Selling and marketing are skills most creatives overlook.
But they are crucial if you want to be rewarded for your work, and make a living from it.
Marketing and selling creative work is different for everyone. But there’s usually some element of networking, building an audience, pitching ideas, connecting with the people who are interested in what you do, approaching new clients/venues/retailers, telling your story and explaining your creative process well, showing your work, pricing it, and consistently offering it for sale.
These are skills. Which means they can be learned, like any other skill. We just have to want to do them, then focus on learning what works best for us, our audience, our work.
Every creative should be spending serious time on honing their marketing skills, and make it a part of their regular work routines. If you’ve never thought this way, and it makes you uncomfortable, you’ll probably be experiencing a lot of resistance as you read this.
We all have these limiting beliefs. Stories we tell ourselves that keep us safe – but also keep us small, and skint. With the brilliant creatives I coach, here are the objections I hear most. And how to change the thinking behind them.
1. “Selling is manipulative and sleazy”
Selling creative work doesn’t have to be sleazy. See it as sharing instead: sharing your story, your process, why you do what you do, why you’re passionate about it. Let others into your world, and help them enjoy it too.
That’s how you build an audience, how you find the 1000 true fans who will enable you to make a living from your work. See it less about closing an immediate sale, more about building a lasting relationship.
2. “Selling is intrusive”
Again, it can be. I work from home. My day is often interrupted by phone calls from people reading from a set script and demanding to be put through to “the owner of the business”. I didn’t ask them to call. I don’t want them to call. And whatever it is they are selling, I most definitely don’t want to buy it from them.
Then there are the people I’ve invited in.
This week, I got an email from an author I’ve been following for a while. He sends out regular newsletters full of interesting information about creative process. He has a new book out soon, and was asking people on his mailing list to pre-order it.
I clicked and paid immediately, because I’ve grown to like and trust him over the year or so I’ve been on his mailing list, and I’m pretty sure I’ll find his book useful. Also, I’ve got lots of value from what he’s given me already, so I want to support him.
Can you see the difference here? And how liberating it might be to focus on serving and sharing, rather than barging in uninvited?
3. “I don’t want to be pushy.”
The photographer, publisher, podcaster and all-round lovely human David DuChemin suggests a reframe around this. You’re not pushing your work onto people. You’re extending an invitation.
It’s less about demanding people buy your stuff, more about, “I made this for you. Do you want to know more?”
4. “No one likes a show-off.”
Many of us were trained as children to be seen and not heard, not to draw too much attention. If you see showing your work and talking about it as bragging, boasting, attention-grabbing and generally being too big for your boots, as my mum would put it, try to shift your mindset towards serving your clients or audience.
Be proud of what you do – even if you know it can be improved. Enjoy sharing it with other people, telling your story and how you make what you make or the services you offer. And if it feels uncomfortable making it all about you, ask questions and turn it into a conversation.
Ask what people think of the work, how it makes them feel. Talk about where they’ve come from, what they do, how they found your work.
Get curious, and use it as an opportunity to find out more about your audience. It’s all useful data. It might even be fun!
5. “It’s degrading. The top people don’t have to sell themselves.”
But they do. All the time. It’s part of the job, with very few exceptions.
- A-list actors don’t go on talk shows to talk about their new film, or turn up at the premieres wearing a photogenic gown just for fun. It’s in their contract.
- World-class artists are expected to give lectures and talks, appear at the opening of their exhibitions, have dinner with curators and collectors.
- Musicians on stadium tours still have the backstage meet-and-greets with sponsors and sales reps, the endless interviews and the two-minute appearances on local radio shows that often involve crawling through rush-hour traffic for an hour each way.
- Best-selling authors have to negotiate an exhausting round of book signings, literary festivals and trade events.
Whether you’re George Clooney or JK Rowling, Jeff Koons or Adele, everyone has to be involved in selling creative work. And that’s especially true at the top. Indeed, many of the successful creatives I work with talk about not having time to make new work, because of the endless promotional demands.
Marketing and selling is just part of the job. So get used to it, and learn to do it well.
6. “When I get an agent/manager/gallery/publisher/label, they’ll do the selling for me.”
To an extent, yes. But it will still be you doing the press interviews, performing onstage, doing talks about your work, representing what you do – so you might as well start learning to do it well. The work doesn’t end when you sign that contract, or get the representation you’ve longed for. It’s just beginning.
If they like your work, the first thing most gatekeepers will do is look at your social media, your website, your public profile to see how good you are at connecting with your audience, telling your story, selling your creative work. They’re looking for creatives they can partner with, not children who need everything done for them.
7. “I’m not good enough yet.”
Maybe. But unless you’re putting a gun to people’s head, people will only buy your work if they like it and want it. And who are you to say that they’re wrong?
Wait until you’ve made the perfect piece, and you’ll die broke. In fact no one will even appreciate what you’ve made, because you didn’t allow them to see the process, the struggles that got you there – let alone be part of that journey.
Of course you’re going to improve, if you keep on making your art, writing your books or your songs, designing your collections, honing your craft. Your later work might well be better.
But those lucky people who bought early works by now-revered artists, first editions of rare books, early singles from a band who later became huge? They aren’t complaining. They were there at the start. And of course that early work becomes more valuable, as your work becomes more recognised.
8. “I’ve tried. No one wants my work.”
This was from an artist I was coaching, who had put hundreds of drawings and paintings on her social media, gained followers and likes but no sales.
So I went over her feeds. In two years, I found just a handful of times when she’d actually said the piece was for sale, priced it and made it clear how to buy it.
You have to ask. You have to make clear offers. And make it really easy for people to buy your work, if they want to.
Once she started doing this consistently, her followers turned into fans, and her art started to sell. She also started getting queries from shops and galleries, because it was clear she was an active, professional artist who was interested in selling creative work.
So what do you do?
Share generously. Tell stories about your work. Show your studio, your process, your world. Invite people in, then keep in touch and turn them into true fans. Experiment, and find ways of doing this that feel right and authentic for you.
Make it obvious how people can buy your work, your service, or otherwise support you. Make regular offers. Approach retailers, galleries, venues. Upload your work to platforms that sell the kind of work you make.
Connect with your audience. Answer questions. Hear what’s stopping people buying, and then answer their objections. (A potter dramatically increased her sales, for instance, by making a simple video showing how carefully she packed her creations before shipping them to buyers.)
If you don’t have the knowledge you need, Google it and find who is teaching it. Then find a teacher whose style suits you and your work. From setting up a free mailing list to uploading your visual designs to Patternbank or Spoonflower, from selling work to independent retailers to speaking in public with confidence: there are people who can show you the way. You just have to make it your business to find them.
Don’t try to do all the things at once. Choose one strategy, and try it, consistently for 90 days. See what happens.
How are you going to start selling your creative work, today?
What do you think?