Art-Selling Holidays You're Sitting Out (Mother's Day Is First)

Introduction to Art Selling Holidays

0:00coming up on today's edition of the art marketing podcast eight art selling holidays you're sitting out mother's day is thirst specifically and i almost called this episode nuts by which i mean n n uts which i'll explain nothing new under the sun which i just found out wasn't a bible verse you guys artists keep chasing new platforms new technology new marketplaces new shiny objects and nothing in that business fundamentally changes i'm sure you felt this in yours two things today

Rules of Business Apply to Artists

0:35why the rules of business are the rules and they apply to you and the art selling holiday calendar you're sitting on the sideline thor by the end of this episode you'll know exactly what rules to follow exactly when to deploy them starting with mother's day in 25 days

0:59the rules are the rules you guys the rules are the rules how many times do i need to relearn this in my own career plenty how often do i talk about it on the podcast plenty why because i don't want you to have to relearn the rules same as me because it's painful to just keep learning them over and over and over again and it really you know the shiny object trap especially in today's day and age when information is coming at us at the rate that it is a new this and new that and ai this and ai that

1:31like every year there's a new platform a new marketplace a new this changes everything people using the word game changer right and artists chase these things artists have always chased these things creators have always chased these things photographers have always chased these things and what ends up happening nothing in the business ever fundamentally changes meanwhile the core bread and butter the stuff that actually moves the needle it never gets worked on no one ever does anything in those

2:03buckets and that's absolutely what i want to change and you know there's the nuts line right

Nothing New Under the Sun

2:09nothing new under the sun and i've read the bible lots of times not recently as much as the old days but goes to figure that it's actually in the bible right that it's in a bible first because regardless of how you feel about the bible or religion i think everyone everyone could probably agree that there's some wisdom in that book right and they knew it all the way back then nothing new under the sun and there really is nothing new under the sun and yet we're constantly trying to reinvent everything all the time and i've been harping on this a bunch lately because it just continues to be a recurring

2:39concept right you have a large batch of creators artists of every stripe photographers of every stripe creators of a number of different stripes which are increasingly in our ecosystem and they are all struggling to sell their creations and a lot of them have really incredible creations why are they not selling why are they not moving why are things not getting picked up on social media why are you not finding your collectors how many times do i have to see these same emails these same comments every single solitary day right we've got to fix this we've got to fix this and there's this notion that

3:16i'm an artist i'm a fine artist i'm a creator i do things a little bit differently the rules don't apply to me wrong they do apply to you they apply to all of us right and i'm going to continue saying these things and continue repeating some of the things that i've said in previous episodes in previous years in previous decades even at this juncture because i think they're so important and i think learning them through rote is really really key right and again why do all the art storefronts websites look so minimalist look so simple because what is the established paradigm for displaying viewing and

3:50purchasing artists galleries and museums a website should mimic that modality minimalist limited distractions no bells no whistles right nothing new under the sun the paradigm for viewing appreciating and purchasing art is already established we just need to follow it those are the rules and i think back i think back to like a number of years previous when i got approached by 200 different people

4:21explaining to me their new vr setup and how it would be great at art storefronts and do you want to incorporate it we'll work on a licensing deal with you dot dot dot dot dot dot right vr was the hot new shiny object of the day like you want to sell your art in vr it's incredible what a bunch of nonsense shiny object that was and by the way you think i'm immune to this you think i'm lex range from some high hill it got me okay i went and bought one of those stupid oculus headsets because i'm like this is the future i got to learn it what did i do i played with that stupid thing for a weekend nothing productive

4:55stupid games and then it went into a bin in my garage where it sat ever since waste of money waste of time it's a minimalist website that mimics the established paradigm that's it those are the rules we talk about retail i touched on some of this last episode retail equals retail artists and photographers think i'm trying to sell art these rules don't apply to me wrong they do apply to you they apply to all of us right tiers of pricing pricing ladders and caps that you have in retail

5:29stores they're all a day they're all holiday themed okay these like we do not have the right as creators trying to sell our creations to think it is a high odd high odds of success we can reinvent the way commerce has gone down for for decades and centuries and millennia right like there's just fundamental tenants that have worked in retail forever and ever and we've got to follow okay

Pricing and Retail Strategies

5:56i have a ton of episodes on this going all the way back to like you know two episodes ago 20 episodes ago on pricing okay on on all of the things that you need to do those are just the rules right somehow we've been led down this trim rose path that because we sell art because we are creators we are somehow different right we talk about all these holidays that are coming up and there are a myriad of them okay there are a myriad of them that are coming and we we get sold this notion that somehow we're

6:26different that somehow our art our photography our creations what we're selling these it just doesn't really dovetail with this particular buying season that's coming up right and i and i like look i i i i get this too right like i get this that the we're somehow different in the what we're doing and the creations that we're selling like the rules don't really apply to us and i think it's like it comes down to the success stories that we all see right like those fringe artists that create what

6:58they want to create because it what speaks to them and they sell it for whatever price they want to sell it because it doesn't matter it's going to sell because they're an artist and they're bohemian and this is just how it works right they price it they market it however they want they just sort of live this crazy life and it all works out and i get that and i get those names and i know who they are and i get the success stories what no one talks about though is it's even less those artists that are in those buckets are even less a number than the people that you know that play sports versus the professional

7:31athletes because there are less successful athletes or less successful artists than there are athletes across all of the sports the athletes is a way bigger group every one of us could name you know probably 10 some of us that are sports nuts 500 professional athletes over the years do the same with contemporary artists contemporary photographers right it's a much smaller number it is a much smaller number and yet we glom on to the success stories of those folks and it somehow leads us down the primrose path that as creators that want to be paid to create our creations that the

8:07rules don't apply to us and that's just not how it works right that's just not how it works you have to have a range of pricing you need to be doing seasonal selling the rules apply customer acquisition emailing marketing all of the things that we talk about in this podcast and you know you're listening to this no one listens to this that does not want to have the successful business that does not want to have a successful business and be paid for their creations and so we just have to stick to the rules of how businesses work right and i got a wonderful message from a buddy of mine after

8:41that podcast last week and you know the spring cleaning one where i'm talking about your your lineup and everything else and i didn't ask him permission to say this i'm not going to use his name but he's like send me a message like hey just just finished up listening to your podcast and i want to let you know that i sold 65 000 of art last week to two different buyers guess how i acquired the customers and i know this particular person's story i know that they have a book that's very successful i think they've sold thousands and thousands and thousands of copies of the book and this person was like both of those people that bought the 65 000 worth of art originally bought a

9:17book and i was like i already knew the answer i didn't even need him to tell me because he's like you know he wanted to say thanks for teaching him that it's like dude these are just the rules of business they should have been teaching him an art school right they should just the rules of business that's it so we've got to follow him right we have to we have to separate this notion of being an artist of being a creator versus being a business owner and there's absolutely like a distinction right like there's a hundred percent of distinction and everyone that shows up you know somehow throughout the art storefronts ecosystem on the webinars on the lives in the community all the

9:53different places they're asking for marketing advice they're asking for business advice and they don't want to be just an artist they want to be an artist that gets paid for their artistic creations that has a business that's growing yes they want to be an artist but they also want to be an art business owner right there are rules there is a business there okay there are rules to the business and you've got to got to got to play the business game it's two games it's the creations and then the marketing and selling the creations right i believe that you guys are an extremely

10:27talented bunch creating amazing things and that you should be compensated for the sale of those amazing things that's that's what i think you should be if you want to be an artist you can be an artist you want to be a photographer you can be a photographer you can have any hobby you want i like cooking i like gardening i like surfing i like riding motorcycles no one is going to pay me to do that but the minute that you decide that you want to have a business we have to play by the rules right we have to play by the rules and so i think it's so so important to continue hearing these things can to continue

10:57hearing these lessons to continue hearing these analogies and i sound preaching and pedantic but it's just there's so many times when it's like i get the same question i get the same question i get the same question i get the same question well you thought about doing this have you thought about doing this yeah and then i get and ask you the same question then i ask you the same question. It's like my buddy's dad's a pastor used to, it stuck with me. I've maybe even mentioned it before, but he, he, he's making this point that like everybody as a human really only wants to talk about themselves, right? They're not genuinely interested or want to hear about

11:29someone, how someone else is doing. And he's like, you know how I know? Because someone will come up to me and go, okay, great. So here's what's going on with me. By the way, what's going on with you? Okay. That's enough about what's going on with you. Here's what's going on with me. And I hacked the way that he did it a little bit, but it's just, it's the human nature of us, right? It's the human nature of us. The rules state that when the fish are biting, you know, I love a fishing analogy. You got to go fishing, right? We're all just trying to catch fish to sell our goods, our services, our products into a market, find a customer, make the sale, make more sales, grow the

12:02business. Well, everyone knows that the best time to go fishing is usually early in the morning, sometime at the end of the day, when the weather is right, that's when the fish are biting, right? If you're out there deep sea fishing and you see a giant piece of structure, whether it's a log or floats them and jets them or a giant patch of seaweed, that's usually a good place to stop because oftentimes they're holding fish, right? And it's this notion of there are just rules in fishing that apply to anyone trying to go out and catch fish. And I think for some reason, there is a

12:39disconnect in the creative community. You are being led down this primrose path. You are being told that somehow these rules don't apply, right? And it's like my strong contention here is that these rules do apply. They apply and work for how goods and services are sold in the West, in Western markets.

Art Selling Holidays and Retailers

13:01That could be the US, that could be North America, that could be Europe, right? There are art selling holidays. There is Mother's Day, Father's Day, Memorial Day, 4th of July, Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, spring break. They come up every single solitary year. And like it or not, okay, I don't know whose idea this was originally. Yeah, who am I kidding? I know exactly whose idea. It was enterprising marketers probably originally on Fifth Avenue and then parts here, there and everywhere else. When these big holidays come up, okay, our society has been organized and structured

13:36such that when the holidays are coming, retailers of every stripe, services, businesses, restaurants, insert anyone trying to make a buck, they bombard every single solitary marketing channel that exists, okay? This happens all year, every year, always around these holidays. And the number one objection, okay, that I get from my customers, from those of you that talk to me on lives, those of you that come

14:10to the webinars like, Patrick, my art has nothing to do with, insert name of holiday here. My art, my photography, my creations do not dovetail in the slightest with this particular holiday, right? And I get that all the time. I get that all year long. And in some crazy circumstances, I'm sure it's correct. I can think of a couple in the past that I don't even want to mention, you know, anti-mom days, anti-dad days, whatever. It's not the point, okay? The reality is though,

14:41why I bring up the fishing analogy is that these holidays have absolutely nothing to do with how you're catching the fish. Nothing. Meaning your product, okay? It could be a lure. It could be a shiny crocodile. Those are like one of my favorite lures back in the day. It could be live bait, okay? You could be dragging a hook in the water at 60 miles an hour. When the fish are biting, you are way more likely to catch fish, okay? When the fish are biting, you are way more likely to

15:12catch fish regardless of what you're fishing with, okay? Yes, you might catch more fish. If before Mother's Day, your secret sauce is hand painting small flowers and selling for $15, okay? Yes, that's probably the best bait for Mother's Day. You're going to do fantastic. But you can do just as well with whatever your creations are because it has nothing to do with your creations. It has nothing to do with our creations, my creations, okay? It has nothing to do with my marketing messages. It has

15:45to do with the fact that every single solitary retailer in the United States and the Western world spends a massive amount of money, okay, to work our psyches that this is a time, this is an opportunity when we should be spending money. And for whatever reason, it works, right? I always use the retail analogy, right? And going back to nuts, nothing new under the sun. Yes, it applies to pricing. Yes, it applies to your lineup. Yes, it applies to why your website should look minimalist. If you need one,

16:16come see us at our storefronts. Yes, it applies to all of those things. But it also applies like, don't reinvent the wheel. Just do what the paradigm is, right? And I'm reticent to call any of us retailers. But we are. We're retailers, right? We are trying to sell our products and to sell more of them and to acquire more customers and grow a business no different than the retailers who have been doing this a lot longer in a range of different markets than we have. And I always use Target as my

16:47example here. If you don't have a Target in your town, pick your retail store du jour. There are a number of them, whether they're the big box ones on down to the small ones that are smart, they all do the same thing. And walk into any Target two weeks ago. And what is the theming in the store? What are all of the end caps? For those that don't know, end caps are like the magical displays that sit on the end of a row of merchandise, right? They're like prominent. They usually get, you know, usually have to pay extra money or they put the hottest products in them, et cetera, et cetera. Anyway, all of the end

17:21caps, all of the theming two weeks ago at a Target was Easter, Easter, Easter, Easter, Easter, Easter, Easter, which in today's secular, you know, maybe 20 years ago, that would have been like Catholic and Jesus and everything else. Now it's Easter bunnies and chocolate and everything Easter related, Easter adjacent, right? The minute Easter Sunday is over, what happens? All of that theming comes out and all of the Mother's Day stuff moves in. And if you don't believe me, go to a Target, okay? Walk into a Target. If you don't have that, walk into a Walmart, walk into a giant

17:55Bass Pro shop and you'll see it, okay? All of these retailers do this. And it's important that you understand they all do it. All the various different retailers do it, regardless of what like products they're selling. You know, it goes from Easter to Mother's Day to Father's Day to Fourth of July to back to school, to Halloween, to Thanksgiving, to Christmas, and on and on and on. And for the retailers, for all of them, like it's just binary. They don't care what the holiday is. You might have one that you're more partial to. You might have one that you enjoy more. I'm

18:27partial to Fourth of July. I love it. It's summer. It represents beach days for me. I'll never not love it to death. I love America. I love our country. But it's binary. Like we all tend to get wrapped around the axle on which one it is and whether it applies to my art and how important it could be for what I do and my message and everything else. The retailers don't care. They don't care. They go theming on the holidays because they know that is how you move more merchandise. They know that more people are going to be coming into their store ready to spend money

19:03because that is the way that society is just organized, right? And I speak about like the retailing aspect of it like or the advertising aspect of it like there's just something that psychologically happens to buyers in the Western world when the aggregate averaged out advertising spend is through the roof. And when these holidays come up, every retailer and their brother, you can't avoid it. TV, radio, billboards, buses and subway placards, side of the freeway signs.

19:39If you're in an urban area, dad's in the cabs and on the back of cars. It's everywhere. Social media. You can't avoid it, right? And the combined effect of all that advertising, it just loses one's clutches on one's wallet. Most times we're probably not even conscious of it. It's like we're somehow someone magically, whether we have the money or not, goes and tells us it's okay to spend money right now. This is the time where it's okay to spend money and you're going to go spend money because

20:12everyone else is doing it and that's just the way that things work. Like, look, I have two small children. I just got back from Mexico last week because it was spring break. Who the heck came up with the idea? That one, kids get a week off for spring and two, that they're entitled to go somewhere. I don't even know why I took that trip. It was great. It's a little exhausting watching the children, but it was great. I enjoyed it. But I'm coming back here and going like, what? I do everything for these kids. Are they entitled to somehow have a week off? I don't even know why I just spent all that money, but I just did. I guess it's because everyone else was doing it,

20:45right? So we have to think like retailers. We have to water ski behind these billions of dollars in advertising spend. That comes up for every single solitary one of these holidays. It doesn't matter what our art, what our creations are. The fish are biting during these periods of time. They are just biting. I'm going to get off the fishing analogy. It's kind of like the blackjack analogy. If all of the twos and the threes and the fours and the fives and the sixes just got out of

21:16the deck, everybody got terrible cards. They all busted. They're on the same deck. You know, there's a point where the deck, okay, turns hot, meaning there are a bunch of tens. There are a bunch of queens. There are a bunch of jacks. There are a bunch of aces. It is a very good time where the dealer is going to bust and you are likely to hit a 10 and 19, a 21 and 18, right? And I think back to that movie. I read the book and watched the movie and I can't remember what it is, breaking the house. You know, those, those elite blackjack teams that were like the mathematicians from MIT

21:48would just sit at the table with a little minimal bet, running the count in their head, knowing, okay, the deck has just turned. This is when the odds of success are extremely higher. And it's just that analogy, right? It's just that analogy when these holidays come up. And I think I don't want any of you guys missing even a single solitary one of them. That's number one. Number two, I'm cognizant that you guys are going to miss a couple of them, but don't sit on the sideline because you don't think the holidays apply to you. Okay. Don't convince yourself that you are

22:23somehow a fine artist, a fine creator, that the rules of business don't apply to you. They do. You cannot afford to sit these things out all year long. You're here. You're listening to this. You're coming to the webinars. You sign up for Arts Talk Frontier. You're shouting on my life saying, I need help with this. What you're saying is, I want my creations to sell. And what I'm saying to you is, the blackjack deck, okay, on these holidays is paying at a much higher rate than it is the rest

22:57of the year. And we can talk about all of the reasons why I lined up and how we feel about it, but them's just the rules. The rules are just the rules, right? And it doesn't matter if your art doesn't dovetail. Yes, people buy gifts for mom. Yes, they buy gifts for dad, but they also give themselves an excuse to buy something because the advertising worked on them subconsciously. It's just how it goes. And it sounds weird, but again, these are just the rules.

Preparing for Mother's Day Sales

23:27So as I record this right now, Mother's Day is 25 days away, okay? I don't know if you guys celebrate it differently. I think you do in different days. If you're in Europe, if you're in Oceania, Australia, New Zealand, and maybe it's a little bit different, but it doesn't matter because there's always one of these coming up, right? And exercising these muscles, understanding how to execute a marketing campaign is a fundamental aspect of what it takes to run an art business. You are not just an artist.

24:03You are not just a photographer. You are not just a creator. Stop saying that you are. You are a business owner. You are trying to run a business. You are trying to build a business, okay? So the clock is ticking on Mother's Day. There's less than a month left. It's not theatrical. It's happening now. I've got a number of different episodes in my vault on how to run a Mother's Day sale, the anatomy of the sale, okay? But it's not difficult, you guys. 90% of this thing is just showing up. Most artists,

24:38most photographers, most creators do not show up, okay? You want things to be fundamentally different in your business. You've got to show up, okay? Pick a Mother's Day promotion. Send an email sequence, right? Do send to unopens. It can be anything. You can do no discount. You can do a discount. You can do free shipping. You can bundle something. You can do BOGO, buy one, get one free. Whatever fits, right? Whatever fits. But we've got to play the games that we know retailers play to make sales,

25:10right? Post on Facebook, post on Instagram, on your social network, do you? Go back two episodes ago and create some memes and center them around your work and the Mother's Day vibe. I gave you all the resources to be able to do this, okay? Run a sale like that. End it. Extend it. Go through the motions of what a proper sale is. I have a number of episodes on this too. You do this, you've got the 90%. You showed up. And what will happen when you show up in these times is your odds of success of making a

25:46sale, of acquiring a number of new customers is going to go up significantly. We have a ton of historical data on this too. And the beautiful thing about the data is it just works every single solitary time. It's tried. And are there years where it works better? Yes, there are years where we're in an economic boom time. And there are years when we were in an economic recession and it doesn't work as well. But the orders still come. The new customers are still acquired. Money is still spent. And I want it to be on your creations. The rules are the rules. There is literally nothing

26:20new under the sun. Stop reinventing. Stop thinking you're different. Start fishing when the fish are biting. And I would say like, you guys, you are creatives. You're actually really good at marketing. You just never done it consistently. And you've never done it when the fish are biting. And you've got to start. You've got to start. Your Mother's Day promotion plan this week, not next month, this week. Get it started. Get in the water. Let people know you exist. Okay? Let them know you

26:52exist. Mother's Day's up. After that, give yourself a little break. Walk into Target. See what they're doing next and get a promotion going for that. Right? That is how you're going to start selling your creations. You're going to start acquiring new customers. You've been working on your lineup. So you now have items priced from zero to a hundred, a hundred to a thousand, a thousand plus. You're going to acquire more new customers this year than you have at any other time, which is going to put your business on the upward trajectory that we want. Okay? Year after year after year. If you work on this

27:27and you start working on understanding the mechanics of a properly run promotion, whatever you decide to promote, everything in your business is going to start getting better. I promise I will come with a new updated and refreshed tactical anatomy of the sale sales campaign promotion podcast. How to omni channel market is really what it is. In the meantime, though, you're a business play by

27:58the rules. Happy selling. Thanks for listening. And as always, have a great day.