The Essential Skill of Marketing

Being in business, by definition, means you want to profit financially from your work. Marketing is the context in which business happens. It is not sales alone. It involves all aspects of your art business, promotion, client relations, price, sales, etc.

I believe that sales are an outgrowth of marketing efforts. Art sells when people who love the work. Familiarity with the artist often enhances affection for the work. Now, people cannot love the work unless they have seen the work, and they cannot become familiar with the artist unless they know the artist exists. That knowledge can only happen as the results of marketing. Marketing is always happening, bad or good, in spite of our level of marketing understanding or discipline. Bad marketing can be a disaster and destroy your chances of success. Good marketing is effective and in can bring tremendous opportunities for success. Good marketing can also be fun.

Effective marketing is a focused and disciplined skill essential to practicing the business of art. It is very important that marketing become natural part of business routine. Study marketing and practice it. Finding a mentor or a support group of other artists who are comfortable and skilled with marketing to emulate and coach you really helps.

Here are a couple good places to start:
Alyson B. Stanfield's Art Biz Blog
Art Career Advice blog