Create a Consumer Persona

As an up-and-coming artist, your marketing and sales team consists of only you. So, what kinds of strategies do you need to effectively sell your art?

Creating a consumer persona is a strategy that many professionals use for business growth. You can create this persona based on what you already know about your previous buyers, as well as your calculated and well-thought guesses. Make sure to gather as many details about them as possible. If you’re on social media, then you can definitely take advantage of your online presence. Gather insights about who follows your page. Can you identify a pattern? What age group do your followers belong to? What do they do for work? What educational background do they have? If you create a business account, you will have access to the information and the data that the platform generates. So pay specific attention to that and try to find specific patterns. Once you do, creating a consumer persona will help you with the steps that come next.

Connect With Your Target Consumers

After creating a consumer persona, how can you connect and establish long-term business relations with them?

Making genuine connections with your buyers is critical. Frequently interacting with your customers can lead to multiple purchases. Also, remember that your buyers can also act as your fans who will promote your art and praise your artistic talent.

You can share your inspirations for creating your original art and discuss your creative process with them. You can also simply talk about other shared interests, whether that is about art or any other topic. When you create content on your social media platforms, you should keep your buyers and target audience’s interests in mind. Share the kind of content that you think they will engage with. As an emerging artist, the internet can make this process easier. Make sure that you keep your social media active and find the platforms that your buyer persona prefers and mostly uses.

Stay True to Yourself and Your Art

As an up-and-upcoming artist, creating a brand that is unique and consistent makes you and your original art recognizable amongst your buyers. As such, maintaining a consistent style and feel to your website and social media content is important to create familiarity for your target consumers. This does not entail that your art and creativity cannot have variety; it just means that you should try to promote your works of art in a way that is consistent and unique to your brand.

By having this consistency, you should be aware that you will not be able to sell your artwork to everyone. But that is ok, because if you try and sell to everyone, you will waste your time and energy to connect to a large group of art enthusiasts who may never be interested or in a place to buy your work. So instead, spend some time to create your buyer persona, come up with effective strategies to connect with them, and create online content that is specific to your brand.

1. Plan Ahead!

Planning ahead of time for a museum visit is far more important than you might think. To maximize your experience of exploring art, follow the tips below to plan the best possible museum visit.

- If you want to avoid waiting in long lines, it is a good idea to purchase tickets online ahead of visiting a museum. Most museums offer this service, making it easy for you to buy tickets from their website and from the comfort of your home.

- Most museums have free of charge or discount days that are budget-friendly. These days are often on weekdays or in the evening, so they might not be accessible to everyone. However, if you check ahead of time, you might be able to plan your visit accordingly.

- The free or discount days usually attract a lot of visitors. So if you want to explore art in a more quiet atmosphere, visiting a museum on the weekend might be your best (although more expensive) option.

- Finally, make sure to thoroughly check the museum’s website to find out about ticket prices on different days, special exhibits that are on display, and even parking availability options.

2. When at the Museum

So you purchased your ticket and now you’re at the museum, what can you do to make your experience of visual art as perfect as possible?

- While you might be tempted to use your phone to take photos or look for background information about an artist or works of art, it is a good idea to keep your phone in your pocket/bag and put it on silent. If you’re an art lover, you want to make sure that you’re not distracted and that nothing takes away from your museum experience. Instead, you can consider taking a small notebook with you to write down the questions that come to mind while discovering new art. You can also ask the museum’s employees questions to get professional insight instead of searching for information on your phone.

- Consider getting some kind of professional guidance instead of just wandering around the museum by yourself and looking at paintings without having the necessary context. While you will probably get a sense of the meaning of an exhibit or a painting on your own, professional guidance can be really helpful to delve deep into the narrative of a work of art. Museums offer different kinds of guided tours, some might be personally guided or they can be audio guides. Either option can really enhance your museum experience.

3. After Your Visit

Here are some extra tips to ensure that your museum experience continues beyond your visit.

Once you get home, you can start doing some research about all the questions you wrote down in your notebook. You can also find other art lovers and have a discussion with them about the different visual arts you encountered at the museum. Finally, make sure to find other activities that you enjoy to intentionally extend your museum experience and get prepared for your next visit!