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Understanding Advertising and Why You Simply Cannot Do It All

Floyd Snyder

Blog #16 of 66

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January 31st, 2022 - 11:47 AM

Understanding Advertising and Why You  Simply Cannot Do  It All

Advertising Your FAA Artist Website

This article aims to address the artist's needs on FAA trying to balance their time between creating their art and selling it.

You simply cannot do it all. Not effectively.

When is enough, enough, and maybe too much? One of the biggest mistakes that I see FAA members doing is advertising with no advertising plan whatsoever. They think all they have to do is post a few times to Facebook or Tweet here and there, and that's it. Or they are out there thinking they have to be on everything. Total market saturation. Neither one is the right way to go.

There are a lot of ways of advertising your FAA artwork. But to do that you first have to understand something about essential advertising.

Advertising on the net is no different than advertising mainstream media. The vehicles you use are different, but the basic concepts are the same. You have to reach the marketplace and prospective buyers with your product in a way that will most likely give you results.

Let's look at the different vehicles we see most often used by successful sellers on FAA. When I first wrote this, Facebook was probably the number one, with Twitter number two. Today there are too many to mention as far as choices. Equate those to traditional adverting vehicles like TV, radio, newspaper, billboards, etc. Put these aside for a minute because for the purpose of this discussion, we are not going to use them to promote your AW on FAA, but we are going to learn from them.

To keep this as simple as possible, let's look at two different methods to adverting.

First, there is Direct Advertising, Target Marketing, or Market Specific. Someone reinvents a new name for it every year or so, but it is still the same thing that it has been for 200 years.

Then you have Institutional Advertising, Generic, Top of the Mind Awareness, and again all the new names people have come with.

I am assuming you have at least a basic understanding of the two different approaches above. Here is a very simple example of each.

If I have a photograph of a cowboy on a horse, I would target the western cowboy, horse market using Twitter, FB Groups, or any other vehicle to identify these people. This is pretty simple stuff. On Twitter, you use the right #Hashtags; on Facebook, you join the right groups. I do not recommend using #Hastags on Facebook. That tags are links, and they do the opposite of what you are trying to do by sending people away from your artwork in much greater numbers than they draw.

Institutional advertising would differ in that I would not necessarily even mention a photograph but would instead just be posting to Facebook or Tweeting "Visit FASGallery.com, see the best artwork on the net." I would be promoting the "institution" FASGallery to everyone, not to a specific photograph and not to a particular market. This goes to Top of the Mind Awareness. Still really boring I know, but stay with me.

With institutional advertising, what you are trying to do is the same thing All-State Insurance has done with "The Good Hands People" or McDonald's with the Golden Arches. It is a form of branding.

All of these things have to be taken into consideration of any advertising plan. But now we have to talk about the meat of that plan. How do you reach the market in a meaningful way that will get you the best results?

When you get ready to actually launch your plan, you simple cannot do it all. Everyone has limits. We are talking non-paid advertising but it still cost something. The currency is time. And you simply cannot be on Facebook, Twitter, and every one of the dozens of platforms out. Not effectively. It is just simply not the best use of you time because the frequency is going to be too thin to really make the impact you need to make. You will not reach the market penetration that you will need to be effective.

This is where we start talking about Vertical Reach and Horizontal Reach, the meat of any plan.

Most people are not in a position to where they can go for total market saturation. They need to focus; limit the number of vehicles you chose to use, and then use them wisely.

Here is an example. If you were advertising on radio, and there were ten radio stations in your market, more the likely you would not have enough money to be on all of them. You would have to choose. If your budget is $1000, you would be much better off running $500 dollars on two stations instead of $100 each on all 10. $100 is simply not enough to achieve decent market penetration. It would be a waste of money.

Vertical vs Horizontal. Vertical: $500 on each of two stations. Horizontal: $100 on each of 10 stations. In this case, your $100 on each of 10 stations simple will not give you the market penetration you need to get any decent results.

We now need to talk about one of the biggest reasons, besides the cost why you cannot effectively do all of the Social Media outlets. With social media, unlike radio, TV, newspaper and other traditional adverting vehicles you have to build your own audience. You actually have to advertise you advertising vehicle. You have to build up your own followers and friends and circles; your audience.

For advertising to work, you have to reach some level of market penetration. You have to be in that market, advertising your gallery, your artwork, often enough to make an impact, to penetrate the market.

Think of it the same way all great speech writers do when they write a speech. To make a point stick in the audience's mind they know they have to repeat that point three times. "Tell'em, tell'em what you told'em and then tell'em again".

Applying what we have known about advertising for 200 years and from leaning what we have from radio and television, 50 tweets a day or posts to Facebook, will be more effective then 5 posts a day on ten different Social Media vehicles. It will also give you more time to create your art because you do not have to manage all of those different outlets. You can actually make fewer posts to a smaller market and have better results and at same time because you are getting better market penetration which will give you better results.

In closing, pick one or two, maybe 3 vehicles, build up a targeted market as best you can and do the best you can to penetrate that market.

I chose three platforms when I started, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. With Facebook, it is not about your followers, that is way too small of a market. It is about Joining groups that allow selling and making regular posts to build up a following that will hopefully like and share your posts. Likes and shares give you raking on Facebook. Twitter is about getting Retweets and likes, like give you status and retweets widens your reach way beyond the number of flowers you have.

But the bottom line is you have to have an advertising plan, and you have to be committed to it and stick to it. Plan your work and work your plan as the old saying goes.
Best of luck to you!

Comments

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Patriel Manning

3 Years Ago

Calipatria, CA

Floyd this is gold. Thanks!

La Vonne Whiteman

3 Years Ago

Aurora, CO

Excellent article! Glad I came upon it and your vast knowledge and witticisms of how to navigate marketing. For me marketing has been that HUGE scary word filled with subjects that I'd rather keep avoiding. However, so many artists like me I know prefer the artistic side of this career, mainly focusing on creating all those wonderful pieces that we long to share and if possible sell to make rent. Not realizing we'd increase sales by doing more research.

Janet Marie

5 Years Ago

Sonoran Desert, AZ

Great information Floyd. I will certainly give it a try all that you brought. Makes total sense. Thanks!

Frank J Casella

6 Years Ago

Homewood, IL

Thanks Floyd for sharing your wisdom and experience with the rest of us. I would like to note that it's important to not forger about email marketing. Here are Pixels / FAA we have an email campaign tool, which is very basic but it gets the job done. The best way to use this tool is to post an invite to join everywhere you can. The send an email once a week minimum to let your followers get to know, like, and trust you. ... using the methods you mentioned above.

LEANNE SEYMOUR

7 Years Ago

WEST RYDE, NSW

Thanks for sharing your wisdom and thank goodness I could get past your typos.....lol!