Why should I do my own marketing instead of outsourcing it completely?

Doing your own direct marketing is the only way to get an unfiltered pulse of your customer and understand the real value you’re adding to the world. You need that feedback piped directly into your brain—not through someone else’s filter. When you market directly, you discover what content resonates, what styles people respond to, and why they connect with your work. This understanding lets you create more of what the market actually wants, which leads to more success. You’re providing real value to real people’s lives—they put your art on their walls, it inspires them, they talk about it with friends. The more you understand this directly, the bigger and more consistent your business becomes. You can eventually train an assistant to execute, but you must build this knowledge yourself first.

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Asked by artist considering outsourcing marketing · Answered by Patrick Shanahan · art-marketing-podcast · 2020-06-27