This week’s Saturday Entrepreneur is especially for artists! I’ll be seeing a lot of you today, because I’ll be spending the day at the Tempe Fall Festival of the Arts.
Artists are just about the hardest people to contact. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve tried to find an artist I saw at a festival and they seemed to be hiding from me. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t their intention — at least not for most of them. They probably did want to tell me when they’d be coming back to Arizona, or which galleries sell their works.
Artists! Did you know:
Most festivals don’t keep a list of artists and their contact information after the show is over. Customers trying to reach you through the festival are often disappointed.
Even if the festivals keep their lists, you are probably identified by the name of your corporation or gallery. Whatever name they have will not be the name the customer knows.
No matter how unique your work, the festival organizers will not remember it the day after the show. The customer who calls asking for “the guy who makes the 40-foot electric pink flamingos” is out of luck.
So here’s my marketing communications advice especially for artists:
1. Think of all the ways that people may try to reach you.
2. Think of all the materials they really need to remember you.
3. Think of the easiest ways they can share your information with others.
The most vital marketing communications piece you need is a standard-sized business card. There are no substitutes for this little card, and if you hesitate to make new cards as often as necessary, or to hand them out generously, you are being extremely penny-wise and pound foolish.
Most people already have a way to save business cards, whether they put them in binders, card files, boxes, stacks or card scanners that send your card info into their computers. Any other paper pieces are a gamble. Outsized cards, index cards, brochures and fliers are easily lost if the customer has no habitual way to store and retrieve them. You may have already found that people reject your larger printed materials because the customers don’t want to carry them at the fair.
Business cards don’t have to be expensive. A white paper card with large, simple lettering is a very strong marketing tool all by itself. You may feel pressured to put photos of your art on your cards, but if you sell a variety of items at fairs and galleries, those photos aren’t really all that helpful. Your customers will be making notes on the back of the card no matter what’s on the front. If you want a photo on your card, your first choice should be a photo of yourself.
The most important attribute of your business card is writeability. At least one side of your card should be matte and easily marked by a pen.
The most important section of your card is your contact information.
The second-most helpful piece of collateral is a 4×6 postcard. They’re small enough to easily store, your customers may already have a way to file them because they’re so common, and you can also set them out at certain restaurants and coffeehouses. If the photos on these cards are pretty, the customers may even put them on their refrigerators! Make sure one side is writeable!
Brochures and fliers are not nearly as useful. The only people who want to carry them are those who really, really want to order your work, and even then they won’t want them if you have a decent website. So yes, make a brochure if you’re absolutely certain that you have potential clients who don’t use the Internet, but don’t try to force them on others.
And if you’re considering printing nice, glossy, four-color brochures INSTEAD of setting up a professional website, you’re really making a marketing communications mistake.
Next week: How to make it easy for people to find you online, even if you don’t have a website.
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