Why should I engage in 'hand-to-hand combat' marketing when I have a website?

The lie that the internet brought us passive income—that you just put your art on a website and it sells while you sleep with no human interaction—is completely false. If you owned a physical gallery and someone walked in, you’d ask if they need help, right? That’s what retail stores do because it works. Yet artists think their digital business is different. Hand-to-hand combat means writing personalized thank you notes instead of generic emails, immediately replying to Instagram messages and getting on video calls, having face-to-face chats with potential buyers, and doing everything that doesn’t scale. When someone asks a buying question—about size, availability, anything—don’t just answer ‘yes.’ Offer to show them the piece on a video call, give them your availability for a Zoom meeting, help them across the finish line. It’s more impactful to spend one hour one-on-one with a prospective buyer than to hope your social media post reaches thousands. These warm leads will disappear if you don’t engage personally—they’ll get distracted and buy something else. This is the single most impactful thing you can do in your business.

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Asked by general teaching · Answered by Patrick Shanahan and Nick Friend · art-marketing-podcast · 2022-01-08