Art Marketing Buzz

Ok,  I have a pet peeve I am gonna vent about.  Business Planning or lack there of.  Alright,  maybe its not so much as a pet peeve but rather a point of contention specific to most people who teach business planning.   At least these folks believe there should be some planning and that gets some big props.  But the challenge is if you dont project, goal-set, dream and plan for specifics you may have a successful business regarding cash-flow and income but in reality that is a only a part of the whole picture.  What if you end up working 80-100 weeks which is fairly common in our industry? (actually in industries across the board 75 hour work week is the norm).  Is that what you want?  Is it your definition of success?    That is what I mean because everyone has there own idea here of what success is to them.  The point is if you dont know what you want, specifically, you most likely will get down the road and find yourself unhappy.  Also if you know exactly what you are trying to build, and more importantly why, it allows you to design patterns of success based on being extremely effective not just efficient.  Efficiency is good but if the task we are so efficient at is not necessary to be effective towards our goal…it is still a waste. Right?  This story I saw a few years back illustrates it perfectly.  I am not sure where it came from originally but I just found it again in Tim Ferris’ book, “The 4-Hour Workweek”.  Here you go.

Fables and Fortune Hunters

An American businessman took a vacation to a small coastal Mexican village on doctor’s orders.  Unable to sleep after an urgent phone call from the office the first morning, he walked out to the pier to clear his head.  A small boat with just one fisherman had docked,  and inside the boat were several large yellow fin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish. 

            “How long did it take you to catch them?” the American asked.

            “Only a little while,” the Mexican replied in surprisingly good English.

            “Why don’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?” the American then asked.

            “I have enough to support my family and give a few to friends,” the Mexican said as he unloaded them into a basket.

            “But…What do you do with the rest of your time?”

            The Mexican looked up and smiled.  “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take a siesta with my wife, Julia, and stroll into the village each evening, where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos.  I have a full and busy life senior.”

            The American laughed and stood tall. “Sir, I am a Harvard M.B.A. and I can help you. You should spend more time fishing, and with the proceeds buy a bigger boat.  In no time, you could buy several boats with the increased haul. Eventually, you would have a fleet of fishing boats.”

            He continued, “Instead of selling your catch to a middleman, you would sell directly to the consumers, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product processing and distribution.  You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village, of course, and move to Mexico City, then to Los Angeles, and eventually New York City, where you could run your expanding enterprise with proper management.’

            The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, senor, how long will all this take?”

            To which the American replied, “15-20 years. 25 tops.”

            “But what then, senor?”

            The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part.  When the time is right, you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich.  You would make millions.”

            “Millions, senor? Then what?”

            “Then you would retire and move to a small coastal fishing village, where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take a siesta with you wife, and stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos…..”

So what does all this have to do with social marketing, attraction marketing, social media marketing, photography or digital painting?  Everything.  If you don’t spend the time defining the “why” of putting your business together it wont work.  What if you get down the road and find out you would be happier doing 4-5 paintings a month or just one, instead of photographing seniors or babies and all the rest?  What if you really want to work 2 days and just hang with your family the remaining time?  Most of us plan and goal set according to previously defined social moire’s.  Why?  I think because we don’t spend the up-front time to really defined what “our”  perfect life would look like.  I am guilty of this…. bigtime.  Next-time we can pick this up again and take a look at some other issues pertaining to the “why” of your business.

Kenny Kim has always been fascinated by the visual arts – and especially the connection between art & photography. His passion ?rst led to the study of graphic design at the University of Illinois, where he also became a skilled web designer and eventually opened up his own design studio in 2003. It was during this period, he began to realize that the greatest outlet for his artistic expression and technical skills would be through his passion for photography. Incorporating his own vision into the technical elements of photography, Kenny’s goal with each photo he takes is to present each moment he captures with a subtle artistry that enhances the feel of the moment. With the launch of Kenny Kim Photography in 2005, Kenny’s vision for a photographer’s work instantly resonated with his audience and within a short period of time, Kenny Kim Photography has now grown into a nationally recognized studio. In just 3 short years, Kenny has been commissioned for over 100 weddings in locations throughout the United States and the Caribbean. He was also retained to shoot for the University of Illinois Men?s Basketball & Tennis teams along with various celebrity events featuring David Foster, Andrea Bocelli, John Legend, Three Doors Down, Chris Tomlin, Michael W. Smith, and many others. Kenny currently resides in Chicago, Illinois. He is thankful to call his passion in life, his profession as well.

Kenny has made incredibly quick inroads to success in a very competitive area.  Find out about Kenny when we podcast…maybe we can pry some of the secrets out of him. Get his views on social media marketing, social networking, digital painting and a host of other fun questions.  If you have specific questions for any of our podcast interviews you can leave a comment with the question and we will get them answered. We will publish his interview in 7-12 days. Coming up next will be Marilyn Sholin on Thurs or Friday next week.

Angel Grady is a digital painting that I will be using in an experiment in social networking. The basic jest of this experiment will be to build a mailing list from scratch over a 3 month period. Then with this list sell some prints from a limited edition piece I have that has not been on the market. I have not put all the details together yet but I know it will be called “Project Angel” and I know the piece I will be selling. There will be some other goodies with it. It will be fun and informative. The image profiled was produced with Adobe photoshop, Corel Painter and the idea is to use web 2.0 or social media marketing to sell this piece of digital art. Stay tune!

Why To Use Email Marketing in Your List Building Campaigns

Ok, there is a ton of stuff out there on email marketing.  How to do it is not a problem.  There are a billion websites talking about how to optimize, strategize and monetize.   My initial question for everything is always…why?  So here I want to take a look at a few reasons why we should look at email marketing as a piece of our internet marketing and networkmarketing or MLM presence.

Leverage.  One of the reasons some of the best entrepreneurial minds are in on the secret of attraction or social marketing is because of leverage.  Email is a small part of that and allows us to leverage in a few different areas.

We can leverage our marketing budget.  Budget you say? I hope you have a budget or spending plan established for your business.  Anyway, email is a great investment in terms of dollars.  Unlike the real world our email does not have much in terms of production expense.  I am only including hard costs here.  The labor expense to put your dream pieces together is likely much the same as our offline competitors.  There is no letterhead, envelope, or stamp.  Ok, so we do have other expenses on the technology side. Sofwtare. Some people think that only large companies can afford the software and service to do consistent email communication. In fact, most email marketing software is priced according to desired capacity.  That means only paying for the size license that you need. Smaller licenses are surprisingly affordabl, as we are starting here I think it costs about 14 bucks a month.  A very inexpensive employee I might add.  Check out http://www.icontact.com/a.pl/250405

We can Leverage our time. Email marketing allows us to effectively and proactively communicate with our customers and targeted prospects. In this awesome cyber world we no longer need to passively wait for our clients to cruise to the storefront or website.  Using customer databases, campaigns can be customized with specific data allowing highly targeted mailings.  Choose whatever targets you want, gender, age, niche, or source for example.  Sometimes an area that is overlooked in terms of effectiveness,  is permission.  Our clients have indicated some interest…they have opted in.  They have given us permission to contact them and are more likely to respond positively. Compare our properly constructed client list to the ton of crap we all receive everyday from the postal service.  Did we opt in to that?  No.  A high quality targeted email list can achieve and sustain click through rates of 20 and 30 percent. The numbers compare to less than two percent for direct mail campaigns and maybe a 2-5 percent response from blanket or non-targeted email campaign.  All of this together can improve your lead generation and customer retention programs.

Next email is now.  It’s immediate.  With the self service tools around anyone can create and send effective email communications in minutes or hours.  Production time is minimal.  The other side of immediate is obvious.  Once you hit the button it is literally seconds for your targeted client to receive the message.  The method also generates opportunity for immediate response.  It cuts the old direct mail 6 to 8 week response time in general down to 48 hours, in many cases just minutes. 

Results are measurable.  As this is a new blog and podcast we haven’t talked about tracking much.  We will need to because it is vital to your marketing efforts.  In email marketing the results are reported in-terms of “opens”. Which tells you how many people saw your offer, CTR’s or click-through-rates, which tells you how many people actually clicked on the links.  There are many other really cool ways to track and measure your responses, you can check them out at icontact.com. or many other autoresponder services.  By being able to quantify the success of your campaigns while in progress, you can adjust your strategies or even copy to improve your results. Email is far less expensive on a cost-per-contact basis than many advertising options.  Another area that ties into cost or ROI is how effective it is. 

Email can help drive traffic and help with SEO.  By using links embedded in your messages, customers can quickly be directed to your site.

And finally most importantly, but not regularly talked about is relationship building.  In traditional marketing you need so many touch’s before your prospect takes ownership of their part of the relationship. Through email you can automate those touchs and still have it be personal.  It can help to build loyalty through a concept called reciprocation.  When you have been giving useful content for free it builds a type of perceived commitment from your prospect to you.  See “Influence, The Psychology of Persuasion”,  by Robert Cialdini, to see this and other mental triggers.  

Email builds brand awareness and Customer relations.  Regularly delivered email messages with a proper subject line and your logo or branding environment reinforces company and product awareness.  Email created and interactive connection and nurtures quality customer relations.

So there you have it.  If you haven’t started already do it today.  See these resources to help you along the way.

Resources talked about.

Hello fellow artists! Actually I am more of a marketing geek than an artist. An Artist wannabe perhaps. No, actually I am an artist I just choose other methods to make a living. I think for me I can be much more effective in changing peoples lives as a teacher than as an artist. So for me that’s what I do. I still get to paint, I just don’t have an commercialization pressure on me at all. OK so this is the first post here. What our focus will be is primarily art marketing. And alot with the whole social networking part of the internet. It is the new frontier and I think we have tremendous opportunities there. I also will check out books here with the book review page. Readers are leaders. The content specific to the book reviews will be business, marketing, positive mental attitude and of course “How to” content from all of you talented people out there. As this is a new blog please check back often or subscribe to the feed. We will have many changes go forward…I just wanted to get it up now. If I waited until I thought it was ready I never would have it up. Also in a week or so the podcast will be up and running (I hope). I have several recorded it is just getting them here that poses a challenge. I am not a techie, so blogs and webs are a challenge for me just as they may be for some of you. Wrong side of the brain for me. Ok so thats it for now. See ya tomorrow.