What creative customer acquisition strategies can artists use beyond lower-priced items and sales?

There are numerous creative strategies: (1) Open yourself up for commissions—it acquires new customers and helps you discover new directions for your business. (2) Pet portraits—highly in demand, everyone wants artwork of their pets. While commission work trades dollars for hours, doing 50 pet portraits a year is a great acquisition strategy. Those customers fall in love with your work and may purchase your other fine art at higher prices later. (3) Holiday-themed items centered around Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, or favorite sports teams. (4) Special event services like live painting at weddings. (5) Custom home portraits painted or photographed by hand. (6) If you have a service component to your business that pays the bills, use those interactions to acquire customers you can sell art to later. (7) Use everyday interactions—one bartender constantly talks to customers about his art because every conversation is an opportunity. The key is: it doesn’t matter how you acquire customers, as long as you’re capturing their information so you can market to them consistently.

Asked by general teaching · Answered by Patrick Shanahan · art-marketing-podcast · 2023-10-16