Promoting Artist online

Yotuube is the best avenue for promoting an artist, create a channel on there and buy some youtube ads to promote your channel.

As is always the case, the best way to promote is to get in front of prospects that are ready and eager to buy what you are offering.


You can find those prospects at web sites in your niche that they regularly visit, or you can do targeted advertising to identify prospects who show an interest in your keyword terms and phrases. It's probably best to do both.


In your case, it sounds like you need to do both as you are not getting targeted traffic to your web site currently. It's not enough to just look for people interested in prints or paintings. You should be targeting people interested in the artist, the type of painting he/she does, and the subjects of the paintings. You have said nothing about that.


People who sell creative expression (artists, sculptors, designers, musicians, singers, bands, poets, writers, etc) usually find marketing online difficult because they are not specifically looking for buyers who want exactly the type of products they offer.


This isn't a one-size-fits-all industry (marketing). You will only be effective when you learn how to research your niche marketplace so you can find individuals who are motivated to buy what you have to offer.


Steve

I agree with Steve. I've promoted a number of visual artists and the best way to drive sales is know your audience. As a creative your job is to create, not market but if its just you then you have to take on the task. Set up all social pages that can visually show off your work (IG, FB, YT, TW, Pin), use different styles of creative content for all. For example, a time-lapse video of an art pieces process would be great for YT but not so much for IG if the entire video wont fit so maybe a photo of the final piece. Make sure each page is a business page so you can track the data and publish ads if you decide to.

Once you have the channels and the content up, start engaging with the community. Build that audience organically and then once you collect enough data to find a demographic majority then start publishing ads on the best performing platforms and then use that data to optimize future ads.

The benefit here is that you will collect data on who views, likes, comments, and buys from your social profile so you can use that data to target them in ads to sell your art :-)

Best of luck!

Very good advices! Thank you guys.
With art buyers, you never know, it can be anybody, not necessarily the ones who are actively appreciating particular type of art. So I guess, I'll need to target a wider audience at first and/or focus on one particular theme - as artist has several phases of his work. I was thinking to split campaigns for a different type of work separately (ink drawings, tarot cards, landscapes etc), could be easier to pick right keywords and phrases.

Else I wanted to ask - about credibility - since now, author wasn't engaged in promoting his art at all. Do you think the online presence is enough to compensate lack of offline public presence or previous references?

It's not possible at this stage to do both - offline and online - all at once. Also, I think it would be counterproductive to expose in too many places. There must be a flavor of exclusiveness, scarcity, hard to get, mystery - of course - well balanced. Otherwise, it may make artist look a little too desperate, imho. Maybe I'm wrong on that one.

Hey Douriff,

In my opinion, Instagram campaigns work pretty well. Facebook adds I wouldn't do but you sure need a fb page and Pinterest profile.

I would dedicate time to promoting the artist in Instagram. Not only with campaigns but posting interesting stuff in the account. User want to see the process of creating the prints, the materials, what the artists is doing... I think your clips would do good on IG. If the videos are longer than a minute, you can divide them into 1 minute clips and upload them to the same post (that's what everybody does).

If the artist still doesn't have an online shop to sell the prints, Etsy is a good option. You can also give IG shopping a look and connect it to your Ecwid shop... and you can also earn money by uploading videos to IGTV.

About promoting offline, the artist should start doing that... it's important too. And don't forget to post pictures and videos online of the events, exhibits, etc... for the credibility. Users/clients will likely purchase from artists (or products, services...) when they find more activity online. Let's say a person that likes the prints and wants to buy them, if he/she reaches to the IG account and see that there hasn't been any post for weeks or months, they might think the account is dead and probably change their mind.

Thanks zimadev.
IG is my weakest point, to be honest, I never understood how it works. In my mind it's a duckface platform, promoting who knows what, false nails, I guess. But, obviously it's worth giving a try. I'd need to hire somebody to put it together.
At this point, we are in the stage of making raw video material and making HQ photos of the work. The idea is to focus on the process of creation. From how the ideas are generated, to sketches and final work. This approach is good for keeping online presence active, imho.

Well, I really sure that Instagram would be perfect for you as it the most usable platform by artists.

Wow, amazing how many followers this people have.