To sell more giclee prints, try shaking up your status quo.
The need to learn new ways to sell art never stops! Put these ideas into actions and watch your giclee fine art print sales grow!
1. Get Out of Your Comfort Zone. Use this exercise to get started. Create a list of things you would never do when it comes to marketing or selling your giclee prints. Don't stop until you have a list of 50 marketing actions you would never take.
Get help if you need it. Have fun with it. Wild ideas encouraged. Among your results, you are sure to discover new, creative ways to boost your giclee print sales.
2. Be Bold. The adage, Fortune favors the bold, remains true. Being bold is neither being rash nor cocky. It is acting swiftly with confidence in taking on new challenges. The most successful artists routinely leave their comfort zone to take action. They jump in where other's fear to tread. They successfully blend ambition with boldness to separate themselves from their competitors. So can you when you cast your fears aside and just do it!
3. Offer Big. You lose money on every sale when you fail to OFFER BIG. Since you never know a buyer's budget or intentions, simply assume the best and OFFER BIG. Sheepish selling based on what is in YOUR wallet costs you thousands in lost revenue each year. Always start by showing your most expensive work. Get the sale and ask for more.
Be ready with offers for suites, companion pieces or commissions and so forth. Learn to ask open-ended questions and use what you hear to make solid offers. You didn't excel at making great art overnight. Rehearse your questions and your offer until asking for the order and OFFERING BIG comes easily and naturally to you.
4. Develop Confidence. Confidence is crazily contagious, powerful and cool. Creating great art makes being confident easier. If yours isn't, find out why and fix it. Act like the winner you are. You don’t have to be a snob to be self-assured.
People may love losers, but they buy from winners! It's not poppycock; it's true that you are what you think. Use consistent, positive self-talk to overcome your self-limiting beliefs. As your confidence grows, you will naturally and gracefully radiate it without pretense. Confidence is sexy; it is a highly attractive palpable, tangible asset. It will amaze you to discover how consistently presenting your art with cool confidence will create more sales.
5. Synergize Your Art Marketing. Vow to waste money on single marketing programs. Make sure your marketing plans are cohesive; layer multiple marketing impressions from different sources focused on the same goal. This creates a synergy and momentum where the sum of the parts becomes greater than the whole.
Let’s say you have scheduled a show. Then plan to coordinate your marketing plans with postcard mailings, email blasts, advertising, press releases, publicity, YouTube, social media, event planning and alternative marketing. Synergistic marketing plans will amplify your results in ways standalone marketing cannot touch.
Bonus Point: Know How Your Art Fits in the Market. If you don't have a good handle on what is selling in terms of subject matter, sizes, pricing, and if there are emerging trends for how giclees are sold, you are at a competitive disadvantage.
Start making a sincere, concerted effort to learn more about the giclee fine art market. Who is succeeding? Why are they successful? Are they national or regional? What suppliers can offer marketing help and market intelligence? The more you know, the better decsions you make.
My How to Profit from the Art Print Market, Second Edition paperback, and How to Price Digital Fine Art Prints e-book are available now in a bundle. You get both books for the price of one! Click here to get the details.
You have the tools you need to go out and make a great life as prosperous visual artist in the print market. When you wisely use those tools, you will prove what you instinctively know: Life and business are much more fun when you are enjoying success. It’s within your grasp. Just go for it.
I leave you with this quote from Johann Wolfgang Geothe.
Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
Comment and Reply
Here's a comment criticizing this post and my reply. Normally, I would leave them in the comment section, but with this Typepad layout, they are not posted in an easy way for others to read.
Hi Sandra,
Thank you for taking your time to comment on this post. I am sorry you found nothing you could use in the suggestions offered. Perhaps I am guilty of not being more diligent with my thoughts. Here are some additional thoughts to consider.
Have you ever used a brainstorming technique such as challenging yourself, your employees, family members, and friends to come up with new innovative ideas to open new markets for your art? It is surprising sometimes when you do something to get out of a rut and out of your own way.
These are trying times for artists. Taking action now is better than sitting back hoping things get better. Being bold requires a certain amount of risk, but it should be calculated risk.
Have you had an idea to do something that would improve your art sales? Perhaps it is changing galleries in a geographical area, or introducing yourself to someone who could help you, but held back on it? Now is not the time to be timid. Taking bold action with calculated risk is how businesses of all sorts jump over competitors.
Have you rehearsed how you sell your art? Or, do you let your customers lead you around in a conversation with you hoping they will buy despite you not being in control? Do you make any offers besides check or cash, shipping or leaving with in a sale?
We are talking about giclees in this post They are the perfect medium for offering an upsell to multiple pieces. If you are not consistently thinking about creative ways to make big offers, you leaving money on the table.
Customers are adults; they will not find offense at your recommendation to buy more art. They know how to say no. What they do not know are what other possibilities you have to help them own more of your art.
Buyers only ask for things of which they are aware. Steve Jobs didn't come up with iPod because he waited for his customers to ask for it. He offered a product they had not seen before, and they positively responded. Make offers that are out of your personal price range and let the buyer decide.
Some buyers when presented with the idea of buying a suite, or multi-image package, will be happy to say yes. The prospects of making a large order will excite some buyers. More will say no than yes, but saying no to a big offer will not stop them from making a single piece purchase. You cannot imagine the glee you will feel when you hear that first yes to a big offer.
I realize the suggestion to work on developing confidence sounds like a pithy bromide… yada, yada, yada. Nevertheless, the advice is true if you are open to it. When artists come across as some humble artist eager to take any bone thrown to them, they discourage sales. People buy from people they like.
Of course, it is always about the art, but if you are there in the transaction, it’s about you, too. When you come off as self-confident, not smug or arrogant, just confident, you encourage sales. Working on improving your confidence will improve your ability to sell more art.
If you don't have a marketing plan that details how you will promote, when you will promote and what resources you will focus on promoting your art, you are throwing money away.
Nuff said.
Do you want to learn how to get better, more consistent, results from your art marketing? I can help. In partnership with Xanadu Gallery, starting in Phoenix, AZ on Saturday, March 31, I will be presenting the Road to Art Marketing Success workshop. It would be great to see you there!
This is an intensive, live, interactive workshop designed to:
- Help you identify available marketing tools and resources
- Decide which resources will work best for your situation
- Implement a believale plan with achievable goals
- Coordinate your marketing efforts so you maximize the potential of each component
- Enjoy greater results without spending more money or time on your marketing activities
Click here to register now on the Xanadu Gallery website.
Read your article and realized you did not say anything that one can use. Just lots of buzz words intertwined with other words and ending with punctuation.
Posted by: Sandra B. | March 18, 2012 at 04:33 PM
Hi Sandra,
Thank you for taking your time to comment on this post. I am sorry you found nothing you could use in the suggestions offered. Perhaps I am guilty of not being more diligent with my thoughts. Here are some additional thoughts to consider.
Have you ever used a brainstorming technique such as challenging yourself, your employees, family members, and friends to come up with new innovative ideas to open new markets for your art? It is surprising sometimes when you do something to get out of a rut and out of your own way.
These are trying times for artists. Taking action now is better than sitting back hoping things get better. Being bold requires a certain amount of risk, but it should be calculated risk.
Have you had an idea to do something that would improve your art sales? Perhaps it is changing galleries in a geographical area, or introducing yourself to someone who could help you, but held back on it? Now is not the time to be timid. Taking bold action with calculated risk is how businesses of all sorts jump over competitors.
Have you rehearsed how you sell your art? Or, do you let your customers lead you around in a conversation with you hoping they will buy despite you not being in control? Do you make any offers besides check or cash, shipping or leaving with in a sale?
We are talking about giclees in this post They are the perfect medium for offering an upsell to multiple pieces. If you are not consistently thinking about creative ways to make big offers, you leaving money on the table.
Customers are adults; they will not find offense at your recommendation to buy more art. They know how to say no. What they do not know are what other possibilities you have to help them own more of your art.
Buyers only ask for things of which they are aware. Steve Jobs didn't come up with iPod because he waited for his customers to ask for it. He offered a product they had not seen before, and they positively responded. Make offers that are out of your personal price range and let the buyer decide.
Some buyers when presented with the idea of buying a suite, or multi-image package, will be happy to say yes. The prospects of making a large order will excite some buyers. More will say no than yes, but saying no to a big offer will not stop them from making a single piece purchase. You cannot imagine the glee you will feel when you hear that first yes to a big offer.
I realize the suggestion to work on developing confidence sounds like a pithy bromide… yada, yada, yada. Nevertheless, the advice is true if you are open to it. When artists come across as some humble artist eager to take any bone thrown to them, they discourage sales. People buy from people they like.
Of course, it is always about the art, but if you are there in the transaction, it’s about you, too. When you come off as self-confident, not smug or arrogant, just confident, you encourage sales. Working on improving your confidence will improve your ability to sell more art.
If you don't have a marketing plan that details how you will promote, when you will promote and what resources you will focus on promoting your art, you are throwing money away. Nuff said.
Posted by: Barney Davey | March 18, 2012 at 10:50 PM