A Greek Warship, a Horse Named Sally, and the Mother's Day Sale You're About to Run

0:00Coming up on today's edition of the Art Marketing Podcast, a Greek warship, a horse named Sally, and the Mother's Day sale you're about to run. Specifically, call back to episode 10, Nothing New Under the Sun. It wasn't episode 10. Why didn't I even write that down? Where are these notes? Remember the Nothing New Under the Sun? I promised you a refreshed anatomy of a sale.

0:24This is the anatomy of the sale episode. Two messages today, primarily. How to properly run sale actually works. How does one work? The anatomy. And also why omni-channel marketing is the key to marketing. Today, 30 years ago, 25 years from now, omni-channel marketing, the key. And I promise by the end of this episode, you will know exactly how to run your Mother's Day, your Father's Day, your spring break, your welcome to summer, summer kickoff, memorial day slash insert name of sale here.

0:58So I want to start with my thesis, which is all oars in. And I think we all intuitively know this, but like attention is just fleeting in 2026. You almost never get a human's full attention, not your wife, not your significant other, not your partner, not your kids, not your mom's, no one's. I feel like attention span sometimes is two seconds in today's day and age. You know, sometimes a subject line,

1:30you get somebody's attention with just a subject line for a second, or sometimes a caption scroll by, or sometimes maybe they'll see an image on a carousel or a story frame or a hello bar announcement bar on your website. And all of those impressions, despite the fact that maybe they see the subject line, but don't click your email or they've quickly thumb scrolled by your post, or they glanced at an image you post somewhere, but just kept moving, whatever it is, you know, subconsciously those things barely get registered, but they do get registered.

2:00And that's the reality. That's the runway we're working with in 20, 2016. That is the nature of the tension. You know, it's really, really hard to get. And I think it's why it's why I'm on this all the words in thing. It's why you, you need to understand this stitch together game, this omni-channel marketing game, right? We're not, we're not attempting to write an essay for someone to read front and back. Okay. That is not how you win in today's day and age, like it or love it. Okay.

2:31You know, you, you think about your own behavior, like how much of you guys actually completely read the news versus just scanning all of the headlines and the sub headlines. I would almost argue that like the majority of news consumption in today's day and age has shifted as a result of a lot of things. You know, no one really reads newspapers anymore. You're awesome. If you still do, that's old school. But what do we do? We check a webpage or we look on our phone. And most of the time, given this world that we're in now, you're just scanning headlines and sub headlines and that's how you're getting

3:04informed, right? And it's why this notion of omni-channel marketing, needs to be so, so established, right? You're not writing an essay anymore. You're not writing this heavy, dense, thick piece. They still have their place, but that's not how we get attention in the world that we live in. You're assembling 15 tiny little flashes of attention into a message that lands an aggregate, right? That lands an aggregate. This is what I'm building to this notion of omni-channel marketing. And, you know,

3:34a lot of times like artists, photographers, creatives will pour two hours into an email. No one opens. Ignore all of the other things and go, I spent a ton of time in my marketing. I don't know why it didn't work, right? You know, you've got, you've got an oar in the water, which is great. You're just not rowing, right? So I, I use this, you know, the Greek tri-re metaphor, right? Like think to Troy, think to any Greek mythology, the big Greek ships, two rows of oarsmen,

4:04or I should say two sides of the boat, oars in the water, right? I think it was usually like three rows. I think the ancient Greek warships had like 150, 170 oarsmen, something like that. Three rows of oars. I think it was all there. But the, the notion is those Greek boats were really, really fast because when all oars were in sync, the same stroke, the same direction, the velocity, the power, the boats would just fly back then. And if you started getting oars out of sync, when that was happening, the boat would just sort of spin in place.

4:34And so I think thinking about your marketing, like that tri-re, and like that Greek ship. And I always have like the Brad Pitt, Troy movie in my mind, because it's the last one that I saw, you know, where they, where they're, they're, they're rowing the boats to Troy and they're going to storm it onto the beach. Orlando Bloom just stole Helen of Troy from the Trojans. Um, is that right now from the Macedonians, I think, whatever it's beside the point. Think of those boats like that, right? It's less about like your marketing message and how many pieces you have.

5:05And it's whether all of those oars are pulling at the same stroke. Like omni-channel marketing is not a tactic. It is the definition of effective marketing. Okay. It is the timeless principle of how you get all of those oars rowing in a row, how you get your message in as many places as you can, right? In, in 30 years ago, this would have been, or 40 years ago, maybe now 50 would have been catalogs and radio and newspaper and department store displays.

5:36Same message, different surface back then. Today, it's all about email and Instagram and Facebook and TikTok and SMS and on your website and on the messaging platforms and everywhere else. Different surface, exact same way to go about it. 25 years from now, I'm sure it will be the same rules, but the surfaces will once again change. It'll be the helmets that we're wearing or the virtual reality goggles or Lord knows what else. I don't even want to think about it. But to go back to the last episode, there is nothing new under the sun.

6:07The rules are the rules. It might be attention spans are a little bit shorter these days than they were, you know, 25, 30 years ago. But the reality is it's all about having your message consistently in as many different places as you can at the same time. And those are just, you know, the rules, right? And so I think the, the sort of life skill reframe that we all need for this, it's like, it, it, it isn't art marketing. It isn't marketing your creations. It isn't me marketing my software, trying to push whatever I'm trying to push this podcast.

6:40It's just the craft of promotion. It's just promotional craft. It could apply to a bake sale, a garage sale, a gallery opening, a fundraiser, your kids go fund me your HOA election. It's the same rules. It's just the same rules. It's audience plus incentive plus scarcity, right? As many coordinated services as you can apply that on. And I've said this on the podcast a bunch going, going back, right? Like discounts plus scarcity,

7:11you know, is, is, is essentially what underpins every single solitary sale. Right. But I, I like this notion of audience, whatever your audience is incentive, reason for them to take action, scarcity. It's going to end across all the surface that you have. Right. That is sort of this notion of like promotional craft. And you know, you're, you're, you're not learning just how to sell art. When you do this, you are learning how to make humans pay attention to, something specific by a specific deadline.

7:43That's what it is. And that's a powerful thing to say. You are learning to make, I wrote this down. You're learning how to make humans pay attention to something specific by a specific deadline. That is a life skill. That is going to pay you back for all the rest of the time that you have on this earth, no matter what you are doing, because we all have situations in our lives where we need to get attention, where we want humans to take action, whatever the case may be. Right. And so most artists, I would say they think they only have three oars and they,

8:17and they row three oars, right? You don't own three oars. You own 20 plus. Okay. We got to inventory the surfaces you already own and probably aren't using. Right. What do most creatives think they have? Oh, I've got an email list and you know, I've got some, some, some personal friends on Facebook and maybe a couple of Instagram followers or whatever the case may be we have to zoom out and we have to realize like truly how many surfaces, how many outlets, how many venues that we actually have.

8:48Okay. And you guys are a wide and diverse bunch. So I'm for illustrative purposes, I'm going to throw out some ideas here for you. Okay. And for some of you, you might not have all of these surfaces and some of you might have all of them. And some of them, you might have ones that I don't even know about yet, but it's, it's thinking creatively about all of the ways that you can do this. Right. And, and remember life skill. It's not just about selling your art. We all have a vested interest in getting better at understanding how to do this whole thing. So let's talk about the own surfaces.

9:19Okay. That you have, let's say you've got a website, you've got the website itself. You've got its website copy. You've got the email pop-up on the website. You have the announcement bar, which is like that little bar at top or bottom. Our websites have that. So I'm using that as an example. You should have them. They're very effective. You've got everything on the website, right? You've got your email subject lines. You've got the preview text, the body text, the PS, the footer signature. Okay. You've got order confirmation and shipping confirmation emails,

9:51transactional emails. A great many of you have snail mail lists. You've got Instagram, right? And, and that's partly correct. You don't just have Instagram. You have Instagram and Instagram stories. You have Instagram and Instagram image posts. You have Instagram carousel posts. You have Instagram reels. You have Instagram lives, which I taught all of you to do. And none of you ever do, but I wish you would. You've got personal emails to friends asking for a share of your promotion. You've got the community bulletin board at your, whatever your community pool,

10:23your local college, your job site, whatever you've got that, the magnet you put on the side of your car yard signs that you ram under the grand around town, right? A sign you leave hanging over the four or five freeway overpass. All of us have these various different surfaces in our life that are unique to us, unique to our town, unique to our culture, unique to where we live. Right. But in most cases, what I've pretty much always found is that you always have more of them at your disposal than you think you do. Okay. Then you think you do. And the social services,

10:53I mean, there are so many different social services, right? Like, you know, with most artists it's, it's Instagram, it's Facebook, it's Tik TOK, it's threads, X, it's YouTube, it's Pinterest, it's blue sky, right? Like whatever you're on, there's a ton of services there. Most people get it. In some cases there's paid services. So if you guys are running ads, running ads on Facebook, running ads on Instagram, running ads on LinkedIn, and you mentioned LinkedIn, LinkedIn's a good one too. So we all have all of these surfaces, right? And of course there's the analog ones too, that, you know,

11:23I mentioned things from yard signs to handwritten, cards to tags on packaging, to QR codes, to postcards that you're sending to folks, to your license plate frame, right? Like the, the, the, the notion of effective marketing is just like having, doing an honest audit and really seriously thinking about all of the various different surfaces, whether they're in the digital world or in the real world that you have available to you. Okay. And I realize where most of you go because you're going to hear all that.

11:55And you're like, Patrick, I can't even get a marketing message done in the three oars that you rightly accused me of thinking I have. Now you're telling me I've got 20 oars and I've got to come up with a marketing message for all of that. And this is legit where AI is a huge unlock. I'm not trying to hear sell you on AI, but here's the truth. You write one nice comprehensive brief about what your sale is. The AI can write all of this for you and everything just needs to be assembled and put in the various different boxes, right? Something that would have taken two afternoons five years ago,

12:25you can legitimately get done in 10 minutes worth of work and 30 minutes with editing. I'll put a prompt in the show notes. Okay. But I want to talk about this. I want to talk about the anatomy of a properly run sale. And I think I've convinced you, or I think I at least have your attention that you have the vested interest in learning this, right? Mother's Day is coming up. So I'm talking about Mother's Day. Mother's Day is a great art selling holiday, but it doesn't matter what the it is. This is just learning the anatomy of a properly run sale.

12:57I don't care if you sell real estate on the side or what your day job is in any capacity. Oftentimes, there are opportunities where you need to get human beings' attention, and that's why these skills are just so insanely valuable, right? So let's talk at a high level about the anatomy of a properly run sale, okay? Properly run sale. First, let's clear the air. A sale is a closing tactic, okay? It is not devaluing your work. It is not going to make you seem shmarmy or spammy or some sort of a salesy artist, right?

13:33You know, if you're in this whole, like, the discounting my art cheapens my brand, you are playing the wrong game, right? You are not thinking about it correctly. You know, people who already want to buy need to take action now. That's all a sale is. And I always use these disclaimers because I feel like it's such like a misnomer in the art industry that running a sale somehow makes you feel desperate or look desperate or seem, you know, cheesy or salesy or scummy or any of that old nonsense.

14:04And it's like, it is so far from the truth. More art is sold at a discount than full price the entire industry-wide, okay? It's all just a game. The more expensive that you get in pieces, like the ones that sell in galleries and high-end galleries, every one of those pieces at the top, and these people get ground down all the time. I talk to so many different gallery owners. Anyway, don't worry about that part. The sales equation, let's talk about that.

14:34A equals incentive, okay? And the incentive is just the incentive, okay? The incentive is just the reason to take action now. And by all means, you can do you, right? 25% off, free shipping, BOGO, buy one, get one free. Hand signed, right? Hand signed, including a free whatever. I will come to your house and wash your car. Just give me some sort of incentive to take action, okay?

15:06Some sort of incentive to take action. Scarcity is the deadline. So A is incentive, B is the scarcity, okay? And I'm just going to call this equation today the A plus B times C. The A plus B times C, A incentive, right? B, the scarcity. The deadline. It's got to be finite. It's got to be real. It's got to be enforced. Because without it, the maths just say human beings don't take action. They just don't. Oh, oh, it's a beautiful piece of art.

15:36Oh, are you interested in it? Wonderful. Well, don't worry about it. I got it. We can talk about it whenever you're ready. No worries. No, no, no. That thing's got to go. Oh, it needs the scarcity, okay? And attention C is just this omni-channel push that we've been talking about. This getting all the inventory done of all the surfaces that you have and getting all those oars in our Greek trireme. Rowan in the direction to go rescue Helen, right? So remove the emotion from your business, you guys.

16:07This whole thing is just maths. You're going to be doing this for the rest of your art-selling lives, okay? And the more that you do this, the better you're going to get, the more money you're going to make. You're going to realize your goals as creatives, which is being able to fund the lifestyle that you have aspirationally for your dreams. That's just it, which is why we got to do it, right? And the scarcity, the scarcity is absolutely everything, the deadline, right? Like water, cutting Yosemite Valley, like one of the most beautiful places on earth, over 10 million years. That's the power of scarcity. You know, do not, do not, do not mess with the scarcity piece.

16:39No deadline equals no action, okay? Incentive, scarcity times attention, right? Incentive plus scarcity times attention. That little core, okay, at the anatomy of a properly run sale is by far one of the most important things that you can do. It's just maths. Human beings will be more likely to take action, okay, to achieve the objective that you want to when you have that at play.

17:10And it's like, it's almost like a programming language or it is programming or psychological programming. So anyway, the next most important piece, okay? And this is where a great many creatives stumble, get caught up, right? And there's a lot of reasons for this, right? One, most creatives hate marketing. They don't want to do marketing. It's the number one thing that gets procrastinated on. It's the thing that starts at the top of the to-do list and then is on the never gets done list, right? It's not just the equation.

17:40It's working backwards from when the sale is supposed to launch, right? Like at best, you could say there should be a three to four week calendar on this. I could argue that it's a three to four month calendar in some cases, right? And this is where this notion of jab, jab, jab, right hook. Gary Vaynerchuk, one of the greatest social media marketers, he's got a great book. It's old. You could still read it. It's called Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. But it's this notion of you can't be out there right hooking all day long, meaning you can't be out there just asking for a sale, asking for a sale, asking for a sale, asking for

18:12a sale. If you really want to do well, you have to give playful content and introduce people to who you are and talk about your process and be a human being, right? And not just make it about your art. And you do all of that to have the audacity to be able to ask for a sale. And I think that's a really great, I think that's a really, really great way of thinking about it, of framing it, of going down the anatomy of an individual sale, right? So I want to just sort of highlight this, lay this out a little bit, and then I'll get into a little bit more details. But let's just say phase one.

18:44And we're still going to just sit here conceptually about how this all goes, right? So phase one is the warmup, right? So in our three to four week calendar, you could say that this is weeks three and two. And this is where you're doing the aforementioned jabbing and not the right hook, right? You're filling up the goodwill piggy bank. You're filling up your engagement battery from previous non-salesy content, right? Funny post. This is where your memes come in. This is where you're being playful. This is where you're doing your live broadcast. Just kidding.

19:14None of you like doing live broadcasts. But this is where you're just sharing awesome content. You're not trying to get people to take action. You're introducing people to who you are. You're showing a little vulnerability. You're being a real human being. We're finding out who you are, right? Then we get into the launch day, okay? We get into the launch day. It's staggered blasts, okay? Across all channels, okay? Email, then Facebook, then Instagram, and then Instagram stories, and then TikTok and Pinterest

19:46and whatever you have. Text messages, Messenger, DMs, all of it, right? Same imagery, same message, platform tune voice, okay? Then you get into mid-sale, which is the sale week, daily. You can't go quiet. You can't just announce it and then end it. You've got to be active and in the trenches and posting content and talking about it and resending emails to unopens. You've got to keep the story going. You have to keep your headlines being heard, being mentioned, dovetailing together with

20:18one another in the various different venues, right? Phase four, 24 hours left, the panic push, as I like to call it. Deadline on the subject, all channels again, ends in 24 hours. It's almost over. Phase five, you can extend the sale. I think you should always extend the sale. It's the rule, right? It's a great way to do it. You don't always have to do it, but it's great to do it. You extend, because when you extend the sale one little bit, that's where all the fence sitters are like, shoot, I lost my opportunity.

20:49You know what? I'm going to go for it. All the last minute procrastinators, which is 100% me. Then you've got phase six, post-sale follow-up, right? These are the people that abandon the cart. These are the thank you sequences. This is when you send shipping confirmations with personality, when you go for upsells, when you ask if anyone needs anything else, right? And you could argue that that's it. So we warn people up. We have the launch day. We have everything that we do during the middle of the sale. We have, when it comes down to 24 hours left, we have the extension.

21:19Okay, we extend it. And we have the post-sale follow-up activities, right? And really, that's a very, very simple way to think about a sale. In the warm-up, make sure that we're sharing cool stuff and we're showing who we are. We're being real humans. Launch all the channels, all at once, staggered throughout the day, hammering them, middle of the sale, where a great many people get tripped up because they just announce it and then they end it and then nothing in between. All the different creative ways that you can continue to dovetail on the sale, and we'll get into this in just a second. Very, very important, right?

21:5024 hours left. That last bit of important scarcity. That last bit of important scarcity that's really going to get them to take action. The extension, again, I would say if there's anything in these six phases, the extension is the one. You don't have to use it every time, but I've had phenomenal results in my career using it. Phenomenal. So the extension, and then at the end is the post-sale follow-up, which is just really you communicating with your buyers and trying to get some additional revenue out of them, trying to raise your AOV, your average order value, okay?

22:21Very, very important. Here's the crazy part about this whole thing, though. And I would almost call it like the alchemy of a sale. We're talking about the anatomy of a sale, the alchemy of a sale. It's kind of like cooking, you guys. Like every step is an ingredient in the final dish, and maybe you can pull one of them, okay? You forgot the Parmesan cheese, and the Parmesan cheese is just not going to make it into the dish, okay? That might not kill the dish. Let's be honest. That's probably going to kill the dish. Maybe it's the pepper. That might not kill the dish, but it hurts.

22:54If you pull one of the ingredients out of the dish, the dish dies, it's never going to be as good as it could be, right? Sometimes all the action is in the first email. Sometimes all the action is in the last. Sometimes it's the combination. But you don't ever get to decide what steps matter. And in most cases, it's very, very difficult to even measure which steps matter. And that's something that no one ever talks about. Like, oh, Patrick, we live in this digital world where we have all these analytics, and we have UTM tracking parameters, and we have all kinds of stats and everything.

23:29Even in today's day and age, people start on their phone, then they go to their computer, then they're on their wife's phone, and then they're on a VPN, and then they forgot all of that, and on their work computer was when they came to buy. Unless you are asking people, and by the way, even when you ask people, like, this is like one of my biggest conundrums in life, like, I have instructed the sales staff at Art Store Friends to ask for like 10 years, hey, how'd you hear about Art Store Friends? Hey, what made you call today? In most cases, they're like, you know what?

24:00I don't even remember. I think I saw something somewhere. Maybe it was a social media post or an email. It's alchemy, you guys. It is absolutely alchemy that usually gets them over the line. Now, under no circumstances am I not suggesting that you as artists and photographers, when you get an order, say, can I just ask you, what about my marketing moved you, or how'd you discover me, or what is it that drove you to purchase today? I'm just really curious, and then shut up and let them tell the story. Always do that, but you'll find more often than not that they don't even know what it was.

24:31Oh, sure, they remember whatever the last thing that maybe brought them in, but it was just the alchemy of all these messages, and sometimes they just saw a subject line, and sometimes they were scrolling at a million miles an hour, and they passed your post, but it got stuck in their head, or they remembered the color, or they remembered the subject matter, or maybe you did a funny reel, or maybe you posted a meme, or your animal, or your significant other doing something funny, or some crazy thing your kid said. All of those things just psychologically get stuck in there.

25:02Those are the things. That's when all the oars are just rowing, right? Like, which guy is pulling the hardest on the oars? You don't know. You don't know by looking. It's the attribution. Excuse me. The attribution in today's day and age is just really, really hard, and that's okay, right? It's just important to know that it's alchemy, right? All of these things are important, and even if you truncate them down, and you can only do a little bit in phase one warm-up, and you can only do a little bit in phase two launch day, and you can only do a little bit in phase three mid-sale, and you can only do a little

25:35bit in phase four, 24 hours left, and you're not going to extend, and you can only do a little post-sale follow-up. Those things all matter. Those are the things that set the creatives apart from the ones whose businesses are growing year over year, and acquiring new customers, and developing new relationships, and eventually having collectors, versus the ones that don't. Thinking, like, you can just thrown it in and skip this whole process, right? Like, I really, really, really want to impress upon all of you guys how valuable learning

26:08this skill is. Like, it will apply to so many other areas of your life. The ROI of spending the time to figure out how to get human attention, to figure out how to get human attention, to take action, A plus B times C, incentive plus scarcity times, I do that right? Yeah. But incentive plus scarcity times the attention, right? The services that you have, like, it is so valuable to learn. And, you know, you start small, and then you just keep getting better, and better, and better, and better, and better, and better, and better. Part four, I want to talk a little bit about the humor, the memes layer that you guys are

26:43all now experts on. It's been really fun, by the way, seeing you guys tagging me and sharing all the memes. And, you know, some of you are hilarious, too, because it's like, I tell you, you can't just share art, art, art, art, art, art, art, art, art, art, art, and you hear me, and you're like, okay, cool. Memes. I'm going to do some memes. I think it'll be kind of fun. And then you do some variety of, you actually make a meme. It's actually really funny. You posted it on social. Because your batteries are so drained, you know, you barely got any interaction. You're like, okay, that was fun. I'm going to move on. Or, better still, oh, memes.

27:14This is really fun. This is actually a way that culture communicates. This can sway hearts and minds, and move public opinion. I'm going to try it. And then what do you do instead of doing a meme? You just do it with your work, and then you throw text on the top. I love you guys. I love you guys. And in some instances, that can work, especially if it's really, really funny. But this notion of memes, this notion of humor, okay? This notion of being a self-deprecating, right? Like, I've been pounding this into you guys. And I really do feel like it's making an impact, because I've got a ton of you guys in our community,

27:44and I'm, like, seeing the interactions. And it's why I'm, like, on this track where I'm really trying to build all these podcast episodes. And, like, get this into your guys' heads. Because I think it'll absolutely work. Like, you just have to keep being encouraged to do it, right? And you already know you can't be one-dimensional on social media. You can't be one-dimensional in your marketing. You can't just post your art. You can't just post your photography. We need to know who you are. I've been redundant on this, and I'm not going to stop, right? And you now know that memes and the entertaining stuff and the non-art stuff and your pet stuff and the funny stuff and making fun of people and being self-deprecating and being vulnerable

28:17is what charges up that engagement battery, right? If, assuming you've been doing that, and most of you, I've seen a ton of you do it. You just need to do more of it. But if you charged up that engagement battery, this is the episode where all of that finally pays off, right? Humor, like the humor, the self-deprecating, the fun stuff, the lighthearted stuff, the entertaining stuff, it's not a sidetrack. It's the warm-up that makes the sale push convert, okay? Your funny content should make your sale content make more sense.

28:51Not distract from it. Not distract from it. With the battery charged up, okay, the sales push, it rings into cold air, or I should say without the battery charged up. With the battery charged up, people are going to actually see it, okay? And if you take seriously this multiple services and hit everyone you can, it's going to do fantastic, okay? And I really do think, like, for me, self-deprecation, I mean, anyone who listens to this podcast knows, like, a little self-deprecation, okay, in addition to your memes,

29:23in addition to the humor, it just works, okay? It is such an unlock. And I feel like a lot of times, artists, photographers, creatives resist humor because they think it undermines their serious artistic brand, right? You know, it's like the same objection as, like, discounting devalues my work, right? In both cases, I just think it's the wrong frame. Self-deprecation is a trust builder. It makes you a person, right? It makes you a person and not a brand, right? And, you know, like, it's so easy to insert a little bit.

29:55And some of you guys are naturally hilarious because I see some of your posts. And some of you are like, I don't know how to do it. Spent six hours on this painting. Cat sat on it. Mixed media now. $800. Things like that, right? Like, simple, simple lines. My studio is a war zone. Two weeks before a sale. Here's the chaos. See what I did there, by the way? Teasing the sale. Here's the chaos. Raised my prices. Nobody told me I was allowed to. Here's why, right? And I'm just throwing out randomly, random, teasing little lines, right?

30:28But for your warm-up content, yes, memes. Yes, you guys being human. Yes, self-deprecation, right? All of those things. All of those things are really, really important. They're very, very important, right? And if you guys just did some more of it, if you just did some more of it ahead of running the sale. If you just did some more of it ahead of running the sale and you understood the A plus B times C, every one of you would do significantly better in the sale.

31:00But it's a process, right? It's a process. I want to give you an example because I know I'm sort of speaking high level conceptually and it's much easier to drill into it, right? And what did I put the title? I made a really funny title. Oh yeah, Greek Warship. A Horse Named Sally in the Mother's Day Sale. I was just looking at one of my friend's work that's heavily involved in horses. Shout out to Carol. She's like the wild horses left in the United States. So I thought about it to, I don't know, I got the Mustang Sally in my head.

31:32I must have heard the, I'm going to ride Sally, right? I must have heard it. So let me give you some example of what this sounds like, okay? What this looks like. How it all comes together, okay? How it all comes together. So let's say you're a horse photographer, okay? Okay, your, that's who you are. Your incentive is going to be 25% off. Your deadline is going to be Mother's Day at midnight.

32:02Your four bestsellers are Clydesdale, I love those horses, a lip, a thoroughbred, and a Mustang that we're going to call Sally, right? Because that's what Wilson Pickett did. So same message, same imagery, platform tuned language, okay? And I had to write these down so that it would all make sense, right? But I'm just going to give you an example and roll through because I think when you tie all of this together, you sort of feel the magic of what omni-channel marketing is.

32:33What having your message in all these different venues potentially looks like, right? Email, galloping into Mother's Day with my biggest sale ever, 25% off, bestsellers pictured, deadline Sunday, Facebook. Giddy up. My biggest sale of the year is on, 25% off storewide, just like Mustang Sally here, right? Sally Ride. The Instagram feed post, Lippin's on her horse, looking majestic.

33:03Similar language, a little bit tighter copy because it's Instagram, right? For the Instagram story, flip through all four breeds, same deadline repeated on the very last carousel slide for your reel or your TikTok, 15 second pan across the four photos with some meme-y text overlay, right? For your SMS, I know most of you don't send them SMS, but let's just say you did mom's day sale, Sally's 25% off, end Sunday link, right? Let's say you're using Messenger, you're using Instagram, DM to your super fans.

33:35Hey, you might've already seen this, my biggest sale of the year, don't want you to miss Sally, right? On the hello bar, on your website, the announcement bar, Mother's Day sale, 25% off storewide, end Sunday at midnight. It's not outside the realm of possibility that every one of those touch points I might see, okay? If I'm following you, if I'm engaged, I might see the email and ignore the email. I might see the Facebook and ignore the Facebook. I might see the Instagram, ignore the Instagram. I might see the story, pause on it for a second and go, wow, Carol's having a sale.

34:09I just saw it in four different things. And then my wife would yell at me and I got busy and I got bored. And then I would go back to the email, I would click and I would come in and check it out because you just hit me, you peppered me in all of these various different venues, all with the exact same message. And all of this applies to every aspect of the sale, right? To all the aspects of the sale, to the warmup, to the launch date. It's like less important for the warmup, but for the warmup, for the launch date, for the

34:39mid sale, for the 24 hours left, for the extension and for the post sale followup, you try to get your message in as many of those different venues and as many different creative ways as possible. And yes, AI can help you write all of those, right? You just have to come up with the initial. And I think where things go so terribly off the rails for most is one, people use the same language, the same imagery, consistency, all channels at once. You've got to mix it up a little bit like I did in the copy and told you what images I'd

35:12be doing. And then just the aggregate effect, right? Exactly like I explained it. Like what happens in the real world is they ignore the email, but they see the subject line. They see you on Instagram. They're like, that's interesting. They go back to the email. They see another email. They ignore that. They go back to Instagram or to Facebook or to TikTok or to Pinterest or wherever they are. They see that. They ignore that. Then finally, at the very last day, they're like, oh, I don't know why I'm interested in horses all of a sudden, but it's just been so effectively pounded into my head subconsciously that I don't want to miss this, right?

35:43And the power of the omni-channel marketing and the fact that most creatives do it is why the creatives run a sale and they say sales don't work. I don't even know why I'm doing this. It's just not working out for me, right? You have to do all of these things. It is all part of the alchemy of the entire thing, right? You know, if you only send one email, you're going to get 10% or none of the results. If you skip a bunch of these things, if you leave out a bunch of these ingredients, you lost the alchemy, you ruined the dish, right? If you think that your art doesn't fit Mother's Day or it doesn't fit Memorial Day or it doesn't

36:17fit Father's Day, I've told you already, it's just about the wallets being out during those times, right? People are already in the buying mode. So that is why we ship these things at those venues, right? Like at that time, because the wallets are just out. And if you start super, super late, I still think starting super, super late and running a truncated version of this would be more effective than not doing anything at all because you get reps, you get sets, you get practice. But when you get this whole thing, all humming, all firing, all cylinders at once, it just works,

36:54right? And it's not something that you can leave off. It's not something that you can ignore. You're going to be using this skill, okay, for the rest of your life. You just will, right? And I know like the number one pushback I get is I hate being salesy. I hate running sales. The reality is, you guys, no one sees it. Almost no one sees it. That's like the premise I operate off all the time. Like I'm not worried. You know the perfect example that I use? I use Gray Malin.

37:25Do you guys know who Gray Malin is? Gray Malin is like the drone photographer. He started out as a drone photographer. Now I guess he's just like a famous photographer. He, you know, had those famous original photos of like Posey Otano and all these other beaches. And, you know, I became famous for that. He's like one of the first guys to that. He has a seriously mature sales operation. And all you have to do is go to his website, Google him after I get off this, and go get on his email list and put the email on a filter so that it doesn't overwhelm your inbox. Art Storefronts already does that.

37:56Don't worry. Look at the sheer volume of sales that that guy runs. That guy runs a sale once. I mean, maybe a couple of weeks. A couple of weeks. Like every other email is sale email, sale email, sale email, sale email, sale email. And I think he does conservatively $5 to $10 million worth of large sales a year. He's got a huge team running his entire operation. And what does Gray Malin understand? Why am I bringing this all up as I close this thing out? Because nobody sees your message, right?

38:26No one's really worried about Gray Malin running sales all the time because they're not interested in Gray Malin most of the time. They're not even reading those emails most of the time. They're not even looking at them. They're not even aware that he's a thing. Then, when they do become interested in Gray Malin, what are they greeted with? They're greeted with a sale. They're greeted with A plus B times C. Incentive scarcity across all the services, right? Like a lot of winning in a sale is just having something with that equation in the water when

39:00that person is interested in your art, right? That's it.

39:06That's literally it. And every time you run one of these, it's like training for the next 40 years. You know, it doesn't matter. Mother's Day, gallery, open bake sale, your kids dance recital, Kickstarter, class reunion, HOA election. Same rules, same muscle, same craft. You're not learning art marking. You're learning a promotional craft and I think it'll serve you down the line, down the years in whatever it is that you do. So, the rules are the rules. Nothing new under the sun, okay? Pick your four best pieces, okay? Your four favorite, write one tight sales paragraph, 60 to 80 words, deadline, okay?

39:41Put it through your favorite AI. I'm going to give you a prompt. It will help you generate the rest of the assets and then try to run through the three to four week calendar, okay? You do this. You're going to start getting results. You do this. You will likely fail miserably the first couple of times, but you'll be like, that wasn't that hard. I was able to get that in the water. I think I could do that again. This really works, you guys. The rules are the rules. There is nothing new under the sun. All oars in, all the same direction. Happy selling. And we'll be talking about this more in future episodes as we get into this season that we're

40:15in now from Mother's Day to Father's Day to Memorial Day to the summer sale to 4th of July and everything else that we have coming. So exciting stuff. Get going on all of it. I'll put some exciting stuff to you for you in the show notes, including that prompt. I'll put all the language that I used on the Mustang Sally thing. And let's go, you guys. Giddy up. Mother's Day is coming. All the rest of the holidays are after. Thanks for listening. And as always, have a great day.