Marketing and Advertising for Artists
on the internet is an art form, period!
you’re either good at it or you’re not. If anything else it should be left to the professionals.
Or should
For the past century, the ways of advertising really haven’t changed all that much other than maybe staying on top of what was the new look or style of the times. But up until about a decade or so ago advances in technology and the internet has basically made it faster, cheaper and easier to brand yourself and/or your business simply because everything that you would ever want to learn or know about marketing, or anything else for that matter can be found right over the internet.
That’s right anything!
At first, the big-time advertising firms, newspapers, television, radio types of media didn’t feel threatened by the diverse effect that advertising on the internet could have, and even though it was no threat at all, some even thought it would never last and laughed at the idea.
Truth is, because of the latest technological discoveries and the speed of which it has hit the internet in such a major way that most of the advertising media were caught with their pants down, to say the least. They failed to believe that the diversity of the internet would be the new age and way of doing business across the globe. I mean really now, what were they thinking? I may be a little harsh saying this and some of you may think I’m off my rocker which is fine, and I don’t really care because I am not here to tell you this to make friends, I am here to tell you the reality of the power of the internet and it like it or not to show how I turned my business around by using a combination of many marketing techniques and the power of the internet that works. Many advertising firms and businesses were losing revenues to the internet long before I first started to delve into marketing for both my decorative arts business and my painting businesses back in 2000- 2001 because of the $25,000.00 a year I was dumping into just my painting businesses advertising budget alone. Many of the smaller newspapers, magazines, and printing businesses were also losing to the streamlined cheaper and faster ways of getting things printed like postcards, business cards, brochures banners, you name it and if you had to have it by tomorrow it was done! The speed of the internet was astonishing and yet the others still didn’t think it would last or be a threat to the “brick and mortar” kind of mainstream businesses who focus mainly on the local markets and not the huge vastness of the
World Wide Web,……. Incredible!
I know what you’re thinking What does this have to do with the Marketing for Artists Classes?
Hold on to your flip flops, I’m getting to that, I just have to lead into this to make sure that whoever signs up for these classes understand how we got from there to here and to figure out how we are going get to where you want to be. You must understand what happened at the beginning that got you where you are today to be able to layout a strategy to get you where you want to be.
I only want people to sign up who are serious about their business and not just looking for a silver bullet that they think is going to turn things around overnight. It doesn’t happen that way.
Although I can make some major things happen very quickly and get customers in your door that, of course, would come with a pretty big checkbook behind it because of the focus and the all-nighters I would have to do to make that happen and that isn’t what this is about.
This is about showing you how to market yourself and finding out just how powerful it is
and not about paying me to do it for you.
Why would I want to market your business when I could just start another business and do it for myself?
But, stranger things have happened…
I can show you ways to get to page one in the search engines for your local market very quickly which is only a small part of it.
As a matter of fact, type this into your Google search bar,
Faux Brick Wine Room
Humor me and tell me where it pops up……
So, do I have your attention now?
Welcome to the brave new world of marketing
The new age of advertising and marketing is in such a chaotic free for all that even the most talented ad execs are left scratching their heads wondering what’s coming next with the new age of technology. On top of that, when you combine the substandard quality of consumer products that have been getting dumped into the market for the past decade along with, shall we say, the decline in skilled quality labor because of the craziness of supply and demand of the massive boom in the late great housing market, that our country will ever see, there were many service and trade business that came out of the woodwork that simply didn’t have the skill sets or perhaps even the desire to give the consumers what they expected, which was trust and genuine value for their dollar. Simply put, anyone could drop an ad into the local newspaper, yellow pages, magazine, radio, t.v. whatever the case may be and Bang! they were in business, but those days are over, and I hope for good.
The average consumer has lost trust in advertising as a result
The trust that consumers had once put into advertising has all but disappeared and it will never be the same.
There I said it, and it probably isn’t what you expected to read when you clicked on this page,
But like it or not it is what it is…..
I know this article is long and I made it this way on purpose so as to see just how serious you are about learning these new strategies and if you made it this far then I am beginning to believe that you are genuinely here to make that change not only in your business but in yourself as well.
If you’re not willing to make those changes then you may as well leave right now and go back to whatever it is or isn’t working for you and don’t waste your time and money here with me.
You still here?
Terrific….
Kind of like a bad train wreck huh? You know you’re not going to like what you see but you still have to slow down and take a look anyway huh? Well, that’s what some people say about my butchering of the English language and how I shouldn’t write my own copy,
but if I didn’t write it myself then it wouldn’t be me now, would it?
You will come to understand the importance of this later on if you decide to sign up and learn what it is that consumers are looking for these days. It doesn’t matter if you’re an artist, writer, carpenter, retailer, interior designer, doctor, dentist, lawyer, etc etc, it all boils down to one thing and if you haven’t figured it out by now then we have a lot of work to do.
Don’t worry, it took me nearly 5 years of research, trial, and error, and a ton of money to figure it out.
So Congratulations! You made it halfway through my gauntlet of what some have described to me as like trying to decipher a bowl of week-old alphabet soup when it comes to my style getting my point across.
I know there have been many of you who have been waiting for me to start the marketing for artists page, but truth be told I have been very busy with everything else like commissions, blogging, and life in general. I started this page nearly a year ago and didn’t think it was going to take me this long to finally get to it. I have listed the page under “class schedule” because at first, I thought I would be able to start this up right away once the studio was finished.
Which is another story that some of you may or may not know about
but I get slammed with things right when it starts to look like I can pick up where I left off so to speak. I have made some major changes within my business plan and personal life over the last 4 or 5 years because of what I have learned which has resulted in one delay after another.
I found that old marketing techniques that I was using, in general, were bringing in very few new clients if any at all. So instead of bringing these old advertising techniques for artists to light on this blog I spent another year of testing and researching to make damn sure that what I have learned over the last several years will not only bring you business and new clients but will also open the door to many other streams of income available to you at the same time. You may choose not to pick up on these other streams but wouldn’t it be nice to know that the options are there for artists and small businesses in general if you decide to take them on later?
What I have to tell show you will totally blow your mind and will probably even encourage most of you to take this much further than what you thought was possible.
Now here’s the best part, after giving this class for artists some long thought and how I was going to make it available I decided that this should be done online and not in a typical classroom venue.
But then again I thought there are going to be some of you who are going to want to learn as much as you can as fast as you can, so it really can work both ways.
There is so much to learn that a typical 5-day class would be hard to take in all of the information in at once unless of course, you think you can handle it.
The beauty of it is through this system can work for any small business.
So a 5-day workshop will be a very limited opportunity and open to all businesses.
So with that being said, I am going to set up a separate website just for this because I will need more room and availability than what I have here at Art-Faux and the new site will basically be focused on marketing for small businesses and for artists.
This way you will not have to come here to Naples to get updated information because as you know marketing is a continuing thing especially with the internet and the consistent changes that occur and by starting an actual membership site for artists, students and businesses you will be able to work at a slower pace and have interaction with me as well as other members. This will be a limited membership site so it would be a good idea to get on the membership list early by signing up below and let me know how interested you are in learning
what has taken me nearly 5 years to put together?
I will be starting this very soon and all I need to know is
How Serious Are You?
All you have to do at this point is just sign up below and let me know which you would prefer.
A 5 Day Intense Marketing Work Shop or a monthly fee-based venue? or maybe you would prefer both
Doesn’t matter to me because I am already busier than I want to be. It just all depends on how fast you want results.
Marketing for Artists and Small Business
Yes, there IS light at the end of the tunnel, and guess what? It’s not a train my friend!