Imagine if you could advertise cheaply and actually get results

Patrick explores a cost-effective and highly effective advertising strategy for artists, photographers, and creatives. He discusses the limitations of social media ads for art promotion and introduces the concept of using postcards for direct mail marketing. Drawing inspiration from a local kid's creative marketing approach, Patrick outlines how artists can leverage postcards to gain local visibility and generate interest in their work. He provides practical tips on what to include on the postcards, ways to make them visually appealing, and how to distribute them effectively. Patrick emphasizes the potential return on investment and encourages creatives to adopt this underutilized marketing technique to boost their business in 2024.

Podcast Transcribe

 Patrick Shanahan: Coming up on today's edition of the art marketing podcast. Imagine if you could advertise cheaply and actually get results  specifically as artists, as photographers, as creatives, you need to advertise. Social media ads don't work. So let's get creative with an inexpensive. But highly effective technique. 

All right, guys. Welcome back to another edition of the art marketing podcast. Patrick here with you. And what is a creative's biggest problem today? It remains getting noticed for the world to know you exist for them to know you have amazing creations for sale, the world. You say I will take the world quite frankly, and I appreciate your lofty ambitions there shoot for the moon.

And even if you miss, you will end up in the stars. But what if we started small though? With instead of the whole world, we start with the neighborhood. Let's just say, what if everybody in your neighborhood knew you were an artist or a photographer and had art and or photography for sale?  What would your business look like if that was the case? 

How often might your phone ring? Why don't you get contacted for a commission? I brought over to contemplate a home remodel in the walls that need spade, that need art in there. The majority of you guys are diligently marketing on social media, or at least I hope you are most of you listening to this podcast are, and that is great.

But when you can add an additional venue  to the effort, things just get better. You get omni channel marketing.  And, and for me, inspiration like you guys can come from anywhere created the wall stripes. But for me as a marketer, some just arrived via postcard that was dropped off on my porch. Now in my neighborhood, as in yours, I'd likely school is out for summer.

It's the start of summer as I record this, uh, which means kids need jobs and a local kid in my neighborhood,  uh, just dropped off or presumably was him just dropped the postcard on my porch. And guess what? He got my attention doing it.  So on this card, I've got it in my hands. I'm going to include a link to this thing in the show notes.

He's dropped off this card and it's a picture of him. And it talks about how he's going to be a freshman in high school. And he's giving me his why and he's, I am saving up to get my first car. So already I'm on board with this kid because I believe in his why I want to help him out and then he lists out his services and he's got things on his menu like dog walking and dog run cleanup, which I think is a fancy way of saying cleaning up the poop, well done, son.

Watering, bringing in mail, taking trash cans out, babysitting, dog sitting, the whole thing.  And I will likely hire this kid just based on how effective his use of real world marketing is because this thing totally got my attention. My wife saw it, I saw it, it ended up in my office desk. And he is running a playbook here that I think most creatives can and should borrow.

But let me give you some context. You need to advertise, right? You need to advertise. We all know we need to advertise to get our name, our art, our creations out there.  And the older you get to give this some context, I'm 45 at the time of this recording, the more amazed you become at how everything that was once in Vogue, then goes out of Vogue and then comes into Vogue again.

And I was having this discussion recently with a friend about the early 1980s Mercedes two door SLs, okay? The convertible hardtops. These things epitomized wealth and opulence when I was growing up, they were just cool. All the beautiful women and the successful rich men were driving them around, putting them in the garage. 

And they were cool all the way  until they were coming out of the garage and parked in the street as the old car. It went from being like the status symbol to the people that kept them, the car started becoming old, then it was parked outside, then it had leaves all over it, then the paint was starting to fade it.

And then it was handed down to the burnout kid that doesn't have a job and he got a dent in it and was driving it around with faded paint everywhere, right? They were classic until they weren't. Some of those cars have stayed in the garage for the last 44 years. And now they're out driving around and looking super cool again.

They're officially back in vogue. And my buddy and I were discussing like, of course, now a classic again, it was so out of style for so long. And that's how we remembered it. There used to be this beat up red one with a customized number plate that this kid that would never get a job drove around and it just, it was a terrible look.

I'm like, can I get those things out of here? But now it's classic again. Right. And.  I think that cycle can repeat itself, especially when it comes to advertising. And what do we know is the conventional wisdom out there as it pertains to a business, let alone a creative business. Yes, of course, it's that you have to advertise it.

You have to get the word out, but we also know that the default low hanging fruit of advertising available to creatives today, i. e. paying for ads on the social platforms just does not work that well for art. It doesn't work for art. It doesn't work for photography in most created businesses. I think. The oft repeated line that I've said, which is absolutely true, is that over the past like 10, 15 years of being in this business, I've not seen a single solitary artist or photographer start advertising and then still be advertising a year later, buy my work, purchase my work, new work, it's out, I'm having a sale.

And it's because it just doesn't work. No one can get it to pay. No one can make it be effective, but we still have to advertise. So we need to be looking for these creative ways in which we can do it that are outside this mainstream system of just social media ads, which are difficult and competitive and everything else.

It's my position that postcards, okay, dropped off on the porch, i. e. direct mail is no different than the early 80s Mercedes. They're now back in vogue. It now works again. There was a time where all of our mailboxes got just burnt out. And if you're young, you probably never lived through this, but. There was a time when there was just so much spam and junk and crap in the mail, and it lost its effectiveness like any technique does in advertising.

We would throw away 70 percent of our mail just sitting there at the trash can before we even came into the house, right? Or just right into the circular filing cabinet, most of it. That's on a way and it's come back into vogue again. It's capable of getting attention. It's, I'm noticing it more and more, I have a buddy that, that just took on huge rounds of investment that has a company that helps e commerce merchants do this because it's working really well for them too.

In this constantly glued to our cell phone social media world that we're living in now.  Sneakily while we were asleep, when we didn't notice it, just like me with the 80s car being cool again, all of a sudden the mailbox has become back in vogue. Right now, I should note that I started teasing this podcast episode to my customers in an office hours session.

And I did have somebody that was worked at the post office for 20 years. And they said, I guess that it's illegal to put something in a mailbox. If it doesn't have postage on it, I think these things need to be dropped on the porch or use a door hanger or whatever.  As I look at this  as a marketing technique that can be leveraged by creatives, artists, photographers, in terms of the dollar for value that you get, it's just a great way to get attention in 2024 and nobody's talking about it, nobody's talking about it.

It was all over my radar. And then this kid dropping this thing off, giving me the final inspiration. Like I have got to record a podcast episode on this. I've got to start encouraging my customers to do this because it's just so insanely effective. I believe that this technique.  Using postcards that are dropped off on people's porches, advertising your services, your art, your creativity, your, your, what the things that you have for sale or the services of the classes that you're teaching, whatever it is that you've got in your operation is an underpriced way to get people's attention.

And especially when we compare it to the other venues that are available, that are out there right now in 2024. And again, you need to advertise. So what are you going to do as an artist or a photographer? What are one of the things that we recommend customers do that we recommend that you guys do that I've recorded in multiple podcast episodes are leveraging print giveaways.

What are the print giveaways? They're just ads. They're just ads, right? And I find them to be a highly effective form of advertising, but what are the others? Are you going to try to get yourself into a trade publication or an interior design magazine? That's like crazy expensive, right? Or  pay for a radio spot?

I don't even know why I brought that up because why would you use a radio spot? That's probably the least effective. Or pay for a bold billboard somewhere? Or boost a post on Instagram? Don't.  Or are you going to get more sophisticated and enter the meta ads manager and set up some properly targeted ads on Facebook and Instagram, buy some Twitter, now X ads, I've wrapped a YouTube ad.

Not only are most of those expensive, but they also require in most instances, quite a bit of work on the creative and the targeting and everything else.  Now, what leveraging a postcard to keep things simple, a postcard that gets dropped on the doorstops and give this some real numbers. A postcard to get dropped off on the doorstep to 250 houses in your neighborhood, or a close, affluent neighborhood, or you could even go guerrilla status and do it outside of an event on car windshields.

Although people usually get a little bit irked at that, me being one of them, but it's available. But let's assume that you did the postcard dropping yourself, rather than hiring a kid on rollerblades to do it. And by the way, If you're in Southern California, go ahead and send me a DM and I might offer up my neighbor's number here because I guarantee you he would do it. 

If you did this yourself, okay? 250 postcards, and I looked this up just for context, from Vistaprint, there's other outfits that do it, I just know Vistaprint. 16 cents per unit, 40 total. So for 40 total, you could have 250 of these things that you dropped off on houses, on front porches. And I'll include a, a link in the show notes of the link for Vista print.

If anybody wants to check that out,  you guys as creatives, okay. With the creations that you have, some of the most beautiful assets, visual assets on the planet, right. And with a free Canva template, and you can Google Canva to their easy service. Many of you guys that are photographers already have Photoshop chops, so you could do it in Photoshop very easily, but you could design one of these things.

Very easily. Okay. And so not only is it my position that this route is less expensive than the digital alternatives that are out there today, i. e. boosting posts, running posts on Facebook meta, I would strongly bet though, you know, having a huge career experience in digital advertising, that no matter what BS metric, assuming you did run ads on the socials, Oh, you reached 25, 000 accounts.

Yeah. Did I, I didn't get anything. I didn't get contacted one single solitary time when I got two likes on the post. Right. It's my opinion. It's my feeling that. Leveraging this technique, even 250 times or 500 times or a thousand times, are you going to go bold? You will likely get the attention of way more people if you spent even three times as much on an ad on Facebook or Instagram, because everyone's just scrolling past things a hundred miles an hour.

You have a much less competitive visual landscape, uh, that is not competing with anything else on the phone when you leverage this technique. So I think it is back in Vogue. I think it offers a really incredible opportunity. I think the technological barrier for this route is really low. And I think many of you can and should leverage it.

If I was trying to sell my creations, not only would I leverage this, but I'd probably set up my system, however, you decide to do it. Perhaps the gorilla market, you're going to do it yourself. Perhaps you're going to hire a kid on rollerblades to deliver to them, to all the porches. Or even if you wanted to go all out and actually pay for postage, I would probably do it monthly for an entire year and measure the results at the end of the year.

What would it be, like a thousand bucks or eleven hundred bucks or twelve hundred bucks in advertising? But you can start at forty bucks or fifty bucks. I don't know of another form of advertising where you stay in such a great shot at getting that many eyeballs and letting them know you exist. And not only you exist, but you're local.

You're in their neighborhood. People love hiring local people. People love discovering local artists.  And for many of you guys, one sale of an original, and you've paid this off 10 X and you might make multiple sales or get commissions or have something happen for your service. Maybe you have a portrait business, or maybe you shoot dogs, or maybe you paint houses or any of those types of things or whatever it is, right?

Maybe you find out that you, there's actually like three interior decorators in your neighborhood and you had no, they had no idea you existed. Or there's a realtor too. And they're like, wow, I could really use some art in my houses to sell. I think this is an extremely effective technique at starting conversations.

Okay. Starting conversations and knowing the price points that many of you operate at the possibility of a really strong ROI return on investment return on advertising spend in this instance is it's just, it's underpriced attention. It's an under leveraged technique. And I think you guys should avail yourselves of it.

And let's just say you agree. You think this idea has merit. Let's get in some tactical that could potentially help you on this.  And by tactical, I just mean what should be on the cart itself and the delivery part and what neighborhood is easily enough sorted. You guys all live in different parts of this country, different parts of other countries.

You know what would potentially work, where the affluent neighborhoods are in your community, where the people that are actually going to be purchasing art and purchasing services. So you would obviously want to target those. But I think high level  that,  again, this technique is just so very effective at getting attention.

And it also opens itself up to such a wide range of creative applications. Do you push your entire lineup? Or do you just push your commissions, uh, again, or the fact that you paint or photograph houses and offer them this beautiful print of their home that they can hang on the wall or again, pet portraits or any kind of portraits of any kind or any kind of photography services, or do you teach kids to paint or do you upcycle women's handbags or do you just introduce yourself and show off your work and let the neighborhood you exist?

There's so many different ways that you can spin this. And the fact that you can reach this many homes, this many families, this many different career people from all sorts of different walks of life. I'm just really bullish on this technique right now. So here's  what I think you should include in yours.

Once you've sorted out what portion of your lineup, what portion of your services, what you want to promote, here's what I think you should include in yours. And no different than like a Facebook ad, right? There's multiple different ways to win, okay? If it's a Facedrock ad, and you run a Facedrock ad, You might get a page swallow and there's some ROI there.

You might get a comment, which charges up the, the engagement or a share, or you might get it a message so that somebody that wants to talk to you. And so there's multiple ways to win with a Facebook ad, right? And some are better than others, but at least you get something out of the effort. So I think we want to take that same rationale.

That was probably the rationale that was originally applied to direct mail marketing  and open ourselves up for multiple different ways to win, right? And let's state the obvious, obviously you're going to include inset postcard. Okay. You're in the one that I have in front of me. And again, I'll put a link to this thing in the show notes.

Looks to be like a three by four inch card. It's, you know, five business card size or six business cards. I had something like that. I know they have a name for it. A4 or whatever it is. But the number one thing I think you want to include in this is, of course, the images of your art, the image of your creation.

You have double sided on these things. They get printed, double sided, color, gloss, matte, any which way that you like. And they might raise the price a couple of cents, depending on what bells and whistles you put on it, but there's great room for you guys to express yourselves creatively, okay? And what else should you include on it, in addition to your art, which is self explanatory? 

I think you should include an image of you. Your smiling face, such that even if I don't call or text or email, and I later see you in the supermarket, I might just start up a conversation with you. And now I know that I've got an artist or a photographer in the neighborhood. And anytime someone needs an artist or a photographer, I might refer it.

You should put your phone number on it. And yes, I want you to include your phone number. And you could put next to it, call or text or just text. And for the super privacy conscious among you, it takes about two seconds to get a working Google voice mailbox and they're free. So you can Google voice. They will give you a voicemail that takes messages and emails, transcribes them and emails them to you.

So if you're uncomfortable using your phone number and that might apply for some neighborhoods, I know  you can totally do that and you could put that on there. Now I generally do, especially on some of these like local neighborhood type of plays. It is great when your area code matches the neighborhood so they don't feel like you're some out of town grifter. 

That's what your cell phone is and you're just going to use it. Don't let that stop you. I also think you should put a link to your Instagram profile on there because your Instagram profile instantaneously gives them an opportunity to be able to credit check who you are, what you're up to, what you're posting, who you, can I get to know them?

What are they interested in? Oh, here are some of these places they go to. So it's great to put both the Instagram logo And your Instagram handle on the postcard as well. I think that's a great way to do it. If you've got a website, of course, your website, and if you have a small website handle that doesn't have 685 characters in it, right?

Patrick's photos. com short enough, easy, then throw the direct text on there. If you've got too many letters in yours, then you might want to just leverage a QR code, right? And QR codes are really easy to get. They can be redirected to anywhere. If you're a customer, I know a shameless plug, we offer these.

They're very easy. But if you're not, it's very easy to Google free QR codes and sign up and leverage a QR code that you can put on there. Those, there's 500 services that do that online. So I think your website should be on there. And QR codes, generally,  I think given how prominent they are in our day to day lives, how many restaurants do we go to in today's day and age where there's a QR code, like starting to be more and more of them because they don't want to deal with menus.

And this is the true all over the world.  There's not so many opportunities for artists and photographers to leverage a QR code in their marketing because it requires a real. Uh, scenario, right? Because if you're marketing on social media, you don't want to use a QR code because how am I going to scan the QR code when I'm on my phone when I look at that thing, right?

Primary use cases for artists are sometimes In the printed material that arrives with a print when it's been ordered or on the back of a canvas or on a placard. If your art is hanging in a doctor's office or on the side of your booth, if you're displaying your art in person at a show or fair or QR code on the back of the car, driving around for some of you guys that do awesome guerrilla marketing.

But the fact that you can use one on a postcard is really a rare opportunity where it's like.  They're getting to know you, there is a direct mail piece, here is a QR code on it, I'm now curious, what am I going to do with that QR code, right? And I might just scan it just for that. And there's so many different ways that you can leverage QR codes, right?

You could link the Instagram. You could link the QR code to your website or the commission section of your website or the services section of your website, or you could use what's called a mail to M A I L semi colon T O. I believe I have that right. Or maybe it's all one word and then a semi colon, but that's what it is.

But what mail to links do is  it will instantaneously tell the phone, Open your web browser,  draft an email to this address. It automatically populates the address. And you can also, in that link, include a subject line. So, just by scanning that QR code, it opened up the mail application on their phone. It has your email address in the to field.

Okay, and then it has a subject line. Hey, your neighbor here, I had a question about. And you could do all of that via QR code. So I think it's a, just a great opportunity and you could even do a Flint or merge giveaway. They tend to work, right? And if you wanted to leverage that in your postcard, you could do that as well.

Via QR code scan to enter to win. Right. And that's a fun thing to be able to do for the neighborhood, to offer a neighborhood looking piece of art or whatever it is, there's so many different creative ways to do it.  But I do think. No different than my neighbor's example. He did a great job and this is a future marketer.

He's got his job menu. I do think you should have what is on offer. I think you should have an objective here, a call to action, as we might say in marketing world, and that could be a list of your services or the fact that you're open for commissions or the fact that you do a family portraits or the fact that you'll do Christmas cards or any of the above, right?

Whatever that it is that you're offering, you would be good to have it explicit on the card and clear as day.  I also think if you've got it, offer some social proof, if you have some prominent coverage in a local paper or the New York times or the LA times or CNN or local KKTV too, or whatever it is, or you got featured somehow locally as seen in, you could put that in there.

Or if you've got a really satisfied, short and sweet customer review, you could put that in there. Social proof always helps, right? It always helps. But, as I said earlier, and those are all great things to include in the card, there's so many different ways to go about it, it's hard to get too tactical, but I think those general rules of thumb and having those things, or in some combination, is a great idea.

But as I said earlier, there, there's a myriad of different ways you can leverage these, okay? To let folks shit you exist. And it really doesn't even matter what it is. Contemplate like what you guys are competing against. And as I think of all the normal stuff that, that gets dropped off on my porch, tree trimming service, and I have mulch.

This is like what it's like in my neighborhood or sign up for solar or a maid services, right? All of those things are tiny little business cards. They're designed like crap. They look like crap. There's very little thought and effort put into it. And I ignore all of them. They go all right into the circular bin, right? 

When I get one of these on my porch with beautiful artwork, with your beautiful artwork, let me tell you where it's not going to go. It is not going to go in the circular bin. I have never seen an artist. I have never seen a photographer  leverage this technique to get someone's attention. And when something beautiful like that ends up on your porch and you pick it up.

Do you know where that's going? That's going right onto the kitchen counter and I'm not throwing it away. And then, you know, what's going to happen? My wife is going to see it and then my wife and I are going to discuss it. And then it's going to end up back on my desk and I'm going to be talking about it like my neighbors did here.

I really like this. I really liked the fact that you could have this card designed in a day. You could send it to Vistaprint or your local shop for 30, 40, 50 bucks, however you want to get started in it. You could have that card in your hot little hands, 48 to 72 hours later. And these things could be all over your neighborhood within a week.

And everyone would be talking about you. I really like this idea. I really want to get some of you guys to start leveraging it and start contemplating it. Is it going to be perfect for every neighborhood all across where you ever, you might be listening to this? No, it might not, but there's lots of ways that you can get creative with it.

And honestly, for is inexpensive. Okay. And outside the norm and creative, a technique is this is. Okay. You only need one conversation to pay off a large batch of these things. You only need one conversation that again, leads to an interior decorator or a couple of commissions, or you get recommended to someone that just purchased a new house or a new neighbor moved into the house that you dropped it on and they have blank white walls, right?

Like all of those things are on offer and it's just such an effective way to get people's attention. I really want you guys to contemplate this. I really want you guys to try it. I am going to put all of these resources in the show notes. I am probably going to institute a challenge to my customers to do it, where I will pay for the first 10 to get something like this in the water, because I just love this idea and I cannot wait to hear the stories of how it's going.

That's what I've got for you guys today. A new, crazy effective way to advertise that will absolutely work for you. You can do you, it can be in your grand voice, your style. You don't have to be over salesy or too pushy or any of the thing or 20 percent discount or any of that. Okay, you can just let people know you exist and you stand a chance at getting their attention where there's very little competition.

Which is why I love it. So thanks for listening guys.  Please, if you're enjoying the podcast, I would love you. If you would either give me an iTunes or Spotify review, cause I'm really trying to grow this thing, trying to get the publishing back to regular and consistent frequency. I've got a ton of updates coming, but on that note, thanks for listening.

And as always, have a great day.