Guido Daniele-Hand Paintings

I am sure most of the readers here have seen the amazing art of Italian Artist Guido Daniele. You can see more of his art at his site Guido Daniele dot com.


September 29, 2009 • Tags:  • Posted in: Resources • No Comments

Art Markteting-Is Perception The Key to Profit?

Art Marketing-Target Market Involves Perception

My new friend and artist Bruce Burkholder sent this article and information to me via email. I tried to track it and it looks like it comes from the Washington Post. It is a perfect example though of perception, which also leads then to target market.

If over 2,000 people went by Joshua Bell and only a few people took the time to look, listen, comment or drop some dollars how then can somone actually “make-it” with less talent than one of the most gifted musicians ever? Marketing to the proper audience. Guaranteed that if the 2,000 people that went by him were the same that purchased tickets to his sold out concert…this out come would have been different.

Great lesson. Check it out.

PERCEPTION

. . .Something To Think About. .

Washington, DC Metro Station on a cold January morning in 2007. The man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time approx. 2 thousand people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. After 3 minutes a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried to meet his schedule.

4 minutes later:

The violinist received his first dollar: a woman threw the money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.

6 minutes:

A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.

10 minutes:

A 3-year old boy stopped but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. Every parent, without exception, forced their children to move on quickly.

45 minutes:

The musician played continuously.  Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while. About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace.  The man collected a total of $32.

1 hour:

He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before Joshua Bell sold out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.

This is a true story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people’s priorities.

The questions raised:

*In a common place environment at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty?

*Do we stop to appreciate it?

*Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?

One possible conclusion reached from this experiment could be this:

If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world, playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ever made.

How many other things are we missing?
Washington Post image

Washington Post image


September 28, 2009 • Posted in: Marketing • No Comments

Art Marketing With Twitter-Tweetdeck Setup

Art Marketing-Set Up Tweetdeck to Save You Time.

Marketing your art is tough, twitter is a great tool to help in the art marketing process. If you have followed my twitter posts or anyone elses, you know that there are a number of third party applications that will help organize the twitter side of your art marketing plan. Tweet deck is one of my favorite for a variety of reasons but primarily because I can leverage my time using it. Following is a 20 minute video that will show you some basics in using tweetdeck. Send us your comments. Art Marketing-Setup Tweet Deck Video The above link is the highest quality and will require the free quicktime plugin. If you have trouble or you prefer to watch the video here you can simply watch it below.

Art Marketing With Twitter-Tweetdeck set up part 1

Art Marketing With Twitter-Tweetdeck set up part 2


Digital Paint Magazine Now Published

My friend and colleague, John Derry and I recently launched a virtual magazine that is aimed at the Digital Arts. It is called Digital Paint Magazine.
The 2nd issue will be out next Monday. I wanted to give readers here a heads up about a few things going on over there.
First, there is a podcast that we also have linked to the digital paint magazne site called Digital Paint Radio, it is a new podcast show. We also have an area for classifieds called of course digital paint classifieds. They are free, well kind of, the only requirement is a link from your site to the digital paint magazine site. Thats it.
Finally I have a really fun series going on the digital paint magazine blog about SEO.
So check it out and let us know what you think. We are anxious to hear.
Below is the initial podcast.

Listen to this episode


August 26, 2009 • Posted in: Resources • No Comments

Business Suck? Artists Improve Your Business Skills

While I don’t have any data specific to the arts, the data I have is for businesses overall. As artist’s and studio owners we fit into this because we are small businesses. The SBA and USBank worked on a joint project surveying business owners of failed businesses. While there were a number of challenges and reasons noted from the 1,000’s of participants, there were some recurring answers, some common denominators. Here they are;

Business Owners fail because they
Lack vision and strategy to realize it
Lack system for marketing or sales
Lack system to monetize the client base
Try to do too many things at once (I am totally guilty of that)
No plan to invest profits for growth
Caught up in the day to day
Do everything as-hoc and no systems
Don’t create or stick to action plans

Do any of these apply to you? How many?

There are a few areas in that list that I am guilty of. Its great news that they have discovered some common denominators of business failure, now that I know what I am looking at I can go the opposite direction.

It stands to reason that if I work on improving in those areas I will improve my chances of success. So I will begin tweak my business plan and make sure that;

I have a vision and strategy to realize it (done)
Have a system for marketing and sales (done)
Have a system to monetize the client base (needs more work)
Focus on what I do best (needs work)
Re-visit my plan to invest profits for growth (done)
Not get caught up in day to day (continuous improvement)
Systematize even more, no ad hoc (done)
Stick to the action plan within my business plan that I worked so hard to put together.

As I looked very hard at my business plan and my strategic plan I compared it against the above list and another five things that every sustainable business must have;

1-A strong value proposition is the beginning. That leads to strong/premium pricing which then leads to strong margins.
2-A lead generation program that provides new leads and business opportunities on a continual basis.
3-A consistent, cost-effective way to convert leads to clients
4-A way to fully monetize customers. A system developed to extract lifetime value from a client instead of selling to only once.
5-Be efficient and effective so people perform at the highest levels.

In the next few posts I want to focus on compounding, recognizing that small changes compounded, leads to big results.

Here are some area we will look at closely. These small changes listed below.

1-increase our gross margin by 15 percent
2-a 15% growth in the amount of money each customer spends with you
3-increasing our leads or the number of business opportunities by 15%.
4- increase your conversion rate by 15%
5-increase by 15% how much you get done

If we can do these things our business will double. Next post we will address how increasing our margin by just 15% can change things drastically. Its not as hard as one might think. Come see yourself.