The Ultimate Guide To Successful Art Shows and Fairs

In today's episode of the Art Business Morning Show, Patrick unveils a comprehensive guide to achieving success at art shows and fairs. He discusses the importance of these events for growing an art business, highlighting their benefits and drawbacks. Patrick emphasizes strategic planning to maximize ROI, including critical steps to take before, during, and after the shows. Key insights include the significance of capturing leads, maintaining a diverse inventory, and proper pricing. He also outlines advanced tactics for more experienced participants. This episode is a must-listen for artists aiming to build a six-figure art business through effective show participation.

Podcast Transcribe

Patrick Shanahan: Coming up on today's edition of the Art Business Morning Show, we're talking about The Ultimate Guide to Successful Art Shows and Fairs. Specifically, why chosen fairs are so important, the upsides and downsides of doing them in person, and how you need to think about them tactically to win. These are the things that no one ever seems to talk about. Well, welcome back to another edition of the Art Business Morning Show, the show that will put you on the path to a six-figure-a-year-plus art business. And this guide is going to be a beast. I spent a ton of time writing this thing, and I'm excited about it. I've been having it on my list to make for a long, long time and to sort of update some of the older thinking I had podcasted about this like four years ago.

The goal of this guide specifically is just to make you understand why the shows and the fairs are important, number one, help you to understand how to properly think about them, and then most importantly, to ensure the next one you run, you're fully equipped tactically to absolutely dominate the next one that you do. And I think if you put the wisdom that's in this guide into your operation, it stacks the deck in your favor to get the most out of every single solitary show you participate in, regardless if it's a solo show at a brewery, if it's bootlegged on the corner of your street, or if it's an expensive booth at a highly reputable show. And it's going to show you what to do before the show, during the show, and most importantly, long after the show has ended, long, long, long after the show has ended.

And I want to start off with why shows and fairs are so important and why doing them in person is so important. And as I often default to in the show, I go back to the fact of all the artists and photographers that I've been talking to week in, week out on my various different webinars and things, going back years now, all ages, degrees of success, niches, geographic locations. I say that all the time, but it's true. And in my experience, if the successful ones are coming on, 95 out of 100 of them, and let's define successful as seventy-five thousand dollars plus in annual sales, they're all either doing the show and fair circuit, or they all have done the show and fair circuit and then they're selling directly from their websites, from their social media channels. It's almost never the folks that come on the Zoom, the ones that are at that level of sales by selling on the marketplaces or by selling on Etsy or just selling through galleries.

And so when you contemplate that stat and when I continue to have those conversations week in, week out, you come to realize that doing the in-person fairs and shows is an incredibly effective way to grow an art or photography business. It just is. And I put the post, and by the way, there's a post that accompanies this podcast. I'll make sure it's in the show notes, so wherever you're getting it, there'll be a link to it. One of the comments I got on Facebook from somebody who's been doing it for a long time, and I really enjoyed it because it sort of represented some different thinking of my own, and this gentleman said, "Remember, at a show, you are not selling merchandise. By which you meant, everything you acquire, you're buying customers." That was his line. "You're buying customers." And I thought, okay, that is so poignant and that is so on point, and that is literally the entire ball game of the entire thing.

But you can't just do one, right? If you're going to do something, you've got to do something properly, which is what this guide is going to get into. And I suggest, before I get into the next section, like everybody knows how big of a pain in the ass they are. Okay, known fact, got it, noted. But if you do them correctly, like you can literally put in a few years of work on the show and fair circuit, or a few years of doing three to five of them a year, and after a good clip of time, you can emerge with a collector list that will support you for the rest of your career, and you do not ever have to spend a Saturday in a booth ever again.

So let's start with the upsides and downsides of shows, and then we can get into the tactical advice. The upsides, and again, I think it's important to go through the list of upsides and downsides so we understand what we're getting into, and it's going to help explain a lot of the reasoning, a lot of the tactical advice that I get into as I go down this thing. And the good news is, the upsides far outweigh the downsides, but let's take a look.

Number one, shows and fairs are a fantastic way to validate your work, new niches you're going to potentially go into, ideas, directions that you could potentially go. Like, everybody wonders, "Oh, I wonder if my work will ever sell." Well, let me tell you, there's no faster way to find out than to get in front of real humans and find out. You're never going to know otherwise, so stop wondering. Get into a booth, have your work, have conversations with strangers. That is the fastest way. It's not online, it's not via social media. It is the fastest way.

Shows are fantastic for that. They are incredible. Shows are an incredible way to capture leads, and leads are just email addresses from people interested in your work. They are next to actual revenue, the most important part of doing the show. Okay, they're the most important part of doing the show. And oh, by the way, leads captured in face-to-face experiences, i.e., at a show, are more valuable than the ones that you capture digitally. They're important, but it's important to understand that the ones that you capture in person, face-to-face, are more valuable.

Another upside is they force you to order and carry inventory and learn how to properly merchandise your art. Okay, you guys don't sell JPEGs. You don't sell JPEGs yet. That is what most folks have on their social media sites, all over their social media sites. You do not sell JPEGs. When you do a show, it forces you to acquire inventory of your work, so you learn how to present it and you learn how to merchandise it. This is an absolutely huge one, and many of you could use it just for this. If it forces you to do this and you do one show, it will be worth it because now you at least have a body of work to show and the merchandise that goes along with it.

The shows and fairs give you the opportunity to practice selling and negotiation. I know most guys don't like doing this, most gals don't like doing this, but guess what? It's one of the most important skill sets, and you're going to be doing it for the rest of your career. Like a muscle, it needs frequent exercise. You do that, and your entire business is going to continue to improve.

Next upside, the shows and fairs are an absolutely great way to get commissions. Yes, commissions represent immediate revenue to your bottom line, yet they also represent an idea machine to alert you to new niches, ideas, and avenues that you can potentially explore and add to your lineup. Like, commissions are a big deal. You always want to listen to what the market is telling you, whether you decide to take the commission or not. And when you're in the booth and someone comes in and they're like, "Wow, I love your creative style, but I'm looking for something like this," brand new niches are discovered that way, demand is discovered that way, and that's just not something that you can easily do any other way or certainly not as efficiently.

When you do a show, and you understand, and we're going to get into the tactical in a moment, another upside is they offer great promotional content for your email list and your subscribers on your social media profiles. I mean, your work beautifully set up in a booth, properly merchandised, it's a beautiful thing, and it lets folks know your work is for sale. It creates FOMO, fear of missing out, and at the same time, it's a great way to give your local fans, especially when you do it in your backyard, of course, a venue to come see you. So great promotional content for the socials, great thing to share. People love seeing artists that are out there doing things and making waves and making moves. So what a great way for you guys to be able to do this. Phenomenal.

This one, final upside, one of my favorites, is an incredible venue in which to run a live art show. I'm not talking about in person; you're going to be doing that anyway. I'm talking about a live art show in which you grab your phone, you stream the entire situation out to the world. So incredible opportunity, especially when you're all set up, when you're in the booth, when your energy is up, when you likely have some downtime.

So those are some of the upsides, some of my favorite upsides of doing them in person, in addition obviously to the great opportunity to make sales today. But there are some downsides too, and like anything in business, we have to contemplate the downsides. And I don't like being negative, but you're evaluating a business strategy here. You better know the cost, and there are certainly some costs and some downsides to doing these in-person shows and fairs.

So I want to talk about them. The admin and the paperwork to get registered for them ahead of time, you always have to jump through the hoops, you have to do the admin, sometimes you have to get approved, make sure your deposits are in on time. It's just busybody work, but it's annoying. Yes, of course, the booth fees. Some are really inexpensive, $50, $100, $25, but some of them go up to $5,000. So you put that kind of money on the line ahead of time with no guarantee, and so it underscores needing to make the show count. Yes, but also you have to take that into account with the rest of your marketing fees.

The travel required, sometimes there's hotels and long drives. I mean, of course, they're awesome when they're in your backyard, but oftentimes, in order to do a number of them, you're going to have to travel, which means you're going to have to stay in hotels, which means you're going to have to drive, which means you're going to have to eat crappy food and probably not get the right amount of exercise and everything else. So it's a downside for sure.

Dirty little secret here, not every one of them is going to be profitable. Just by their nature, they are hit or miss, and the fact that very few people say this, but it's important to know going into them. Okay, it's normal for not everyone to be a home run. Some are great, others are bad, and it underscores that you need to do a number of them in order to generate a positive ROI on the efforts on balance and especially to cover for the ones that don't work that well.

Of course, the long days of travel, a long day of being on your feet, and the reason I mentioned this one is what inevitably happens when you do one of these shows is you come back and you're just exhausted. You have to unload the car, you did the drive, put everything back in the garage, de-stress, and so you end up losing a couple of days in the turnover, both getting ready—although getting ready is always energy up—and then on the way back, you're exhausted, you lose a couple of days that you're not spending on your marketing. So there's certainly an opportunity cost there, an opportunity cost of time you're just not spending on your marketing.

And the final one is obviously the cost and the storage of your booth and materials. Self-explanatory here, but it needs a mention. Good news though is that we can teach you some additional ways in this podcast on how you can get the most out of both your booth and your materials, which is a great thing.

So the important thing to know is, yes, they have upsides and downsides, but what most people fail to do, what most people fail to understand, is the appropriate way to look at a show, to be able to zoom out and say, "This show is going to be a win if..." and what is the best way, what is the way that the smart artist, the smart photographer thinks about shows? And this is the perfect example of a class they should have had in art school or photography school: "How to Generate Consistent Income and Grow a Creative Business by Exhibiting at Shows and Fairs." That would have been a home run class if that class was taught in school. In my opinion, the chapter would begin with the three bullet points that I'm about to lay out.

If you are going to listen to no other part of this podcast, if you understand these three bullet points, and you know number three being the most profound, then you're going to be in a fantastic place. Okay, bullet point number one: Shows are a game of archery. You have to fire multiple arrows to hit the bullseye. I've already alluded to this, but I'm going to get into it in a second. The next one: Next to sales that you generate at that show and directly after, the leads that you capture are the most important thing. The leads, the email addresses, are often times more valuable long-term than any of the sales that you generate at the show itself.

The final point, the profound one: The smart artist, I'm going to teach you what that looks like, can afford to lose money at the show because they know what happens after the show is the whole ball game. It is absolutely the whole ball game.

Let's start with the first one: Shows are a game of archery. And let's just say the bullseye, the center of the target in archery in this case, is a 5x return on investment that it cost you to exhibit at that show. If you only do one show and you only have one arrow to fire, the odds are just never good that you're going to hit the bullseye with only one arrow to fire. When you realize this, when you come to terms with this, if you instead give yourself three to five arrows to shoot, you're standing a much better chance at hitting the bullseye. And the smart artist knows this, and so when they start planning, it doesn't even enter into their mind the fact that they're just going to do one because if you're going to do one, you're setting yourself up for failure because what will often happen is it'll be a dud, and you're going to be irked, you're going to be upset, and you've lost money, and you've lost a Saturday.

And so when you shift your thinking and you go into each show season saying, "At a minimum, I'm going to do three to five," when you start your thinking that way before you even plan which ones you're going to do, what months, what part of town, your success will follow as a result. It is a very important mental framework to get into, and so understanding that I think is critical.

The next point: The leads that you capture at the show are the most important thing. Guys, not everybody is ready to buy wall art right now. It doesn't matter how good you are, how good your work is, how sweet the deal is, not everybody is ready to buy wall art right now, even those that are attending an art show or art fair. So your job is to capture as many leads as possible at that show such that you can market to those folks in the future for years to come, for years to come. A couple of small sales, and you captured 73 email addresses—that can be the difference between a home run show after the fact and losing. And again, I've said this before, but it's important to say it again: The shows and fairs, the emails that you capture that are oftentimes in addition to in-person conversations and face-to-face and getting to know you and pressing the flesh and everything else, they are significantly more valuable over time than the ones that are achieved digitally. That's an important thing to know; it doesn't often get mentioned. They will represent, as a result of that relationship that you've formed with them, more dollars in revenue per year to your bottom line than the ones that you are just capturing digitally. Yes, they're both important, but the in-person ones are the cream of the crop. Okay, they're the best ones that you can get.

The next point, the third bullet point: The smart artist can afford to lose money at the show. Not only can they afford to lose money at the show, they're not even mad about it. They're not even mad about it. And of course, you're going, "What are you talking about?" Okay, when you do a show with the proper plan, you capture leads, and most importantly—okay, this is bolded in my article—most importantly, you market consistently all year long after the fact. You can afford to lose money on a show up front, as you know you will make it back up in time quite significantly. And that's not something that you learn early in your career; that takes a lifetime of marketing to truly understand that lesson.

Marketing activity, yeah, capture leads, you market consistently, and you make sales for years to come after the original event, years to come. And this is a profound point, so I'll come up with some numbers here on the fly. Let's say Stu does a show, and the show costs $2,000 in expenses all in. Stu sells $800 at the show and another $150 after-show follow-ups. I'm going to get more into how you do that in the tactical section. And he captures 73 emails. So let's say the show is over, it's been a couple of days, he's done all his follow-ups, and all in, Stu, the show cost him $2,000, and now he's brought in $1,050 in revenue. Then in year two, one of the 73 emails that Stu captured buys a large metal print from him for $700. Now Stu is down $350 on that show. And in year two, in year three, and again because Stu is marketing consistently all year long, one of the 73 emails that he acquired at that show just bought a vacation house, and because Stu has been marketing all year long consistently over the years, Stu's work is top of mind. The client now buys $25,000 worth of Stu's art to decorate the new home. Stu does not get that sale if he's not marketing consistently. He's now made $25,000 plus the original $1,050 plus $700 off that initial $2,000 investment. That is how art sells in the real world. That is how it sells in the real world.

And so when you combine these three bullet points—okay, that doing the multiple shows per year, it's a game of archery, I have to hit the bullseye, you're going to have to fire three to five, you capture leads at all of them, and then you market consistently after the fact—that is when the wins really start compounding and stacking up. And you never know which show or event is going to be the big winner, and quite frankly, you don't care. Some are hits, some are duds. Sometimes the weather hoses you. It doesn't matter. You keep your head down, you understand these three points, you keep dropping the leads onto your list, and then you keep marketing consistently after the fact.

And you know, it breaks my heart because most artists and photographers treat their fairs and shows like they would a debt in Vegas. Is the money in greater than the money out? Then it was a win. If not, then no. But when you understand the big picture and you realize that each show is an investment with a longer payback period than just day of, you approach them, and especially how many of them you do, completely differently. Completely differently.

And none of the above is even possible though without a proper tactical plan. So next up are the tactical steps to get the most ROI out of shows and fairs. And the plan is to sort of list out step by step with examples of how we advise our customers to run their shows and fairs. And you know, per just about everything that we do, I have to throw in the disclaimer that this is going to be a bit advanced, and especially to the non-techy, new-to-digital-marketing types, and those folks, you guys are going to find it overwhelming, and that's okay. That's okay. I'll get more into that in a second.

But for the purposes of the tactical guide, I think you know Pareto's law always emerges. There's always an 80/20 in everything. You know, I'm going to split this thing up between the, and I quote, "must-haves" and then the "nice-to-haves." Okay, your job is just to work on the must-haves first. If you work on the must-haves first, as you get a little bit more advanced, you can get to the nice-to-haves. You don't have to do all of these things right out of the gates. If you just focus on the must-haves, you're actually really, truly well and truly set up for success, and the rest is really just going to amplify your efforts.

So the good news is there's not a whole heck of a lot of must-haves. There's really only two, and these two are giving you the best chance to see an ROI from the show itself, and then most importantly, taking into account everything that we've learned so far, you're going to be capturing as many leads as possible. And those are the two. So let me break those two down, and then we can get into the nice-to-haves.

So the first one is all about inventory and pricing, and this one is so insanely and incredibly important. I just released a huge long post on this, in fact, two podcast episodes back, or maybe even the last podcast episode, is on this one. And so if you're listening to this one and you haven't listened to that one, just pause it, go back, and listen to that one because the inventory pricing is just so incredibly important. What I can do though is gloss over it at a high level.

Your booth, your lineup, needs to have items priced from $0 to $100, $100 to $1,000, and $1,000 plus. When you have the range, you are set up to capture all types of buyers and price ranges. You have something for everyone. This maximizes sales and revenue and lead capture because obviously every time you acquire a customer, you also capture the lead. You need to have non-wall art as part of the lineup. Not everybody is ready to buy wall art today, yet they like you, they like what you do. So when you have other items—tote bags, postcards, calendars, hand-painted kitchen spoons, doesn't matter, whatever it is—you need to have something that's non-wall art related. Then you're setting yourself up to get sales out of these customers that otherwise wouldn't buy.

Next one, final, but go back and listen to my pricing thing. You need to properly mark up your art so you can negotiate in the booth and so you can run a sale in the booth. And we recommend, excuse me, a 250% markup on all your prints as a general rule of thumb. On originals, you can set the price higher than what you really want to get. You can sort of do that arbitrarily. And so doing so is going to allow you to negotiate with potential buyers and run sales in the booth, which will get way more sales over the line.

Okay, again, the most important thing you can do is to start doing shows. If you don't have all of the above on your very first one, that is okay. You do need to work up to that level though if you want to give yourself the best shot at maximizing your ROI. And really, this is just a math equation. It's a mathematical equation. And if you have the proper range of price points, regardless of what you're selling, you are going to be more successful. It doesn't mean that it's the number one formula that works for every single solitary artist. You know, Patrick, I saw this other artist, they did $10,000 a show, and they didn't have those price points. That's fine, that's fine, but that's not the norm, and that's not the best practice, and they probably would have done more if they did have the lineup. So very important to have that. Okay, that's number one.

Number two is optimizing for lead capture. And aside from the pricing and the inventory and the sales that you generate at the show, this is absolutely the next one, the most important one. I would go as far to say that it's probably the number one most reflective technique, tactic that oftentimes will take a show from being a loss in the short term to a win in the long term when you do consistent yearly marketing after the fact. It's what separates a six-figure-a-year art and photography business from everyone else. That's just the facts.

And here is the technique at its core, and then we'll get into a little bit more depth on it. Okay, you in your booth at the show, you offer a free something people can win. It can be a print or a merch item or anything. The idea is to enter to win; they have to give up their email address. You let them know the winner is going to be announced after the show. The fact that it ends and the ends quickly, and they find out who the winner is quickly, increases the scarcity of the offering and increases the fear of missing out. So more people will end up entering. And ideally, have the item on display where they enter so they know exactly what it is that they're going to win. And if you have any opportunity to amp it up—balloons, you know, water features, giant pointing fingers, whatever you can do to draw attention to it—is great.

And you know, that whole technique, well, it's like, "Wow, that sounds pretty simple. I can do that." It is simple, but it's insanely effective. And you know, I myself, when I go to shows, and there's when members of my team go to shows and fairs because they're geographically distributed around the globe, almost no one does it. Almost no one does it. Like, what are people doing not doing this? Like, you know, when you layer on what we have you do during the show and after the fact that we're going to get into, it's when it really goes to the next level.

So that's it, you guys. It's literally that simple. Those are the two must-haves: Have the proper lineup, capture leads with the Fishbowl technique. Fishbowl technique is what it's called. I'll go into that in a minute. Once you do those two, you're your 80/20 is sorted. You're already pretty much there. Now is when we can switch gears into the advanced gear, and we can start to turbocharge these things.

So you know, this will be the step-by-step tactical guide to rocking chairs and fairs, aka the nice-to-haves. And this is really, you know, when you start cooking with gas in this portion of the section, it all attempts to answer a simple question: What is the best sales and marketing strategy that gives me as many ways to win as possible by doing a show? I love that statement. I find it to be profound. Like, whatever I'm going to do for my business to grow my art or photography business, are there multiple ways for me to win by doing this? If so, it's usually a pretty good marketing technique or tactic, right? Like when you look at marketing techniques or tactics, it's no different than the archery analogy. Like when you have multiple ways to win, you have multiple ways to hit the bullseye.

So I want to break the tactical portion of this guide up into sections, and essentially, the sections will split it into three, and it'll be what we do before the show, what we do during the show, and then what we do after the show. And in order to understand the various steps and how they all fit together, you sort of need to know ahead of time what we're going to be doing. So I can't just go through it all in a linear fashion. So I'm going to hit at a high level some of the things that you're going to be doing, and then we'll get into, like, you know, we'll peel the onion, so to speak.

So number one, we tease and promote the upcoming show. Your deposit's in, you know when the show's going to be, you know where it is. So ahead of time, we tease and promote the upcoming show by which I mean your email list, your social profiles need to know. It's very possible that in-person folks might attend, and for everyone else, you still want to warm up your list because you're going to be having a sale at the show, and you're going to be having a live art show at the show.

Next point, which I just alluded to, you are going to be running a sale at the show and a live art show during the show. So that means for everyone that shows up at the in-person show, not only are you going to be in there with your work in a booth, but it just so happens you're going to be having a sale, a show special. And for all of those that don't show up but are on your email list and your social profile, they are going to get to participate in the sale also because you're going to be having a live broadcast. You're going to be letting people know that there is a sale, and you're going to be letting everyone know what is on offer.

And then, of course, you are going to run the "enter to win a print, enter to win some merch" Fishbowl technique during the show. After the show is over, you pick a winner, and then you let everybody know that opted in. You are running a show, you're running a sale, or you extend the sale, or you offer a different sale, and we'll get into that in more detail. But that's it. We tease and promote the upcoming show, you run a sale in the booth, and you run a live art show, which is a broadcast in the booth. And that's the ball game.

And again, I know this is going to overwhelm some of you guys because there's a lot of moving pieces, but you don't have to do it all right away. You can, and you work your way up to it. Okay, you level up step by step. Trust me, my customers tell me this on a regular basis. They scream uncle, they throw their hands up, and they're like, "You're trying to kill me. Okay, I mean, you're asking me to do 19 different social posts, and I don't even know how to do one." That's okay. You've got to crawl before you walk. Okay, but this is how you get the most ROI out of a marketing effort, especially for you guys that are spending thousands on the booth. Why the heck would you not want to get the most ROI? Why the heck would you not want to give yourself as many opportunities to win out of something that is probably going to nuke your entire weekend and/or a couple of days of your life?

So all very important. Don't let it overwhelm you. You don't have to do it on your first one. I don't care if it takes you three to five years to get here. This stuff is just important. It's important. We're going to start with before the show, and the marketing starts before the show even begins. Okay, number one, these can all be thought of as ways to win. It's great content for your email list and your social media profiles. What do I mean? That packing up, the organizing your pieces ahead of time, the getting everything ready, that's just great social media content, and it's totally different than anything else that you have going on all the time. And let me tell you, it lets your audience know you're about to have a big sale. It lets your audience know that you are an active artist and photographer out there doing stuff. Believe me, this has its own entropy to it. So show it off. Okay, create social media posts so that people that are following you know you're about to go do this thing.

Okay, next point, you want to try and drive your local following to your show. You always want to do that. The best way to sell art in person, face to face. Okay, even if the show is not in your hometown, you never know where your social media followers, your email subscribers might live or might be that weekend. So it's your job to get the word out and let the chips fall as they do. You know, our customers were regularly and routinely leveraging the in-person shows to get sales over the line. People that have been on your email list and thinking about a piece for a long time, and they just wanted to meet you, or they just wanted to have a conversation, or they just need the slightest little push, and you get that couple-thousand-dollar sale over the line. Well, guess what? You've probably just paid off the entire show. So don't ever underestimate the importance of trying to drive your local customers to the booth.

Okay, in addition to that, all of these social media updates are going to drive FOMO for everybody that can't come to the show because remember, not only are you going to be having a sale in the booth where everyone's there, but you're going to be extending that sale, the opportunity to participate in that sale, to everyone that's on your email list and everyone that's on your social updates. Okay, that's a big deal.

So the packing up the car, the loading things out, the driving by a landmark, the entire family is in the car, the selfie unloading, the setting up, all of it plays an important role of letting as much of your audience know that you are going to be at a show and that you're going to be having a sale. Okay, that you're going to be having a sale. All of this is critically, critically important.

Now, in the blog post—again, this will be in the show notes—I've included, sorry, this is honestly like one of the gnarliest blog posts I've written in probably like five years. Like, there's so much tactical in here. They are all real images from our customers, real testimonials, everything else, and they're really good. And so they're sample emails and sample social posts, and there's videos, and there's testimonials. So you probably want to come, but I'm going to gloss over at a high level sort of the tactical stuff to do, and then if you want the screenshots and the rest of it, then just go see the blog post.

So of course, you need to email your email list. Okay, you need to let them know you're going to have a show, let them know the pertinent details: the who, what, when, where, why. I just slurred that, but you get it. We also advise you in the email copy to tease that you are going to be having some big announcements, which by the way are going to just be the show-specific sale on the live art show that you're having. That your audience is really not going to want to miss. So obviously, you would love to see folks in person. If they can't, stay tuned for a big announcement via email. Right, let folks know that you can email you if you have questions, send you DMs on the socials. You get all of that going on.

You essentially take that message, a version of that message, and you also share it on your social sites. This is called omnichannel marketing. You don't just email your list; you email your list and you post on your socials so that when I get your email and I ignore it because I'm busy and I'm watching cat videos, then I see your social media post, I'm like, "Ah, I'm going to go back and I'm going to open that email." So you essentially blast the same thing on your social sites. And in the blog post, I've got some good examples of this, so you can kind of check them out.

And that's it. And when it comes to the social sites, do try to include both images and videos. And for Instagram, it's best if you do feed posts, story posts, and reels. Feed post, story post, and reels—very important. And of course, all of the content that you're creating should also go to Facebook. If you're active on TikTok, fine, use TikTok. Don't really care about TikTok right now.

So summing this portion up, okay, everybody on your list after this is done, on your social sites, certainly as many of them as we can capture, they're now going to know you have a show coming up. They're going to see this great content on your social sites. Some will likely email you about coming. For those that cannot make it, you know, they now know you're going to be having this big announcement at the show, and they're going to be curious about what that announcement is. And so you've primed your audience to the best of your ability, especially the ones that are not coming, that there's going to be a deal at the show. You let some of them know there's going to be a deal at the show, and so they might start getting some FOMO and going, "Oh man, I gotta get down there. I gotta get down there. I gotta get down there." Very important.

We're now shifting gears to during the show. Okay, this section of the show is going to cover again the basics to the advanced stuff in detail, but we'll include some bonus stuff in here that you can use. So let's start again high level, and then we'll get into the specifics.

So during the show, again, you want to continue to fill your social profiles with content. And you know, you want to spread it out. Right, this is just great content to grow followers. If it's a two-day show, like I'm posting sporadically Saturday, I'm posting sporadically Sunday. It's just good content. Okay, it's great to see, and you'll end up getting the attention of some additional buyers, and it tells a nice little story when I come to your social feed and I get to see, you know, 12 to 15 images and videos because you did a show over the course of the weekend. You don't have to get to that level right away, but I'm telling you, it looks legit when you can do that.

Yes, of course, you are going to be running a sale at the show. At the show, you are going to be competing against other artists and other booths. Okay, this is especially important during difficult economic times, but it's important during all times. You know, when you have a sale going on in the booth, and the sale has real scarcity—i.e., this sale ends as soon as the show ends—you are going to end up getting more sales over the line than you would ordinarily. Right, yes, of course, you're going to be running the Fishbowl. You know, we'll get into the tactical on this, but you know, this is an important, important step.

You need to be prepared to upsell and optimize for AOV. I talked earlier about having the proper lineup and having non-wall art as part of your lineup. When you do, when you have this, you have the ability when you do get sales in the booth to offer additional purchases. So if they buy a piece of wall art, you ask them, "Do they want a calendar with that? You'll take $50 off of it. Do they want an iPhone case or a throw pillow or a yoga mat or a tote bag or whatever else you're selling?" And oftentimes, you'll find this is as simple as just asking the question. That's it. I'm in your booth, I just bought something, I really like it. "Just to let you know, I'm also offering these sets of greeting cards. They're pretty cool for Christmas or other things. Do you want to include those with your order?" And then shut up. Don't say anything and just wait. And they might say, "Yeah, let me see them. You know, Christmas is coming up. That wouldn't be a bad thing. I wouldn't mind having some of these things on offer." So you need to be prepared for upsells and to optimize for AOV. The AOV is average order value. Okay.

Yes, of course, we're going to be running a live art show in the booth. All the time, energy, and effort it took to set that booth up, and only the people that come to the event get to see it? Nope, nope, not when you run a live art show. Then everyone gets to participate. Okay, everyone gets to participate, which is just huge. And again, on the post itself, I've got some really good video examples from some artists across the country filming their booth setups, talking about it, doing a great, great job. And so if you want to see some real artists doing that, you're good to go.

Also, during the show, this is another one of the awesome ones that I love that some people, some artists, do a decent job of, but I don't see enough of it, which is if you make a sale—okay, and if you've made a sale, you've probably gotten to know this person, you probably had a great conversation with them—if it feels right, ask them if you can take a photo of them for your social media. Tell them it'll really help you out. When they say yes, this is really, really strong content. And so I love showing off photos of people that have purchased the work because again, it shows, "This is an artist on the up and up. This is a photographer on the up and up. Man, they are selling. They are selling all the time. I have now got the thumb of the fear of missing out. This person is really killing it. Man, I need to be collecting this person's work." It is insanely effective, insanely effective. And so it is a very easy thing to do, just to ask, "Hey, you know, because you're going to take this thing today, would you mind if I took a photo of it? I love getting photos of my customers holding the work." It's that simple. It's that simple. Never want to stop reinforcing that. Fantastic thing to be able to do.

And I've got some great examples of it again. The show-specific sale guy, this is another one that's so important. So few people do it. "Why would I have to run a sale? You know, I spent all this money to get to the show. I'm not running a sale." Yeah, you run the sale, guys, because again, this is just math. This is a simple equation that I talk about all the time that just increases the odds that human beings, i.e., you and me, take action. And it is very simple: A discount plus scarcity equals human beings more likely to take action. It's that simple, and it's just math. It's binary. It's a one or it's a zero. Do you have the equation in play at your show, in your booth, or do you not? If you do, you are going to get more ROI out of the effort. You are going to make more sales. It is just that simple.

An example of a sale that I had all of my customers run recently, and I've got a cool testimonial that I'm glancing at because they ran the sale in the booth, we had our customers run an "Inflation Sucks" sale. And I realized that language is a little cheeky. You know, it could be, it could using "sucks" could technically say it's, you know, it's foul language, so you don't necessarily have to say that. But the equation is discount plus scarcity equals human beings more likely to take action. So you call the sale the "Inflation Sucks" sale, or you can call it the "Inflation Stinks" sale. You use a discount, 10 to 20 percent off booth-wide on items over $100 bucks. Then comes the scarcity: Sale ends today or end of the show if you're doing a two-day sale, but I would always just say, "Sale ends today." And that's just it.

It doesn't matter what the thing is called. It doesn't matter what the percentage off is. It doesn't matter if you end the scarcity every day or if you end it at the end of it. It's just having that. If you have that equation in your booth, you're going to do better than you would have. If you read the pricing article, if you set your markups correctly, it is not going to hurt your margins whatsoever. All you are doing is taking the prices that you would charge ordinarily, charging a little bit more for them, and then offering the items on sale. Everybody loves getting things at a sale. The scarcity helps get things over the line. And yet, when you go and see shows, how many artists are actually having a show special? How many of them are having a sale? Not all that many, usually not all that many.

Then when you realize that not only are you having this sale to the people that are the foot traffic that you're going to get for that show, for the ones that are going to walk into your booth, but you're also going to have that sale for everyone that can't come to the show. They can't see it in person because you're going to be running the live art show. But before we get to the live art show, we have to talk about the Fishbowl.

And you know, I should mention that this technique, the Fishbowl, sort of comes exclusively from back in the day when everyone would have business cards. You know, you've probably seen this, or maybe if you're young, business cards have sort of gone away. It's not really a thing as much as it used to be. But people would use like an actual fishbowl, like that you would actually have your pet goldfish in, and they would put it out there and say, "You know, it's Subway sandwiches. It would be, you know, throw a business card in the fishbowl to win such and such, right? Free lunch for your office." And it would just be a way for them to do lead gen and to do something fun. So that's what I like to call it. The fishbowl has sort of gone the way of the dodo bird, at least in terms of business cards. And so most people now are either using a clipboard to fill it out right then and there so you can get it that way, or if you still want to be creative, you can have them write on a piece of paper, have a bunch of small pieces of paper, and then put that into the fishbowl. And then that way, if they have a business card, they can drop a business card. If they don't have a business card, they can just fill out their name and email address on a regular piece of paper and drop that in. So that's sort of how it's morphed away from the fishbowl style.

But there are so many different creative ways to do this. You know, like one of my favorite techniques, and again, I have a photo of this in the blog post, so you need to see it, but you know, I feel like this is a technique that's like it came from hipster coffee shops where they would have a tip jar, and it would be like, "You know, what kind of music fan are you? Who's the greatest rapper of all time? Tupac or Biggie." And there would be a picture of Tupac and a picture of Biggie, and then you go and put your vote with like putting a dollar into a tip jar. And so it sort of gamified the Fishbowl process. And so you can do this in your booth where they have the opportunity to win one thing or they have the opportunity to win the other thing. Right? And so you know, you still give away just one, but you know, you let them vote sort of with their entry, which is a really fun additional way to do it.

So it doesn't really matter how you do it. Again, the most important thing that I want you to get out of this episode is to start doing it at every single solitary in-person event you have. And the only mandatory rule here is that you do it. And for some pointers, again, you don't sell JPEGs. Okay, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't go to Kinkos and do a printout of what you're giving me. Show me what you're giving me so that I can opt-in and show it prominently. Right? It's always best to let the entrants know when the winner is going to be announced. So, "Winner announced after the show. You don't need to be here in person." Right? That also creates scarcity and gets more people entering. Again, let them know they don't need to be present to win.

And you know, the idea when you know you've done this right, when the Fishbowl or the clipboard is displayed prominently, and what they win is displayed prominently, and the fact that they don't need to be there to win, and when the winner is going to be announced, you know you're winning when they're entering without having to talk to you. Like when you're in the booth, and you're engaged in a conversation, and someone's asking your inspiration, and it's on a big piece, that is where your focus should be. Right? Because that person might purchase that big work from you. So you want to have the Fishbowl working for you for people that maybe pop into your booth, and you're involved in a conversation, and my wife is like, "Okay, I see something over here. I can't wait for you to have that conversation." So if your Fishbowl's not there, I've just walked out, and you haven't captured a lead.

So when you have the clipboard, when you have the Fishbowl, or tear off a piece of paper, I might just quickly enter that thing and then leave, and that was a sale from me that you might get down the line that you wouldn't have got because that Fishbowl wasn't working for you. Another thing that I like to do is use creative ways to call attention to the giveaway. You have balloons, if they let you get away with it, water features, whistles, hooks, whatever you've got at your disposal, they all work. It is a great thing to be able to draw attention, and any creative thing that you can do is a great way to do it.

And then also, you know, use all the available real estate. Use all of the available real estate. And so you know, if you've got a booth, and the outside walls are facing different directions, or you're on a different corner, like it makes a ton of sense to one, think about the valuable real estate, two, potentially let people know you're having a giveaway around the corner, even if you're not showing the thing there, because sometimes that's what gets them into the booth. That's just what does it.

So with that thing in place, you're going to be capturing leads, which is fantastic because as soon as the show ends, we're going to be putting them to work. Now we can talk about the live art show in the booth. Okay, and I honestly love this part of the strategy so much. I mean, anyone that's been listening to this podcast for any period of time, you know how much I talk about the live art shows. You know how much I love the live art shows. I love them because the quality of the content they produce is fantastic, and then when you're doing an in-person show, like the additional ROI that you get out of doing these things is awesome. You know how much energy and effort like this is just getting more and more ROI out of the investment in your business you just made. They're fantastic.

So I have some examples again in the post. For those that have never run a live art show, in the post, I've also linked to this guide on how to run live art shows, quick start guide. So if you've never done one, you're like, "Patrick, what the heck is a live art show? How do I do it? I don't understand." I've got stuff for you. You can come and read the stuff, you can follow up on it, but at a high level, number one, it doesn't really matter when you do your live broadcast. It can be first thing when you're just getting set up, or it can be at the end of the day, or it could be the show's already over. You know, it's after it's already over.

And the main goal of the live broadcast, the primary goal, is really just to have the video to be able to send to your list after the fact. That's it. We need to establish that. Everything else, including the, I'm doing air quotes, "live" part of it, is just a bonus. Okay, it's just a bonus. I don't care if during the live portion of the broadcast only your mother is watching. It does not matter to me because you are creating the thing to have a video that lives in your social media page. Yes, some people will see it, but really just to have a video to send to your entire list that couldn't be at the show because that is what they're going to look at to understand what's going on with the sale, your "Inflation Sucks" sale in the booth. Right? So you just want to show the merchandise, tell some stories about some pieces, and announce the sale. That's it. Just show it off. You worked hard, you invested a ton of money, show it off, and let people know that they can participate.

You can film this thing selfie-style with your phone. You can ask a neighbor for a favor and have them do it. Both of which are great. Okay, you can, Patrick, the internet service is just absolutely terrible where this show is, so I couldn't do it. Yes, you can just record it locally and get to a Wi-Fi network whenever you can and then send it. Okay, so just record the thing. Don't overthink it. Don't stress about it. In terms of the streaming, just use your phone and stream to wherever you have the biggest social following. If you have no social following, it doesn't matter. Just pick one. But it can be Instagram, it can be Facebook, it can be YouTube, it could be TikTok. In the live part, like I said, it's really just a bonus. Okay, the important thing is you have that video that you can email to your list when you have it. Also, combined with the fact that it's living on your social feed, then that helps. Right? That helps.

Another bonus, I know this won't apply to everyone, but it's very, very helpful if you have the entire show's inventory on one single solitary page on your website. Bit of a subtle sales pitch there because it's a feature that I created on our platform from scratch that gives you these live art show pages, but it is helpful to have it all on one page. Like, because it is a show-specific sale, it is going to end. It's just this stuff; it's not everything. If you want to do it that way, so that's a nice-to-have. You don't have to have it. Worst-case scenario, if you don't even have the eCommerce website, you can always just say, "Look, you know, if you're interested in any of this, send me a DM on Instagram, or you know, send me an email, or here's my phone number, text me." The most important thing is you have it.

And after the video is completed, you grab the URL of that video, you insert it in your email, and you send it to your entire list. And ideally, you have this email already all composed and sorted, and all you're doing is just grabbing the link, throwing it in there, hitting send, and it goes to your whole list. Worst-case scenario, like if you don't do it until you get home, that's totally fine too. Doesn't matter. Okay, it doesn't matter. The most important thing is that you do it, and don't overthink this part of it. Okay, almost all artists and photographers always overthink it. They try to make it into a giant, huge video production, Steven Spielberg special. It doesn't need to be any of that. Okay, it doesn't need to be any of that. I have some wonderful booth examples of live art shows in the booth done at shows that you can see. Okay, they're great. You can copy how they did theirs, or you can run your own. Doesn't matter to me. Just don't overthink it. I just want you to do it, and you will be amazed at just how effective this can be. Okay, amazed.

Next item, we're done with live art shows. Next item at shows are QR codes. QR codes, and you know what's crazy? I had to look this up. The technology of QR codes is almost 30 years old at this point. 30 years old. That's crazy. And you know, for many, many years, they've been thought of as the second coming. Like, people have been hyping them up and talking about how popular they are in Asia. Well, here in the United States, they didn't really tip till COVID hit. But something happened around COVID times. All the restaurants were closed, then when they opened back up, none of them had menus anymore. You had to ask for a menu, and then all of a sudden, all of us were trained that there's this little funky-looking code that you can hold your phone up to, and you don't need any app or anything, and you can scan it, and the next thing you know, you've opened the menu. So now everyone knows how to use QR codes. The whole country, young, old, everyone in between, everyone has a smartphone, everyone knows how to use them.

So it is a good idea to leverage these things in your booth, and there are a ton of creative ways that you can do this. You can do it on the outside of the booth, and to be honest with you, that's the only mandatory one because you can scan these things from a distance. Okay, you can scan to ask people to enter your Fishbowl, enter your giveaway. You can scan it to get on your email list. You can scan it to go directly to your website. I'm not going to make this just about QR codes because I could go into some crazy tactical, and we actually advise our customers to have the QR code underneath every single solitary piece so they can see it on your website. But again, with the QR codes, the idea is they can get the information that they want self-serve at the booth. Like, my wife can be in some booth two doors down, and I don't want to go into your booth, and I don't want to talk to you. I just want to enjoy my cold beer I just spent $18 on, and I'm bored. And so you have on the outside of your booth, "Scan code to enter to win," and I'm like, "You know what? I'm bored. I'm going to do that." And I pull the phone out, and I scan the code, boom, I enter my email address, I'm entered to win, and I was never going to come into your booth. And so you want to have these things available to capture that type of foot traffic.

Okay, there's lots of different ways that you can do it. Again, you can have them on the outside of the booth, you can have it on all four walls on the outside of the booth, you should have it on the back of your car, to be honest with you. But the point is, QR codes have tipped. The whole world knows how to use them. They can be incredibly fun. They can capture visitors you wouldn't otherwise have. As long as you have one on the outside of the booth, technically, you're winning. From leveling up from there, you should do it to enter the Fishbowl, to enter your giveaway. You can link to various different places, but they're fantastic to have. Okay, they're absolutely just fantastic to have.

And really, the big-picture way to think of them, just to get out of the show for a second, then I'll go back in, anytime you do anything printed whatsoever, anytime you do anything that they're essentially not accessing your marketing message with a cell phone, it should have QR codes. That's how important they are. That's how big of a deal they are. That is how big of a deal. Okay, that is maximizing your ROI at the show.

What do we do after the show? After the show, it's the after-party. Now, to the party, it's the hotel lobby. Jay-Z, circa 2000. Why that stuck in my head, I don't know. And that might work for Jay-Z, but the smart artist, the smart photographer, the second the show ends, is really just getting started. And oftentimes, you guys, whether or not the show loses money, breaks even, or makes money in the show window—meaning, you know, right when the show is run in the next couple of days after the fact—is dependent on this next step.

Okay, you ran the Fishbowl, you have some leads, so you pick a winner, email the Fishbowl entrants, announce the winner, and then for everyone else, you extend the sale. You extend the sale. Everybody loves to see whether or not they won. Okay, so this is an email that gets a ton of open rate, a really, really high open rate. And so your job with this email is really to try and capture all of the fence-sitters. You had a sale in the booth, and they thought about potentially buying a piece. They're like, "Nah, I'm just going to enter. Maybe I'll win." Then they realized they didn't win. "Oh darn, I should have bought it. The sale was on." And then you extend the sale, and they're like, "Hey, here's my opportunity."

So really, this entire technique and tactic, notwithstanding the long-term ability to market to these folks and getting the email address, but really what it's designed to do is capture the fence-sitters, the ones that were super close to buying, the ones that got distracted, the ones that had to have a conversation with their significant other. And those are the sales that you are trying to get over the line in the window immediately after the show.

And in terms of a subject line on this thing, I like using, "Thanks for coming to the show, and it's time to announce the winner." You know, in terms of body copy, I'd love to congratulate the winner. I like to let people know, "I never win anything ever anyway, either." So as a way of saying thanks for entering, you're formally extending the sale. And you know, if you have some great photos of the booth or video, and of course you do, it's time to include those in the email. Love to see you next year. In terms of the sale, there's no sense in overthinking it. You can just extend the one that you had at the show. Some folks like to keep it running for a week, some folks like to keep it running 48 hours. What I generally do, and again, there's no right answer here, but you can increase the percentage off of the sale and make it last 48 hours, or you can stick with the same percentage off as the sale and have it last like a week afterwards. But the important thing is you have a sale, you extend the sale for everyone that put their email address in the Fishbowl and didn't win the print. You do that, and watch what happens.

I cannot begin to tell you how many different shows turn into ROI-positive events based on the sales that you make after the fact because you were in the festival. It's just that important. It's just that important.

So wrapping things up, I told you this thing was going to be crazy. It was a beast. I mean, I'm talking myself in circles. I mean, how long is this video? It's an hour episode already. Goodness gracious. You know, the steps in this guide, okay, you know, are as detailed as they are. They are the difference between doing a show and dominating the show. And it's these things that you do before, during, and after. It just is. It just is.

And again, I know that many of you are going to listen to this, and you're going to get overwhelmed, and that is totally okay and totally normal. You don't have to do all of it at once. You don't have to do it on your first one. But you do what you can, and you work your way up to the entire playbook. Okay, and as long as you do the two most important steps—properly sorting your inventory and pricing and running the Fishbowl technique—you're 80% of the way there. You can bit by bit, step by step, level up and get going on all the rest. But you do take these shows and fairs seriously. You do a number of them a year. You can grind them out for five to seven to ten years and then stop doing them for life because you have acquired a collector list. And when you are marketing consistently after the fact, that collector list will come back and buy from you again and again and again and again.

You couple this with being able to sell directly from your own website and all the other marketing that you're going to do in the normal digital fashion without having to leave your house, that is how you build a big art business. That is how you go from being a hobbyist to a side hustle, from a side hustle to a robust, growing year-over-year art or photography business. I don't know of a better opportunity than the in-person fairs or shows to level up and level up quickly. I know how big of a pain in the ass they are. I'm sorry, I do. It's hard. I used to do trade shows in some of my earlier careers. It is very, very hard. But when you approach these things correctly, fantastic, fantastic opportunity at leveling up. And when you know how to do them tactically, you are setting yourself up for success.

So on that note, thanks for listening, and as always, have a great day.