I’m a digital abstract New Zealand artist. I do paintings in digital form then get them printed onto canvas. I’m trying to look for an Art Manager or Art Agent to help me to promote and sell my art. Do you know of anyone that will be able to help me grow my business?
Message in a bottle it wished me well and has an email address (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Thanks for getting in touch. You work in a specialist area and so I’ve consulting my contacts in the art world and have these recommendations
list yourself on The Big Idea website – put up your portfolio, price your works and link back to your website to tell people how to buy your work. http://www.thebigidea.co.nz/
if you want representation, you have to go and meet people and show them your work. There’s no substitute for face to face personal contact.
first work out where you’d like to sell – which places / websites / galleries would suit your work or represent similar art styles? Make a list of them. Phone them up or email and arrange to visit with your portfolio and start a conversation with the owners. Follow up, send them regular updates about your work
have a newsletter or blog where you can publish your latest works and email these out to your mailing list. If you don’t have one yet, start to collect the email addresses of everyone you meet who could either buy your work or may know someone who could buy it. Send them messages regularly.
Good luck and I hope you succeed.
The blue icons opposite are part of our 8-Step New Business Development Methodology.
Click each icon to find more blog articles on the topic – educate yourself in modern marketing
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https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpg00Rebecca Caroehttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgRebecca Caroe2015-01-21 09:56:562020-01-24 01:44:56Marketing ideas for an artist
A new startup business in Myanmar (Burma) contacted us asking
Myanmar Handicrafts
How to promote small business for women who live in villages doing sewing
They sell to both tourists and local Burmese customers.
Marketing to the sales channel
The main challenge here for the women is that they are a disparate group and so clubbing together to make a single selling organisation who can take on the marketing and promotion to a range of distribution channels (web and retail shops mainly) is probably the best use of their time.
I did a search result for the words “Myanmar Handicrafts” and it’s clear there are plenty of existing online shops selling in this category as well as Facebook pages – which is good for international sales in the English language.
Steps to introduce their work to the channel
Get samples of their sewing work. Take photographs of each lady who made the product.
Contact each of these websites and send them two photos of the women and their sewing. Ask if they would like to sell your products in their shop.
After 1 week if they do not reply by email, telephone them.
If you can, ask to visit each shop owner with a bigger selection of sewing for them to look at and then face to face discuss if they will buy from you.
The basic method is to bring awareness of your product set to people who already have an audience of customers – this B2B route to market is faster than trying to build up your own audience of prospects.
Key issues will be
Quality control
Having sufficient stock to deliver in volume
Getting good payment terms
Scaling for growth – Kiva.org may be a good way to raise money
But by getting face to face with retailers I think this group of village women will stand a good chance of finding outlets for their work.
Downstream it may be worthwhile finding charities like Oxfam, Unicef and Save the Children to see if they’ll buy product for their online and catalogue business.
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https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Myanmar.png523581Rebecca Caroehttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgRebecca Caroe2015-01-09 11:09:062019-08-01 15:37:40How to market handcrafts from Myanmar
Christmas campaigns may seem like a gimmick, but they work. That’s because it’s a time of year where people are looking to buy and as a result, customers are far more communicative.
Hellmann’s Christmas Advert
Look reactionary by planning early
Planning early has many benefits. For example, you don’t want to get a campaign stopped behind bureaucratic doors and miss your chance to launch it at the best of times. If your campaigns are pre-approved you won’t miss those good opportunities to launch them when they come by.
Nothing says “viral campaign” like a relevant one that comes out as soon as a meme starts. Start planning your campaigns early, and plan multiple variations for different situations. Then all you need to do is keep your finger on the pulse throughout the run-up to Christmas period and unleash your chosen campaign when the best opportunity arises.
Here’re a few campaign ideas:
Relevant product promos – promo your 2015 calendar when advent calendars start getting popular.
“Still time to buy” reminders – customers often rush for purchases just 1 week before Christmas, so a little timely reminder can go a long way.
Discount codes & free delivery – while most common of Christmas campaigns, a time-liimited discount campaign is often short and sweet enough to catch more attention.
Extended returns period – take the “giving mood” approach and develop a relationship with your customers.
One things for sure, each campaign must decide on a clear goal. Review previous campaigns, check their strengths and weaknesses, then carefully plan out how you’ll support your campaign goals through action.
Focus on increasing dialogue with customers (not necessarily hard sales)
Christmas is a great time to develop customer relationships as well as just push sales. Use the increase of inbox opens and social media interactions to build your email lists and get more in touch with your customers. Outside of capturing emails you could also push feedback forms and surveys to capture behavioural data which can improve all your 2015 campaigns as well.
You could:
Simply wish Merry Christmas via email or pop-up box.
Run social media competitions that require email opt-ins, but instantly give a discount when a customer enters.
Re-engage with past buyers by offering them something special for doing business with you again.
Have fun and test out marketing platforms you wouldn’t normally use, potentially opening your exposure up to a whole new crowd.
Offer something DIFFERENT
Make an impact and stand out from the crowd by doing something different. Implementing a wishlist on your website (EXTRA: can use data for targeted mailing!), personalising your promotions and running some exciting social media competitions are a few ways to have your company look both professional, and interested in its customers.
The question you need to ask yourself now is – “what’s the best Christmas campaign for my business”?
7 steps for creating your Christmas marketing campaigns
STEP 1: Collect and assess behavioural data from past campaigns.
This should be as straight forward as going into a database and looking through campaign statistics. If you’re not doing this already, a simple excel spreadsheet and recording past campaign data should be your next course of action!
STEP 2: Think of 5 opportunities/ circumstances for sending campaigns.
These opportunities should be periods around Christmas (start of advent calendars, last week before Christmas, etc). Try to find opportunities that can easily be related to what you offer as a company.
STEP 3: Write up these campaigns.
Carefully plan out each campaign with action lists and then make sure you’ve got the content ready to go for each action.
STEP 4: Schedule campaigns that can be scheduled.
If your campaign is time dependent, schedule it and make an alert to remind you when it goes out. Once it is live, you should still have to take action (such as sharing your campaign via social media), so have that ready.
STEP 5: Create daily Google Alerts for topics that the remaining campaigns can react to.
If you’ve created some reactionary campaigns for the holidays, make sure you’ve got ways of identifying when they can best be activated. We use Google Alerts to track conversations so that we can react to them, and it’s a great way for looking for that perfect campaign launch opportunity.
STEP 7: Recap on all campaigns (analytics and assessment).
Once is all said and done, sit down and have a good look at the results of each campaign and how they went. This is very important as it will help you create more successful campaigns for the future!
Looking for fresh ideas and assistance on your Christmas marketing?
Drop us an email and we’ll be happy to brainstorm ideas for you!
I am looking to launch a tree care (trimming, removal) business and was looking for ideas on creative
Tree Surgery, Omagh All the smaller bits get mulched. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
advertising etc that can be done cheap.
You’ve come to the right place! You don’t say which town you are in but here are our best suggestions:
Join a BNI group. Business Networking International meetings are weekly and members refer new business to each other.
Get a business card and fridge magnet printed (use something like vistaprint.com) Hand these out to people you meet, clients. Give them 2 each and ask them to pass one to a friend.
Approach the local schools and ask them if they’d like to do a fund raiser. They promote your services to parents and you give back 10% of all revenues to the school for their own use. You will have to give them a poster or flier with all the details designed on it (the person who designs your business cards can do this at the same time).
Use Yellow pages to find all the property rental agencies in the town. Make an appointment to visit each one and ask to talk to the Property Managers. Tell them about your service and ask how you can get onto their approved suppliers list. These people regularly use services like yours for managed rental houses and apartments.
How do these sound? I picked them because you can do them all yourself as the business owner without specialist marketing skill – you just need to be able to explain your service and your prices.
If we can help you with other marketing things e.g. writing a website, running a newsletter, creating a customer database, online advertising, blogging, using social media – please ask.
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https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/CAS_apple.png16761340Rebecca Caroehttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgRebecca Caroe2014-10-11 09:23:222019-08-01 15:32:58Marketing a tree care surgery business
Hi, will you please give me an idea about launching and what gifts we can give to our guests. I want something related to skin care products.
Product launch gifts
What the gift is – should relate to your brand. Ideally can you create small samples in tiny bottles, blister packs or boxes so people can try out several products?
For your launch gift, I suggest three options based on the commitment people make to giving you their time and attention for your launch event.
people who come in person – give them a bag with samples of your product. They get the best gift because they came in person.
people who say they will come in person but do not show on the day. Ask for their phone number and offer to give them the bag if they meet you in person afterwards.
people who cannot come in person – give them a discount code to buy their first order and send them some extra small samples as a gift ‘surprise’ when they order.
The key here is to give the greatest value to the people who come on the day.
Product launch marketing campaign
When planning your launch marketing you will need to have thought through the following as well
contact details for invitees
follow up email or messaging after the event
quotes from attendees to use as Press Releases and customer testimonials
web shop able to use discount codes / vouchers
ways to recognise these early customers when they return to shop a second time (will they become loyal?)
Of course, this is just a list of ideas and needs to be linked together into a fully rounded campaign and tied into your website, CRM database, metrics and other publicity to make a proper campaign.
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https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpg00Rebecca Caroehttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgRebecca Caroe2014-09-22 12:06:422019-08-01 15:33:05Skincare brand launch gift ideas
We create email Autoresponders on a regular basis because they’re a brilliant marketing tool. But so many people ask us what an Autoresponder actually is and why it makes sense for marketing your business.
Autoresponders are more than just those out of office replies you get when you email someone sometimes. They’re automated emails that start based on a defined event.
This means that when your customer does something (an event), the autoresponder sends an email or a series of emails. Examples include joining a mailing list – triggers a welcome message. Or buys something online – triggers an upsell offer.
Simple, you might say. Yes, Autoresponders are simple in concept, but they bring you more marketing possibilities than you may realise…
Instant Response Autoresponder
You can set an Autoresponder to simply respond when an action (the trigger) is performed (like receiving an email). This is great for small tasks like “out of office” notices and “thank you” emails after a customer buys a product or service. However, this side of Autoresponders doesn’t quite go as far as you need it to. It’s just a single message with no follow-through.
Delayed Response Autoresponder
Autoresponders can be delayed to appear a few hours, days, weeks or even months after the trigger has been activated. These are useful for time sensitive reminders such as warranty expiry and account subscription top-ups.
We got asked by a mortgage broker who negotiates interest rate deals with banks for her clients – she wants to send them a reminder 11 months or 23 months after each rate fix so the client has 30 days to get back in touch with her to fix another interest rate deal for them.
Multiple Autoresponders
A neat little trick with Autoresponders is to make them trigger off of each other in a series. This allows you to build a message that is progressive. Examples include training workshops and stories.
For example, perhaps you want to teach a customer how to use your service that they subscribed to online – you can set up a series of Autoresponders that trigger one week after each other, with each Autoresponder email covering a different part of your service. Yes they can unsubscribe and yes maybe not everyone would read them. However it increases those odds of a customer picking them up and making the most of your service, which increases your customer engagement and satisfaction.
The Strengths & Weaknesses of Autoresponders
Autoresponders work best as a marketing tool when they are integrated with other promotional activities. But they can do so much more than people realise. Here’s a list of their strengths and weaknesses that might lead you in the right direction if you’re thinking of using them.
Core Strengths…
Autoresponders are automated – So once you’ve set them up you don’t need to worry about them at all. They’ll run on their own and continue to spread your information and push your sales pitches long after you’ve finishing creating it. This makes them more reliable than a human! All those times you’ve forgotten to send emails could have lost you business.
Autoresponders are simple – Essentially just emails that can tie together or answer specific customer questions on the fly, they don’t take much of your time to set up and yet help you correspond with many more customers without having to lift a finger.
Core Weaknesses…
Autoresponders are made of rigid content – You can change them once they’re up but they’ll only change for people that sign up to receive the Autoresponder after you changed it. That being said, you need to create each Autoresponder with a specific goal in mind and align it to that goal.
Autresponders aren’t individualised – Personalisation is possible – but it’ll just be <insert name> database personalisation. Real individually customised messages are out of the question. While you can do the basic [firstname] [lastname] customisation fields, you will not be sending these emails yourself so won’t be communicating with the receiver directly. One way to respond to this is to add a manual, personalised thank you whenever you get a new subscriber.
So go out there and discover ways to integrate Autoresponders into marketing for your business. Need help? Feel free to contact us for a complimentary chat or use our training resources below for detailed examples and different structures of autoresponders…
Your guide to Autoresponders: learn how you can use Autoresponders to grow your business
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https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpg00Creative Agency Secrets Teamhttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgCreative Agency Secrets Team2014-08-25 14:17:052020-01-24 01:44:55Business Marketing Tools Explained: What Are Autoresponders?
Could you use a similar device on your website to help guide your prospective customers through your services and products?
This is the second one we’ve done – the first was for FeedBlitz – they use it to help readers understand the FeedBlitz services for RSS delivery for email, feeds, podcasts as an alternative to FeedBurner.
Leave FeedBurner
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https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/decision-tree.png421663Rebecca Caroehttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgRebecca Caroe2014-08-21 12:09:132014-08-21 12:14:59Can you help us test our new "decision tree"?
With more people opting for anonymous website browsing it is becoming increasingly harder to see how users find your site – in particular, which keywords they searched with.
Inside your Google Analytics you can see which search terms prospects are using to find your website by going to Acquisition -> Keywords -> Organic in the left sidebar menu.
With the rise of anonymous browsing, Google Analytics can no longer provide useful and therefore accurate keyword search data. You’ll more than likely see the majority of your keyword searches is “(Not provided)”.
This situation is getting worse month by month as we track the analytics for our website.
By following these steps, we can show you a workaround which will remove the dreaded “Not Provided” data and give you greater insight into how visitors are finding your site. Best of all, this workaround will also show you what keyword searches you are appearing in but not getting traffic from.
The Workaround For Keyword Searches
Although not a perfect replacement, Creative Agency Secrets has found a work-around which can give you a good indication of what search words and phrases your website is showing up for and which are drawing visitors.
It involves Google Webmaster Tools – You have to set this up for your website if you haven’t already.
Set up and Verify yourself and your website in Webmaster Tools – generally the easiest way is to do this with your analytics account. If this fails, Google helpfully provide short how-to’s on the other methods of verification.
Remember your site must be using the asynchronous tracking code.
Select the Google Analytics radio button (which can be found under the “Alternate methods” tab) and click Verify.
Now navigate to Search Traffic in the sidebar menu and select Search Queries.
Scroll down below the graph you will see a list of Queries used and the Impressions. The main benefit of this data is you can see the Average Position your site has in search listings for each one (far right column).
We are going to show you how to send this data to your Google Analytics account but it’s worth noting that there is more accuracy in this screen as Google Analytics rounds the numbers.
Link Google Analytics To Webmaster Tools
Now re-open Google Analytics and browse to your website dashboard.
In the side menu go to Acquisition -> Search Engine Optimization -> Queries. You will get a message advising you to enable Webmaster Tools (see screenshot below).
Click the button to Set up Webmaster Tools Data sharing at the top of the page.
Leave all the settings it displays as default although you can change the fields if some are incorrect e.g. Industry Category. At the bottom of the page the sub-heading Webmaster Tools Settings click the Edit hyperlink.
This will bring up a list of site(s) and associated Analytics web properties. Choose your site on the left radio button and Save.
Click OK to Add association in the next window.
View The Data
You’ll be directed to the Admin screen. Click Reporting in the top menu to return to GA and again go to Acquisition -> Search Engine Optimization -> Queries.
You should now see a summary graph and below it the list of keyword queries , impressions, clicks and average position of your website.
For everyday use, we find the Google Analytics summary data is fine. But for non-rounded data, go into the Google Webmaster Tools display to get the full picture.
Note that data is normally 2 days behind on these searches compared to other metrics in Google Analytics.
Matt O’Neill is the Managing Director of ModComms – a company that produces The Pitch Pack, he sent us this neat video pack which business to business marketers
ModComs pitch pack video
can use to open new leads.
How does PitchPack work?
The pack is a bit like a card brochure – you open it that triggers a magnetic switch which opens the power – a logo displays for a second while it warms up and then the first video plays
A typical pack has 4 videos – they come with volume controls and the larger packs have more videos on them. Al the components are built in – from batteries, speakers to CPU.
They are encoded to Xvid format– the reason to use a specific codec is that it is lower file size with max picture quality. A standard has 256 mg memory of which 170 is usable the rest is operating system. so it gives about 17 minutes of video playback.
Finish watching, close it like a book and that switches it off.
In the spine there’s a little USB port you can charge the battery and uploading the videos.
If a client wants to use it the production process is firstly to design the outer pack – card wrap – using a standard Adobe Illustrator template. The videos have to be produced and then you have all the assets. These are sent digitally to China. The factory sends back a prototype in digital print (not litho). Sometimes there are small amends, it is signed off for manufacture and production.
One thing is critical is quality assurance with Chinese factories -we include two rounds of this – locally it’s checked in Shenzen and then it’s sent out and we check a few samples too. Then we dispatch – sometimes it’s a bulk delivery, other times we do the fulfilment individually.
As part of the marketing it’s important that the telesales follow up to fix the meetings.
What types of Business use PitchPack?
It’s any B2B organisation providing a higher value product or service. Tech companies like it, hotels, consultancies, engineering groups and some internal comms – high level changes across global senior teams.
Integration wit the sales funnel – the clients using account based marketing principles. Some use it for the ‘door opener’ – grab attention of a senior decision maker. It’s critical to have a structured follow up process. Or use it as a leave-behind or a send-after to answer questions. Salesman can film themselves on a mobile phone giving the answers and then include other videos too. Those companies that are a bit more sophisticated and using lead scoring, for example, the score triggers sending a pack.
Personalisation – we are used to it with paper mail, but when you show the recipient that there’s an introduction just addressed to them – it’s flattering. Anecdotally we hear it is very powerful.
Results – using a campaign with a global software company – we did a small run of 250 packs of which 240 were distributed. They got 23 meetings with decision makers and they’ve got 4 deals with an average value of GBP250k each. That campaign cost 5k on the packs themselves, 7k producing one video and re-used another couple of videos. Total campaign cost 16k.
Why should our readers try the service?
Video is growing – mobile traffic about 50-70% of mobile traffic is video now. Cisco predicts that 1/5 of the world’s population will access video online by 2016.
As a medium, video creates feelings of trust and so when brands use real people or show people doing real things curiosity is triggered. When making video for marketing purposes don’t put everything in. Leave them wanting more.
Confidence in the brand is built and sometimes amusement. If you can make video for business funny you will have next to no competition because there’s so little out there.
With that popularity it’s a blessing and a curse – the competition will only get more furious.
Marshall Mcluan said the medium is the message in 60s and these packs are both – it allows people to explore video in their own time in their own way wherever they happen to be.
This is an easy differentiation tool – stand out from the crowd. I remember in 2005 there were personalised USB sticks but now these are ubiquitous. This type of marketing tactic is now at its 2005 moment but in 3-5 years it’ll be old hat.
If you are producing video for the pack, the content can be re-used across other media – home page, landing pages, powerpoint, email-able files. The results are pretty tangible – looking at it in pure numbers.
