instagram, your website, your gallery show, or when they order something from your shop? In other words, what's the vibe? As an artist, your artwork does a lot of the heavy lifting for your brand. All those consistent qualities that unify your work, set the tone from the color palette to the subject matter, to the technique and the message. Your art is the foundation for your brand. But your story does not end there. How you talk to your audience, how you show up online, how you caption your art and explain your process. All of these helped paint a bigger picture about your brand. And then, of course, there's your logo and any other graphics you may use within your visual brand identity system. And while these are really important elements, of course, we find artists tend to get way too stuck on them, and we know this from very personal experience. When we decided to do a rebrand at good type, it felt incredibly daunting, even as two graphic designers who have created many, many logos over the years. It's a huge task to undertake to create something that truly reflects who you are and what your work has to offer. It's challenging to take a step back when you're so invested in your own work, which makes looking at your brand objectively, really, really difficult. So here's permission to let someone else step in and take the logo design off your plate if you can. This can be a really great way to delegate and collaborate with someone and take some of the pressure off. If you decide to do it for yourself, just remember that there are other things that hold higher importance in this world. You logo can be a fun, small part of your brand, but it will not make or break you. Give yourself a deadline and stop tweaking when time is up, something that all artists need is a place to display their work. Your art, as we said, is the foundation of your brand and what people are going to hire you for. So you absolutely need to showcase it within a website. We get asked, What platform, should I build my website on over and over? And so often we see this question and others like it creating a really huge roadblock. Consider us the bulldozer. We're here to break it down for you. First off, it doesn't matter so much what platform you choose to host your website on. There are tons of options, and truly each provider has something special to offer. Consider what you really need out of a website and do a quick comparison. Some platforms prioritize E commerce, like Shopify, while others Excel for blogging, like word press. To be honest, it's inevitable that at some point, you'll want to change platforms, but more important than getting it right this first time is to actually just get started. Personally, we use square space. We really love to have everything incredibly user friendly, customizable, mostly code free and pretty much unbreakable. And when we can't figure something out, we hire a web designer to help us. And as creatives, we have lots of grand ideas of building a unique. Never been done before website, but quickly, we remind ourselves that our work and our messaging should be the most important part of our site. Design of a website is truly just the shell that contains all the gorgeous art that you're creating. You've already poured all your energy into that. So feel free to let your web design take a step back. We like using the themes available on square space because there are so many ways you can customize them and make them your own, so it still has a lot of personality. Plus, we love the mobile built in views with a lot of flexibility. Updating our site feels like incredibly manageable. However, if you're a web designer or you just have an undeniable vision, we totally get wanting to make your site completely custom and totally unique. And in that case, we say, go for it. We encourage you to do it. But the messaging on your site is still really important. Generic, non descriptive words really just don't do your work any justice. They don't bring anything to your brand. So consider this opportunity really to communicate your story and what makes you different. All the work we've done in the previous class about finding your niche is going to come in really handy right now, especially the artist statement that you wrote. This will fit perfectly on your homepage or on your about page. You want any visitor that comes to your website to be able to spend 30 seconds looking around before they can repeat back exactly what you do? Your website should really showcase only the type of work you want to get more of. If you want branding, show branding. If you don't want brochure design, do not include that on your website. We know it's really hard to curate, especially when it means leaving stuff out, but what you show people is what they'll hire you for. So give it some very careful thought and curation. There should also be a really clear path for what you want people to do on your website. Is there a specific call to action? Is it easy for them to book or buy your art? Our friend Kate Christie from Folk founded, does website audits for creatives. So if you're feeling really stuck here, that's a great resource to look to. Using consistent brand colors, aunts, and brand elements across your website and marketing efforts does so much to unify your work and support your voice. But like we said, don't overthink it too much. A strong brand identity system, messaging and a solid website is a great start, but building an online presence and marketing your work is anything but passive. You actually have to show up, get strategic and intentional, and we'll talk about all the ways we do that in the next lesson. 4. Social Media: It's safe to say that social media is highly curated. The cool thing is that you've got to be the curator of your own page. You got to decide how much or how little you want to share, and what your online presence really looks like. While you don't need to use one specific app to get your work out there, we do think having a social media presence is really impactful. We know you've heard it before, but truly, you don't need a large following to be successful. Engagement or how people interact with your content really is much more important. Followers is often a vanity metric and a loyal fan base of 200 people can be way more impactful than 20,000 people who aren't participating with you. You also don't need to be on every app. Spreading yourself too thin is a one way ticket to burn out. We know from experience, so let's avoid that. It's true that more eyes on your work might mean more opportunities, but the right eyes are so much more important. We suggest picking one to two social platforms that you know your audience is on and that you hopefully actually will enjoy keeping up with. We primarily use Instagram because we have over 1 million followers there, which is crazy. But these ideas work across most platforms. Once you're on the platform of your choice, it's time to start telling your story and connecting with your audience. You need to set out the bread crumbs. That means sharing your work, expressing your personality and what's important to you. And helping your audience with pain points or needs that they might have, just generally letting your niche flag fly. One thing we like to do as we're deciding what to make is to split our content up into buckets based on what category it falls into. So let's imagine what buckets you might have if you're a children's book illustrator. And your audience is primarily art directors in children's publishing. First, you'd want to share examples of your art. This could be your portfolio showcase bucket. Next, maybe you decide to help art directors discover cool artists or helpful resources with roundups. So maybe something like five children's book Illustrators to follow or my favorite children's books of all time. And then you include yourself in the bunch. This type of content could be easily shared or saved by your art director audience, which is awesome. You could call it your roundups bucket. And then a third bucket might be you're behind the scenes glimpses into your process that give people actual insight into the artists behind the work. So your process bucket. And then finally, that last one, you might share cool design inspiration that art directors would also be interested in, like a vintage design book or some cool signage that you found. That is your inspiration bucket. So now you have your four buckets, your portfolio showcase, your roundups, your process, your inspiration all geared towards your audience, but still true to who you are as an artist. Each one of these categories creates so many opportunities for content and can help keep your social media presence consistent at the same time. We like to keep a running list of content ideas for each category and then spread them out across our calendar. The most successful accounts are the ones that have a clear voice and repeat the same ideas in different ways. Take a moment to open your workbook and brainstorm what your buckets might be. The pressure to constantly create more and more content can feel so overwhelming. So here are a few things that you can keep in mind. First, you don't need to make something new every time you post. In fact, we highly discourage it. We're all about reduce, reuse and recycle over here. You can get so much life out of just one piece if you're creative, which I have it on good authority. You are. You can show a static image. Then you can show a process video of that same piece. And then you can do a transition video or maybe you show a bunch of different color ways, and you ask for people to vote and interact. So that's four different short forum posts right there just from one piece of art. You could even take that same piece and then create a tutorial showcasing how you used a specific technique in that piece. If you fear that people will start to recognize that piece of work, isn't that what you want? We want your work to be recognizable, and we know that not everyone will see the same post. Ultimately, social media posts have a pretty short lifespan. Each post is a little like throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. It's not that deep, and there's so much to learn from how people interact with each post. So concentrate on that. And speaking of interaction, let's talk analytics. What performance indicators should we care about? Like we mentioned before, engagement is so much more valuable than the number of views. Are people saving your content for later? Excellent. Are they sharing it with each other? We love it. Are they commenting and asking you questions? Yes. These posts that are encouraging that kind of behavior are the posts that you should be making more of. And just to be clear, we're not looking for 70% of people to be engaged. We're really happy with five, maybe 10%. Another trick you can do to make keeping up with social media easier is to create templates wherever possible. We use adobe Express for this, and whenever we're making a new post from a bucket we've used before, we start by duplicating the old one if we can. We also schedule our post through Express, which is really, really helpful. Other apps like Later or planee can schedule content in advance to. We use our Notion dashboard to plan out social content at least a week in advance. We try to approve posts at the beginning of each week when we meet with our social media manager, and we also look at an overview of the month to see what's coming up and how we can plan for it. I mentioned that we have a social media manager. She's actually behind the camera. She helps us manage our account, and she is truly the best. She's taken so much dress off our plate, and she brings so many ideas to the table. She's an expert at social media, always testing and measuring and pivoting as needed. This is another great place to hire help if you're feeling overwhelmed and ready to delegate. One final tip we want to leave you with is to always add a CTA or call to action on anything you post. It's important to tell your audience what you want them to do next, because if you don't ask, they won't know. Maybe you send them to a Lincoln your bio where they can opt into your e mail list, or maybe you ask them to comment and weigh in on a topic you're discussing. Give them a clear idea of exactly what you want them to do, and there's a much higher chance that they will actually do it. We should also add a big asterisk to all of this stuff. You don't have to do everything all of the time. Your mental health is so much more important. So when you need a break from social media, take one. If you're worried, you're losing out on clients, focus on another marketing tactic that feels better for a while, like sending outreach e mails instead. Now, what else can you do beyond social media? L et's dive into another great marketing tool in the next lesson. 5. The Email List: You've probably heard a marketing guru talk about how the most important thing you can do is build an e mail list. But honestly, they are not wrong. While it seems unlikely that a social media app will disappear randomly leaving you high and dry, I absolutely could. An e mail list is so much more reliable, and it gives you a direct line of communication right to your audience instead of letting an algorithm decide if it'll show them your content or not. My inbox is very sacred. I don't subscribe to much because that little bubble telling me how many unread emails I have would stress me out so much. So I rarely give out my e mail address, even for promotions. So when someone says, I can e mail them, it feels like I've joined their T Mobile Top five, and I've gotten special permission to stay in touch with them. So I don't take this lightly. We also see the highest conversion from our e mail list, AKA, more people are seeing our offers and then buying them because it's where our most loyal fan bases. Depending on your type of audience or audiences, an e mail list may have varying levels of importance for your marketing plan. For instance, if you're selling originals or items in a shop, your e mail list will be hugely valuable to you. That's your direct line to tell fans when you drop swing new, have a sale, and that's probably going to be where most of your sales come from. And on the other hand, if you're primarily doing freelance work for lots of different companies, your e mail list may not be as high on your list of importance. You can definitely ask previous clients or people you've called e mailed if they want to get updates when you have new work, but you'd probably get better results if you sent personalized check in e mails with those clients and ask them specifically if they have any new projects that you could work on. So take a moment to think through if your audience would benefit from being on your e mail list. What would you actually send them? How would it help them and help your business at the same time? If building an e mail list makes sense for you, let's talk about some strategies to get started. The main way we grow our e mail list is through free opt ins. This is where you offer something in exchange for permission to e mail or communicate with someone. The most basic example is to offer a coupon if someone joins your mailing list. Now, we've definitely all done this before, and probably we all love the satisfaction of saving a few dollars. And our main opt in is a free training. And at the end of that free training, we have an exclusive offer a coupon to join one of our programs at a discounted rate. Our goal is always to provide as much free value as possible so that we can build trust and make those connections that ultimately lead to a sale later. It also falls in line with our business value of helping as many artists as we can to support themselves while doing what they love. It's unlikely that someone will sign up for just a generic newsletter without any incentive, since that seems pretty open ended, and like I said, the inbox is a very sacred place. So when you think about your own opt in, think about what would make someone really excited? What would make them engage? Take a moment to brainstorm a few opt in ideas in your workbook, And you can have more than just one. There are tons of different kinds of people in your audience. The person who wants to buy from you immediately, as soon as they find you. They watch all your content, and they're obsessed, and they totally bought in. But then there's the person who's excited to have found you, but they're going to lurk around and hang out in the background for a while before they actually buy something. It's important to give both of those people a chance to purchase in a way that works for them. That's why we really recommend sharing an offer when people first sign up to your list. But then you can follow up later checking in and offer things in the future. Don't just give up if they don't buy from you immediately. We use convert kit for our e mail platform. And with services like this or mail chip or flow desk, you can create some really, really helpful automations that will check back in with people later on. For example, you might set up an automated sequence that includes a lot of e mails over time. So when someone joins your list, they'll get a welcome e mail and an initial offer. Then if they don't purchase, they'll get scheduled nurture e mails later on that offer educational value, give them more insight into your work, or maybe give them the resources that they're looking for. Then eventually, you can bring that offer back again all completely on autopilot. These e mail platforms also allow you to organize your audience by tagging them based on their interest or how they engage with your e mails. We tag people when they purchase a product, when they click on certain links and show interest in something, when they come to one of our webinars or for many other things. This is really helpful when you want to target or exclude a specific group and can give you more precision in your e mail marketing plan. So take some time now to figure out if an e mail list is a great place for you to be focusing or if maybe you want to look into some of the other marketing tactics. 6. Other Marketing Tactics: Part 1: We know a lot of you rely on social media as a major marketing tactic. It's important to recognize that it's not the only way. Pinterest is another great example, especially for artists. While it has a few social media esque components, it's really more like a search engine at the end of the day. Sharing your work on that platform can absolutely get it in front of the right people if you're using keywords to your advantage. I've spent lots of time pinning my work from my portfolio site in the past, and I think of what my audience will be searching for when I write my keyword rich captions. So, for example, if I'm trying to get found by art directors looking for greeting cards to license, I'll use words and phrases like hand lettering, greeting card design, art licensing illustration, and other things that they might type in when they're searching. I can get more specific too, like vintage mid century style birthday card. Pinters has brought me lots of work, and if your audience is on there searching, it can be an awesome tool for you to. Paid advertising is another path to consider. If one of your products or services is doing really well, it might be a good idea to add fuel to that fire that's already burning bright. We don't suggest doing paid ads on something that's new and doesn't have any proof yet. But if you've got an e mail list opt in or some sales language that just converts people really well already, giving it that boost of paid advertising could help. That being said, online advertising is confusing. And it's all about nailing the right audience and optimizing your cost per click. It's a lot of mumbo jumbo, and you're going to probably have better results if you hire someone who specializes in this area instead of trying to figure out everything for yourself. Our favorite way to grow as working artists over the years has been outreach. We've seen many an artist shiver when they hear this word, but it's not as scary as it sounds. It's as simple as taking the time to identify potential clients and then sending them an e mail or an introductory DM. If you're a muralist, you'll find businesses that you think can benefit from a mural. And if you're a brand designer, you find companies that can use a brand refresh. Then you just craft an e mail that introduces yourself, shows a selection of your work, you'll tell them how you can help them, and then you'll ask for a follow up or give them some kind of call to action. The fear that you're probably feeling here is that they may reject you. But we've found that people are rarely unkind in response to outreach. They may not respond, but they're definitely not going to e mail you back with gross. I hate your work. While outreach takes patience, we've made a lot of money from the strategy and a ton of great lasting connections. When you do outreach, you'll want to keep a running list of potential buyers or clients. You can use a spreadsheet to keep track of your outreach efforts, use the Notion template that we designed, or you can use an app like HubSpot, too. Lastly, we want to mention SEO or search engine optimization as another really powerful tool. We touched on this idea a bit when I talked about Pinterest and suggested that you use keywords that people are searching for in your captions. Search engine optimization is all about keywords. It's using phrases and words that search engines like Google can use to learn about what your website or blog or post is talking about. And then it'll be able to show up in search results when people are looking for those things. SDO can get complicated, but there are some basics to know that'll help you get found. First, you want to identify the words or phrases that best describe what you do and are most attractive to your target audience. Google has a keyword planner that's really helpful for this. So you can type in your keyword ideas, and then Google will tell you how many people are searching for that word or phrase each month and how much competition there is there. So how many other businesses are out there offering solutions for people that are using these same keywords. So the goal is to find keywords that have a high search volume and low competition. Once you identify those keywords, you'll want to sprinkle them in in natural sounding ways throughout your website and your online presence. You'll put them in your page descriptions. You'll use them big and in headlines throughout your site. You're going to include them in body copy, and even in the file names for the images that you're using, there are lots of places you can pepper them in. It's also really important to have as many links to your website as possible, coming from other websites. That's going to tell Google that your site is a really helpful resource, so it'll rank higher in the search results. SEO goes so much deeper than this, but if you're interested in this tactic, it may be helpful to do more research or even hire someone who can help you. We've got an SEO specialist who we meet with quarterly to work on improving our discoverability. And guess what? We're not finished yet. Telling you all the marketing tactics that you can utilize in your art business. So head on over to the next video, and we've got more for you still. 7. Other Marketing Tactics: Part 2: Covered some really great marketing tactics already, but we know that so many opportunities really come down to human connection and who you know. Thanks to the Internet, though, you have a huge community of people at your fingertips, which means that opportunities are actually within your reach. We encourage you to pitch yourself to be featured on podcast, YouTube channels, speak at conferences, and even write guest blog posts. Make sure you're pitching to companies that will actually benefit from your expertise and get you in front of your ideal audience. You're actually doing those brands a huge favor if you're willing to come on their channel and offer additional value. Make sure it's a good fit first and send a simple e mail or presentation deck with your ideas and tell them what you'd bring to the table. In a presentation deck, I would definitely include your basic information, some examples of your work, and make sure you include information about your services and how they can get in touch with you. It's also a great idea to include a few testimonials if you can fit it. If you're new to your craft or new to the world of business ownership, you may want to look for a mentor in your field. Mentorship often happens organically through human connection. So start by showing up for the people who you aspire to work with. Muralst often need assistance on an install or a photographer might need a second shooter. A brand designer may need a production assistant. You'll have so many opportunities to learn the ropes and make connections too. Be cautious of other people's time too and know that a mentor has their own job and life to balance. A great way to get started is to offer to buy them a coffee and learn more about them. And if you're not in the same location, you can definitely use your creativity. We know you have it to try and get a bit of their time. One huge marketing tactic that we haven't mentioned yet is referrals. There is literally nothing more powerful than word of mouth. I trust a friend's opinion much more than I would a random Google search. You can always ask past clients if they have anyone they could introduce you to, also. Might consider offering incentives for clients who bring you new work, like a percentage or discount off their next project. Ask you for testimonials is also great, and you can use those on your website or in pitch decks to help you book new clients. One way to ensure that you'll be able to ask for a referral is to make sure you're giving your client and customers an amazing experience when they work with you. So let's just take a moment to discuss how you can do that. My favorite way to ensure that customers have a great experience and want to tell others is to under promise and over deliver. Now, I'm not suggesting that you hold back and don't tell your clients what they're signing up for, but find little ways to surprise and delight your customers beyond the scope of the project. A great and very simple example is to include a personalized client gift at the end of a project. If you're a wedding photographer, you can send a frame photo or a mini photo album during the holiday season. If you're in the luxury space, you may even want to meet your client with champagne when they arrive at your studio. The same goes for branding clients. Can you include an extra file that they weren't expecting, or maybe send them a water bottle with their new logo engraved? Beyond stellar communication, the attention to detail, and these tiny moments leave such lasting impressions and become conversation starters that are sure to lead to referrals. 8. Putting It All Together: Given you lots of marketing methods to think about, but it all means nothing if you don't put it into action. In this next lesson, you're going to solidify your ideas into plans by committing to the exact steps you'll take in the next 90 days. We really like looking at the year and 90 day sections or quarters because it breaks big goals into more accessible pieces that feel a lot more achievable. So let's plan out the next 90 days of your marketing plan. First, open your provided workbook and check off all the marketing tactics that you might ever want to use for your business based on all the stuff you've learned from our previous lessons in this class. What makes the most sense for reaching your audience? What aligns best with your product or service? What feels most natural or exciting to you? Next, we'll narrow down which tactics to focus on, but by deciding on the marketing goal you want to achieve within this 90 day period. What outcome are you working towards? Depending on where you are in your business and what your needs are, your desired outcome might simply be to increase awareness. We like to take these goals and attach numbers to them, so we know exactly when we hit or miss them. So going deeper into increasing awareness, maybe you want to get more followers on a social media platform. Keep going. How many followers? Which platform? That might lead to you saying 500 new followers on Instagram. Rates. We can work with that. See how much more concrete that goal is now. So let's do another example. If you want to sell more art, give it $1 amount. I want to make $5,000 during my new art drop this quarter. Perfect. Now we can work backwards. If you took our class about setting up your art business, you remember how we figured out your financial goals for each quarter. You can absolutely take those goals and put them in here so we can go deeper into the marketing efforts that you then need to put in place to achieve them. You may have multiple goals and multiple actions that you want to accomplish. But remember, the more you overload yourself, the more likely you are to burn out and not achieve any goal because you're just spread toothin. After you've outlined your goal, you'll move on into your workbook to define the most important actions that you can take to move that needle forward towards achieving it. If your goal is to get 500 new Instagram followers, you'll want your actions to revolve around creating content to attract them. Maybe you can do some networking at an event and create a QR code business card that links to your Instagram. If you have an e mail list, you can e mail them, make sure they're following, too. If you want to meet that $5,000 sales goal for an art drop in your online shop. You can focus on building your e mail list beforehand by telling people that they're going to get early access to that drop and first pick of their favorite pieces. Then you might create a buzz on your social media accounts around that drop, showing previews of the art or process videos of you creating it and just getting people excited. And, of course, you'll want to create some compelling sales e mails for when the art goes live. Take some time to think about the actions that best support your goal and that are achievable within 90 days and commit to them by writing them down. Bonus points, if you add due dates to keep yourself on track. Once you finish these steps, make sure to share your class project with the group. Keep yourself accountable by adding your 90 day marketing goal to the template we've provided, and then upload it to the class projects tab below. You've got this 9. Wrapping Up: Congratulations on completing the class. You should now have a marketing plan for the next 90 days completely mapped out and ready to go. And hopefully, a new way of looking at marketing as a whole. Is that so bad after all, when you start approaching it from this perspective and a place of authenticity? Be yourself and own your niche. Communicate with honesty and tell your story to the people who are excited to hear about it. That's all it is. We're excited to see everyone's class projects. So don't forget to share those marketing goals with us, and give us a follow up at Good Type on Instagram, so you can take advantage of all the other educational resources we offer for artists. Thank you so much for taking our class. We're cheering you on, and we'll see you next time.