If you’ve been selling your art for any amount of time and had been very diligent about marketing it, you’ve probably felt “marketing fatigue” at one point or another. You simply felt that you can’t send out another newsletter, make another phone call, write out another blog post, or send out another tweet. How do you continue to market when you feel that you’re not getting the results you want or getting the results you need fast enough? How do you make marketing a continual process instead of something that you do when you’re in the mood? In this episode, I’ll talk about how to get out of art marketing burnout and how to avoid it in the future.
1. Adjust your expectations- Are you looking at marketing like it’s a simple math equation? If I do X, Y, and Z I’ll get result A, B, C? Marketing is more like planting seeds and sowing a crop rather than a math equation. Most of your activity takes time to build up to work…and often you’ll see results later than you expect.
2. See marketing your art as a long term task- Marketing your art, whether online or off is not an occasional task that you do when you get the time. Effective marketing is something that you do on a regular, continual basis.
3. Do one small thing every day. While large marketing projects like setting up a website or sending out a large postcard mailing might give you a boost, most of your results comes from stuff that you do every day. Set aside 15 minutes a day to do some small marketing task, like making phone calls, sending out email, commenting on blogs, etc.
4. Don’t go it alone. Get help for the things that you don’t have to do yourself and help for the things that you aren’t good at.
5. Try something new. If your current marketing doesn’t seem to be working, try something different, whether it’s tweaking your current plan, or trying something different altogether.
6. Take a brief break. If your absolutely burned out, take some time to recharge your batteries. Take some classes, read books and magazines. Connect with other artists. But be sure to give your marketing vacation a time limit so you don’t abandon it completely!
