The way you share your story can transform how people engage with your work! I have worked with artists and galleries, and, in contrast, in eCommerce and the startup world. Everywhere, it’s the same story: it’s not about perfection, it’s about connection!
Pro tip: start small, be authentic, and let your story speak!
Here’s my 4 Storytelling Tips for Emerging Artists:
- 1. Your Artistic Work – Share the ‘Why’ Behind Your Art
Go beyond techniques and materials. What inspired this piece? How does it reflect your personal story, beliefs, or the world around you? This emotional connection helps collectors and fans understand the deeper value of your work.
Pro tip: Frame your work as part of a larger artistic vision or narrative that unfolds over time.
- 2. Your Website – Create a Journey
Your website should guide visitors through your story, from your “About” section to your portfolio. Focus on how your unique experiences, challenges, and inspirations have shaped your artistic path.
Pro tip: Use high-quality visuals and engaging text to make sure visitors feel connected from the moment they land on your site.
- 3. Your Social Media – Build Relatable Moments
Use your posts to tell stories, not just share finished pieces. Show behind-the-scenes moments, work-in-progress shots, and the ups and downs of your creative process. Invite your audience into your world and let them see the human behind the art.
Pro tip: Use captions that tell a personal story about your work to engage your audience on an emotional level.
- 4. Your Buyers / Collectors / Partners – Tell Stories that Build Trust
When reaching out to potential buyers or collaborators, use storytelling to build rapport. Highlight the journey of a specific artwork, or share a testimonial of how your work has impacted a past collector.
Pro tip: Tailor your story to their interests, showing how your work aligns with their values or vision.
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Social media has become an increasingly important tool for galleries and businesses in the art market over the years. It allows them to reach their customers, create relationships, and increase their exposure. With the right social media marketing strategy, art galleries have the potential to reach new audiences, promote their brand, and drive sales.
When engaging in social media marketing, galleries should focus on creating compelling content that captivates their audience. This can be done by providing helpful advice and valuable information related to the art market, as well as visually stimulating images or videos. It’s also important to blog regularly and share this content across all the main social.
1 – Determine Your Goals
The first step in creating an effective social media marketing strategy is to determine what you want to achieve. What are your goals – do you want to increase brand awareness, drive more traffic to your website, or increase engagement with your existing customers? This will help you focus and tailor your content.
2 – Know your target audience
The second step in creating an effective social media strategy is to identify your target audience. Who are your customers and what type of content will they engage with? Knowing your target audience will help you create content that resonates with them and also determine which platforms and channels will be most effective for you to use.
3 – Choose the right channel(s)
Choosing the right channels for your social media strategy is essential for maximizing your online presence and reaching your target audience effectively. You habe now identified your business goals and the demographics of your ideal audience. Different social media channels have unique strengths and are preferred by different demographics. For example, TikTok is popular among younger audiences: Do you reach the customers you need that have interest in your art and the money to purchase it?
Be bold and leave out social media channels. Instead, focus on a channel that precisely matches your goals and target audience, and play it professionally. By strategically selecting, you can optimize your reach and engage your target audience more effectively.
4 – Create a content strategy
The next step is to create an engaging content strategy. This includes brainstorming ideas for content that will be interesting and engaging to your target audience. Also take into account the type of content that works best for each platform. Planning out in advance what kind of content you will be sharing on each platform can help make sure that you are staying consistent.
Showcase your art: Share high-quality photos and videos of the artworks in your gallery. Provide background information, such as the artist’s name, medium, and inspiration behind the artwork. This helps to educate and engage your audience.
Share behind-the-scenes glimpses: Offer a sneak peek into the artist’s creative process or show what goes on behind the scenes of your gallery, such as preparations for an exhibition.
Highlight events and exhibitions: Use social media to promote upcoming exhibitions, art fairs, or other events related to your gallery.
Use a consistent style and voice: Use a consistent visual style and tone of voice across all social media channels to build a strong brand identity for your gallery.
5 – Engage with your customers
The fifth step for a good social media strategy is to actively engage with your customers. This can include responding to comments, answering queries, and providing helpful advice related to the art market. Additionally, you can also use social media as a platform to promote specific events or new artworks, or simply as a way to stay connected with your community. Engaging with your audience is key in order to build relationships and keep them coming back for more.
6 – Measure and analyze
The fifth and final step is to measure and analyze your results. This is where you can determine whether or not your social media marketing strategy is successful. By analyzing and measuring your social media channels, you can gain valuable insights into your audience and their behaviors, and optimize your social media strategy for the best results. There is no need to pay for expensive third party tools in the beginning. Use analytics tools provided by the social media platforms, such as Facebook Insights or Instagram Insights. These tools provide detailed data on your audience demographics, reach, engagement, and content performance.
Good art marketing is often said to be a budget issue. Where there is no budget for a marketing professional, good marketing cannot take place. However, this budget is missing for smaller galleries.
In addition to the countless daily tasks that business managers, sales directors and/or gallery assistants must acquire, marketing is another competence that has to be professionalized. How is this supposed to work?
The good news is that marketing is not a science that one has to have studied.
Marketing is not magic. Yes, it requires work, but, above all, a good strategy!
With a good strategy, you can do good art marketing without professional staff and large budgets – and grow sustainably.
What many teams however do wrong: they lack this concrete strategy!
They do not know their goals and simply try to keep up with the rapidly moving market and digitalization. TikTok? Big museums are doing that now, we need that too! Instagram? Must Have! Virtual gallery tours? Absolutely! But what specific goal are they pursuing with it?
Let’s take a quick step back to ask ourselves one important question:
What is marketing actually about?
No, it is not about stocking an Instagram channel with appealing pictures, regularly organizing exhibitions and sending an invitation to the existing customer base.
Marketing is about reaching more people, converting them into new customers and bringing existing customers back to purchase!
The first is called “generating leads”, the second is called “retention”. To do this successfully, you have to know your goals exactly. Generating leads, for example, works very differently from retention marketing.
If you know your goals, you can more easily break down the required measures necessary to achieve your goals.
From top to bottom! Without a strategy and goal agreements, which is what so many companies do wrong, marketing will be empty.
For example, a new customer is much more than a achieved sales of X euros. Would it not be exciting to find out how much it costs to acquire a new customer? How much marketing budget is needed? Would it not be interesting to find out where the new customers come from, what their interests are, how old they are, how they are socialized? And would it not be especially interesting to find out where and how to reach these new customers?
For example: If you know that you have never sold art on Instagram, but that art sales are usually generated through the website; if you know that the process of the transaction on the website is cumbersome and involves a high organizational effort for the team … then it makes sense to set the goal of revising the website and prioritizing this process – before caring for an attractive Instagram channel.
If you know that you attract many visitors to the website, for example, through Google search, links or social media – but that these leave again without making a purchase – it makes sense to set the goal of improving the conversion rate on the website.
Or, if you know exactly who your top customers are and what artists or art they are interested in, it makes sense to inform these top customers individually about current works rather than sending them general newsletters. What I mean by this:
Every company, every art dealer, every gallery is different: the goal is therefore to find out which marketing tools work for your own company.
And professionalize them. A continuous, goal-oriented optimization process leads to long-term success and revenue, rather than having to dance aimlessly at all weddings.
These are my tips for a good art marketing strategy:
1 – Be open to change
The rapidly moving art market and rapid digitization require quick adaptability. I still frequently observe a lack of willingness to change on the art market. The excuse “we’ve always done it this way and it’s always worked out well” no longer applies. At the latest since Covid and the loss of fairs and gallery visitors, it should be clear to everyone that it is an advantage to be able to respond quickly to changes.
2 – Know your customers
Customers are the A and O of successful marketing. The better you know them, the more precisely you can address them and do good marketing. Their data, their purchasing behavior, and their “user behavior”, meaning the way they move around your gallery, on your website, in your newsletter, give insight into possible re-purchases and possible new customers.
3 – Solve concrete problems
An example: you observe that your high-priced works are only bought by existing customers? That the majority of your address data is art lovers who regularly come to openings and visit your newsletter, but never buy? Then you should think about a low-priced “entry-level product”.
4 – Develop a clear positioning
… to stand out from the competition! The clearer your customers know what they get from you and nowhere else, the better!
5 – Analyze your data
As mentioned above: the behavior of your customers, your “users”, allows you to draw valuable conclusions about your marketing strategy. You don’t have to subscribe to expensive tracking tools and be a Google Analytics expert! Simple data such as the opening rate of the newsletter or the duration of the website visit are already a very good start.
6 – Define clear goals
Based on the information and data you collect and analyze, you can formulate clear goals that will help you plan concrete measures and their scope, and calculate the resulting costs/budgets. They will help you plan the business year in advance.
7 – Develop a marketing plan
Does everyone in the team know what to do? A good plan is not only the A and O for good marketing. But also the A and O for a smooth and organized workflow. This saves time and resources and ensures that everyone is on the same page.