joeOver the weekend, I bought a magazine that lists the New England Art Shows for 2009. I was thinking and remembered Steve had quite a bit to say about making Art Shows successful. So I went back over the course and pulled out these nuggets for all of us to enjoy ….
Get rid of your director’s chair. Artists that avoid perspective customers always amaze me. You’ve spent so much time creating your art to sell. You’ve spent the time and money to exhibit at the show. Why hide? If you want to sell your work, you must interact with the public.
Put yourself out there! It’s very simple – you create additional value to your artwork when you interact with a perspective customer.
Explain to customers what makes your art work unique. Tell them how you came about conceiving and producing your artwork. Tell them the story, people are interested, and when they buy the piece they now own additional information about the piece to share with their friends.
It’s important to give a reason for someone to stop at your booth. Utilize a main focus piece on an easel or pedestal in order to draw interest from the crowd.
Using signage is an easy way to give someone a reason to stop at your booth. With signage, you can give suggestions for alternative uses of the artwork.
Run a show special and use signage to promote the details. It’s important to give an added incentive to purchase something from you that day. Take one of your lower end products and create an easy way for people to purchase more of them – buy 2, get 1 free for example.
Invite people to sign up for a free drawing to win a piece of your artwork. This last step allows you to capture their name and email for future marketing purposes.
Take a good look at your booth. The success of your next art show will increase when you create the successful booth. View your booth from the customer’s vantage point. Is it inviting? Does it create the “I gotta have that piece!†mindset? Attend an art show yourself. Go from booth to booth and see what draws you in to look further. See which booths the people flow to. What about those booths caused you to walk in? Keep notes, assemble that information, and apply it to your booth when you set up for your shows.
If you’re at all interested in the course, How To Sell Your Art, feel free to visit that link or my home page.
Throughout today and tomorrow while this special offer is on-going, I shall be publishing quite a number of articles on what I’ve learned from this course. I hope you enjoy them.