Learning about sales is an important skill to have in today's competitive marketplace. Sales can help you acquire new customers, build relationships with existing customers, and make better decisions about your product or service.
If you’re an artist looking to sell your work, you’ve come to the right place! In this blog post, we’ll provide some valuable tips and tricks to help you make the most of your sales opportunities. From pricing your artwork to leveraging social media, there are many effective strategies for promoting and selling your work.
So, let’s get started!
1. Keep sold art on your website
Instead of removing your sold artworks from your website, mention that someone has acquired them and provide any other relevant information. Letting visitors know that your work is selling is a great thing! This is because, at a psychological level, when the potential client sees your sold works of art they will feel more confident in making a purchase. Therefore, their interest and respect for you and your art will increase.
How can you verbalise this? You can just add the word “SOLD” or “NOT LONGER AVAILABLE” beneath your sold work or put a short description stating that “The piece has been sold. It is in the collection of ____. Please subscribe to my newsletter to be the first one to know when I’ll have new works available”. If the demand for your work is high, you can even have a waiting list in place and ask your customers to sign up.
If you do commissions, you could add: “Although this work has been sold, please enquire about my commissioned pieces” or provide a link to your commissions page. Similarly, if you also sell limited edition prints of your original works, you can ask customers to check your limited edition prints page for details.
2. Make sure your online platforms are up-to-date
Showing off your most recent career achievements is crucial. Make sure to keep your About page on your website, which should include your Artist bio or statement and CV, up-to-date. Indeed, if you have an artist’s statement, don’t hesitate to rework it from time to time to reflect your current creative process.
3. Help your clients visualise their purchase
From my experience, one of the reasons people hesitate to buy a work they love is because they don’t know how it will look in their home or space they want to display it and how it will integrate with their current art collection, furniture, etc. That is, when it comes to scale, balance, colour, and other characteristics, potential purchasers want to be able to picture your artwork in their own environments.
You can help them visualise your piece by providing images of your work displayed in residencies, businesses, public spaces, etc. depending on where your piece will be. Although this won’t be an actual picture of your client’s home, having a work set up in a domestic space will give your customers a greater sense of scale and adaptability of the piece to its surroundings than not having anything.
4. Take advantage of cross-promotional opportunities
Collaborating with other artists and relevant businesses is an important tool for selling art because it helps to expand your audience and reach more potential buyers. By partnering with other artists and businesses, you can tap into their customer base and benefit from their existing relationships.
Additionally, cross-promotion can help to create a sense of community and collaboration among artists, which can lead to an increase in sales as customers are more likely to purchase from an artist they feel connected to. Finally, cross-promotion can help to generate greater visibility for your art, resulting in more people discovering and appreciating your work.
5. Offer discounts and incentives to attract new customers
This is a great strategy to sell art because it encourages people to purchase art who may not have otherwise done so. When people are given discounts or incentives, they are more likely to make a purchase because they feel like they are getting a good value for their money.
Additionally, discounts and incentives can help to build relationships with potential customers and make them more likely to continue buying from you in the future. Furthermore, it is an effective way to spread the word about your work and increase your exposure, leading to more sales in the long run.
6. Make sure your pricing strategy is competitive and transparent
Price transparency is crucial for helping you make more sales because it creates more immediacy in the sales process. You’re basically eliminating the need for customers to have to ask you for the price, which can put some people off and go somewhere else.
In other words, obscuring prices keeps potential clients out of the market. Indeed, many people would be surprised to know that a lot of art is actually affordable. On the pros and cons of displaying your prices, read my blog post on pricing transparency here.
7. Promote yourself and your art constantly
As I’ve said throughout my platforms, artists need to be promoting their art and themselves regularly through social media, email campaigns and other digital marketing strategies. You should be dedicating 80% of your time to self-promotion and sales and the rest to produce art. If you want to know more tips on how to sell art specifically through Instagram, you’ll find this article I wrote useful.
8. Exceed your clients’ expectations
The art market is fiercely competitive and a great way to stand out is by treating your clients above expectations from the beginning of your professional relationship. Do so by offering a reduction on their birthday or next purchase, sending them instructions on how to install or care for a piece.
9. Seek new markets to increase sales
If you get stuck with your sales or feel that your market is getting saturated in a particular niche, try to showcase your works in different regions or even countries. Likewise, another strategy to increase your sales in other market niches is to connect with other arts professionals, such as art advisors or interior designers, who will open you up to a new set of potential customers.
10. Keep updating your ‘Available Works’ section
If your website has an “Available Works” section (which I recommend!), it's important to keep it up-to-date. You should regularly change what's on the page and move older works to a new one. This will let potential art buyers know that you are continuously creating new art and show that you are a professional artist.
Likewise, if you keep updating this page, visitors will have an incentive to come back and see what new pieces they can add to their own collection. After you update the page, don't forget to spread the word on social media and through an email newsletter. This will make sure that visitors know about the new pieces you have available. 11. Start building your email list Building an email list and sending regular newsletters are powerful ways to increase your digital art marketing efforts because it allows you to communicate directly with your potential clients and collectors in a personalised manner, which results in an increase in sales. There are many more reasons on why having a mailing list is crucial for artists, check out this blog post I’ve written on the topic to learn more. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below and share this article with fellow artists!
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