Marketing Art Online: Attract the Right Audience
A Guide to Attracting the Best Traffic to the Artist Website
May 5, 2009
One of the best things an artist can do to attract followers, prospects and ultimately, customers, is to tell an authentic, interesting story.
How Artists Can Tell an Authentic, Interesting Story
Artists should begin by sharing personal elements about their craft with visitors, including the unique, creative process behind their work and the inspiration, history and ongoing artistic vision for future pieces.
When sharing personal stories and anecdotes about his or her craft, an artist will connect more personally with visitors, possibly even starting genuine conversations with them. Artists who communicate this way become more accessible, and purchasing art from such artists online becomes more substantial and real. It increases the value of the experience and thus the value of the product.
When discussing a new piece, the artist must describe it in detail – beyond the nuts and bolts of the piece – what does the piece evoke? What was the inspiration behind the work? Are there complementary or coordinating pieces to suggest? An artist website is sometimes the first and only interaction a customer will have with the artist- make it memorable and as personal as possible. By sharing this information, visitors get to know the artist behind the work, potentially yielding commissions, custom pieces or wholesale orders in addition to purchasing existing work.
By telling an authentic artist story, and sharing an authentic view of the art in detail, potential customers and followers will not only enjoy the experience better, but they’ll be able to find the artist website more easily.
Include Relevant Keywords to Guide the Right Audience to the Artist Website
In addition to telling an interesting, authentic story, website copy should be crafted with a search audience in mind. For the beginner, the least technical way to think about describing artwork on an artist website is to repeat specific, narrow keywords that a searcher would use to find the website. As an example, here are two descriptions of the same bracelet available for sale online:
- Art Description #1: Emerald-cut blue topaz bracelet in sterling silver. Very pretty!
- Art Description #2: Decorate your wrist with stunning, sky blue topazes! This one-of-a-kind topaz bracelet features twelve, perfect, emerald-cut topazes with incredible depth and clarity. The stones are a transparent, tranquil blue, like the Caribbean on a clear, cloudless day. You can dress it up or dress it down, this topaz bracelet would be great with a sophisticated cocktail dress and heels for a dinner with your sweetie, or paired with a sweet, casual blouse and jeans for drinks with the girls. The simple but intricate sterling silver shows off the beautiful blue topazes. Bracelet features lobster clasp with safety to ensure you can show off this gorgeous blue topaz bracelet for years to come. Our blue topaz and sterling silver bracelet comes with a gift box, sterling silver cleaning cloth and is wrapped in a lovely gift bag.
Description #1, while technically accurate, does not tell a story about the product, it only gives the shopper a general, severely limited view of the item and there are no quality keywords in the copy.
Description #2 goes to great lengths to describe the product, as well as the experience the customer who purchases it will have. The second description also includes searchable keywords to help customers find the artist’s website through search engines. There are many excellent guides to writing search-friendly copy for an artist website.
The community conversations that happen on an artist’s website should continue to other online communities. Every artist who wishes to be successful in selling online should: 1) share their stories on artist community sites or through a personal blog, 2) establish storefronts and profiles on artist directories, 3) apply for wholesale search sites geared specifically for the art marketplace, like Trunkt, and 4) keep the conversation going after a purchase with personal communications directly to the customer.
The final component to successfully selling and marketing art online with an artist website is to promote the artist site with social media applications like Twitter and online PR tactics like social media releases.
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