How should I think about art shows and fairs going forward?

Art shows should be viewed as lead generation opportunities, not as your entire business model. Even before the pandemic, art shows were fundamentally unscalable—most artists doing them well were making only $30,000-40,000 per year and were tapped out on time and energy. The right approach is to use art shows to validate your art, make some sales, and most importantly, collect 50-100 email addresses at each show. Then take those leads and get them into your permanent online presence where you can market to them year-round. Research shows that only 62-64% of potential sales from an art show happen at the actual event—if you collect leads and follow up properly, you can capture another 35-38% of sales after the show ends. Art shows should be one tactic in your broader online strategy to build a scalable, global art business where you own the customer relationships, not your entire business model.

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Asked by synthesized from presentation · Answered by Nick and Patrick Shanahan · art-marketing-podcast · 2020-11-13