An Art Specific Marketing Agency

In this episode of Art Business Mornings, the speakers delve into the concept of an art-specific marketing agency. They define what such an agency would look like, discuss the demand for it, and explore the challenges and pitfalls inherent in creating one. Despite having spoken to thousands of artists and photographers, neither the speakers nor their vast network have encountered a solely art-focused marketing agency. The discussion touches on why such agencies don't exist, the importance of artists being able to sell their work independently, and the critical role of effective marketing. The episode concludes by encouraging artists to empower themselves and emphasizes the significance of preparing for the lucrative fourth quarter of the year.

Podcast Transcribe

Patrick Shanahan: It's art business mornings coming up today. We're talking about a little bit of a hot button issue in art specific marketing agency, question mark. We're going to define what one looks like the demand for such a business and the potential ups and downs inherent therein. All right. Our intro music. Get humming along there.

Nick Friend: I got no intro music. Oh, I guess it's on the other side. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's on the other side

Patrick Shanahan: All right. Morning to you. Yeah Coffee, you got a stick with you saying I Can see on my Instagram crop. It's a little bit off gotta learn these lessons. Okay, and you're just executing and just shipping All sorts of things go wonky and just, just as a, uh, you know, a quick intro into this, everyone that live streams has issues all the time.

I just had to start the stream and I had to kill the stream and go back and start the stream again. Can't let it faze you. Got to just roll with the punches. This is the new world that we live in, which is insane. Now, topic of hand, topic du jour, if you will, Nick, uh, let's define it. Okay. An art specific marketing agency.

I think we need a definition. A marketing agency. Focused solely on helping artists and photographers sell more of their art, photography and services. Okay. An agency that understands the friction inherent in the art selling process. Okay. It's a, it's a sales process that is completely unique. How it all goes down in an agency that does not do anything else.

Okay. It's not helping dog walking businesses or women's handbags. Okay. Or the local plumber. Okay. It's a hundred percent focused. Okay. I'm selling art and that's an important definition. I think, right? Because the next question that I want to ask you, Nick, have you ever heard of one? No, never. And I'm not kidding.

When I say that, like, I like, look, I'm not talking about the solo consultant. Okay. Yes. I know the solo consultants out there exist. Uh, you had one on your art business workshop yesterday. That guy was a consultant representing like two or three artists. I'm not talking about the solo operator. I'm talking about an agency that only does marketing for artists and photographers.

And if anyone's out there, if you're on Instagram and you're hearing this, if you're on Facebook, you're on YouTube with someone, please leave us a comment. If you know of one of these agencies, drop the name. Drop the website. Tell us who it is. Because I would be so curious to see. Okay. I would be so curious to see.

Nick Friend: Well, here's the thing. Here's the, here's, here's like the real answer to the question. Okay. We have 4, 000 members. We've spoken to 100 to 150, 000 artists and photographers literally verbally over the last like seven years. Right. Not to mention. I've been in the industry for 20 years now, right? So I've spoken to probably 40 or 50, 000 and, and I've never heard anyone ever talk about one.

In fact, every artist and photographer is typically running from failure everywhere, right? Like there's no success anywhere. There's no success anywhere. And so it's like, if you would think that if there was anything that was generating success, we would know about, I mean, it's not that you would think, you know, we would know about it.

Right. So that's why, that's why it doesn't exist. And you know what, I got to tell you, I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised, like when you really, if you really want to get down into the truth right of this whole thing, I'm not surprised. Okay, and, and I don't want to throw you off track. So if you want to go through the rest of your, your points there, but we can dive deep if we want.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah, I mean, that's the whole point of this is to flesh this out, right? Like, You know, okay, so let's talk about the demand for such a business, right? And we got a comment from Julie on Instagram. There's a lot of frauds out there. It's a thing. Yeah, we know that, but let's talk about the demand for such a business stated in another way.

I'm not a lawyer, but if I was the facts of the case, number one is the premise, you know, likely not true. A single bigger desire out there that when an art specific marketing agency would deliver, right? There's nothing that artists or photographers would like more than solely focusing all of their time on the creation of their art or photography or process, then the marketing and or selling of it.

Now, as I say that aloud, you know, it sort of makes me think like, That's why the galleries were able to get away with what they were for so long. Right? They took 50%. Mm-Hmm. , all the selling. Now they didn't do any damn marketing for you and they didn't care about the long term, the longevity of your business or your brand.

Uh, in only as not at all. Is it, is it, is it satisfied As long as it helped them? Yeah. Yeah. As long as it helped them. You and I have talked to, you know, we talked to in upwards of three to 400 artists and photographers. A week. Week in week. Yes. For months at a time now. And I have to imagine that 99 percent of the ones that we've talked to, whether they're ready for such a business or not, would all say, yes, I'm interested.

And it's, it keeps bubbling up and all of these different facets. And so it's like the bigger question I have for you now, okay. You and I have talked to hundreds of artisan photographers. We know almost all of them would instantaneously want to hire such an agency. If there is such a demand, why are there none of them out there?

Do you have an answer on that one? Why are there I do if we know that there's that level of demand for an art specific marketing agency, why are there none of them out there? I mean, my wife, my wife, my wife runs analytics, okay, runs analytics or she has her PhD in statistics and six months ago she interviewed.

Uh, Hyundai, you know, like the car company Hyundai, they have an agency that just does Hyundai. And there's like 15 different agencies that just do car stuff. Nothing else. They just market cars, right? Focused. Why does not exist for art?

Nick Friend: Yeah, well, that's exactly where my deep dive was going to go. Okay.

That's exactly where I was going to go.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah.

Nick Friend: Julie said earlier, there's a lot of frauds out there and like, yeah, there's some frauds, but like a lot of the time, those people are actually not frauds. They're actually not frauds. They are. They're like, they're just consultants. They're generalists working in any industry, you know, and then you go to them and you say, I want more sales.

That's essentially what you're saying, right? Well, however you say it, I want more leads. I want more followers, but you really want more sales. And so they don't know your business at all. And so they're just a generalist. And so they go out there like, okay, well, let's Let's, why don't you buy this Instagram package or this SEO package or this, you know, Facebook ads package or whatever it is, or they're trying to sell you a course or they're trying to sell you this or that, you know, and the truth of the matter is they don't have a clue what is actually going to work for an art business, right?

So that's number one, there's more, there's multiple layers to this. So they don't know what to focus on to actually get you results. So while they actually tried. You know, and probably provided you with the service. It may have just not provided you with any value. Okay. So that's the first problem. You got to know what to focus on and where to focus.

And how to do it right, you know, cause otherwise you're just, all you're doing is providing services that don't mean anything. I mean like you can buy those right now, right? Like you can buy somebody to like increase your follower count, but guess what? Your follower count will be like 15 year old, you know, girls and boys that don't even care about ever buying your art and it just doesn't matter.

And so it's, it's a complete waste of your money. And most people don't even realize that, you know, but there's a second layer to this. There's a second layer. Okay. And the second layer I think is a really big problem. And it is, it's the reason why we have been reluctant to go this far, right. To start adding potentially agency type of services at our storefronts.

And we've more been like, we need to empower you guys. We need to empower you guys. It's always better. To empower the artists, to empower the entrepreneur, always better. Like if you can empower yourself, you're going to be a million times better off. Not even like a thousand, not even a hundred, like a million times better off.

Right. Because you're not going to get snowed by somebody, right. Um, you're going to learn the right expectations. You're going to learn so many things. Like if you, if there's ever like a really bad economy or something like that happens, you're always going to be able to fall back on your own skills.

Which is all good, right? All of these things are really good. And, and the more skills you have, this is the truth. The more skills you have that you can combine with whatever agency, the better off you're going to be. Like, you're going to get like, you know what I mean? One plus one equals three rather than like one plus zero might equal 0.

5. You know what I mean? It's one of those situations.

Patrick Shanahan: There's multiple ways to say that one to you, right? Like, when we talk about it all the time, it's like you, Nick are going By a McDonald's franchise. You'd better know how to do the ordering, you better know how to do HR, you better understand when the janitor crews come in and out, and how to make sure that that process is smooth, you better know how to flip the burgers, you better know how to make the fries, you better know how to make that fillet of fish, the nuggets, all the rest of it.

And, and there's that side of it. Okay. So until, you know, all of those things, you're never going to be a completely competent business owner of that McDonald's. You just, people can cut corners. Uh, they can snow you, uh, you know, there could be fraud going on. You just won't understand until, you know, all that.

So we have that on one side. Okay. Balancing, balancing that all out and understanding how important that is to, to own and run a business. The other. Which I think we could go on like six different abstractions on this more often than not is no agency or consultant that I normally see and we can talk about how this applies to Facebook ads and some other things.

Actively comes in and takes control of the entire thing holistically, because that's the only way that it happens. The thing that I constantly say, right, is everyone comes in and they say, how much do I need to spend on my marketing to get going, right? How much do I need to spend on my marketing on a monthly base to get going?

And my answer is the same always. Which is you have to be able to do 100 pushups first. Okay, and by 100 pushups, I mean you need to be able to hit the ground and in one setting go through 100 at once before you're ready to even spend money on your marketing. And it's so counterintuitive that thought, right?

Like, what does that actually mean? What it means is in order for you to spend money on your marketing and actually make it pay, and this is a nuance to many businesses, but specifically in the art industry, you have to be emailing on a regular basis before that. You need to be capturing emails. You need to be posting on the socials on a regular basis.

You need to be getting a sale when the time is right. Ideally, you're going live on Facebook talking to your buyers directly. You're having live art shows. You need to layer on all of these various different aspects of a robust marketing system. Okay, that's the 100 push ups. Now, once you get to the 100 push ups, Okay, then you can talk about hiring a consultant somewhere else.

But the problem is, is that none of the consultants or or let's just even say an agency or maybe this is the reason for an agency. I don't know. This is a really complicated topic. We're talking, we're talking it out, but I don't know of any that say, what is your email marketing look like? What is your funnel look like?

What is your lead capture look like? What's the auto responder on that lead capture? What are the mechanics of the sale? How do you omni channel market a sale all at once? Are you going live? What is the going live look like? What should that look like? And, and actively help you get to the 100 pushups. And we talk about why the consultants always fail.

No one can come in, and there's not a single solitary person in the world that exists. It's good enough to come in, run Facebook ads for an artist, independent of this other system, and make it profitable for the artist. It doesn't work that way, right? So, and this also like has broad implications, way bigger than the art world that we're in.

You know, 10, five years ago, agencies could be out there and they could do paid traffic. Okay. And what would happen, let's just say five years ago, even you could even say up to last year. You would pay an agency, even Nick and I have done this 15 to 20%, sometimes 10 percent of your Facebook spend, you get them to run your Facebook ads.

That used to be a profitable arrangement. If you had a mature business and you know, your revenue models all fleshed out, even that's going away because everything's getting a little bit harder. The competition is getting too high. It's not even that relationship works anymore. So this whole thing is so fraught with danger.

It's like, what was the Elon Musk line you had yesterday? You know, the hard problems, this hard problem, this is an extremely hard problem to solve, like, yeah, not

Nick Friend: hard. And, and, and, and I got to uncover another layer underneath this that I think is an extremely important layer that, you know, right, that no one might want to talk about, but I've got to tell the truth.

I got to tell the truth, right? It's our business mornings. We got to tell the truth. It's early, right? Little, little cold shower. With that coffee, I'm going to give a little cold shower. Okay. Here's one of the other reasons why it doesn't, why an art, uh, specific marketing agency doesn't exist is because the expectations of the typical Artist, business owner, small business owner is completely and utterly out of whack, completely.

And they want to spend, you know, like, and we haven't, we haven't, that's why we've never done this. Right. But they buy a service from the consultant for 30 days. They wonder why they don't have 10, 000 in sales and they're done. They quit. They're out. Right. And just, it's just the expectations of the entire business and not understanding You know, this basic concept of entrepreneurship in any industry, right?

That it takes three to five years to build anything significant. You know, and so it's the same, it's the same thing, Pat, as the, as what we know, what most people do is they, they take one stab at, they send a couple of emails and then they quit or they do a couple of social media posts for a month and then they quit.

Right. I didn't get my sales. I didn't get my sales. I, you know, online selling doesn't work. You know, I've never sold anything for my website or, you know, people like my social media posts, but they never come back to my website and buy. Right. Like they're just clueless. Totally clueless about this stuff.

But what happens is, they quit. They quit. So whether it's themselves quitting, right, or they hire an agency for a month, and then they quit, but either way, they're going to quit, you know? And so there's, there's a lot of bad, there's a lot of bad taste, a lot of bad blood out there from consultants. You know what I mean?

Where it's like, I don't want to touch, I don't want to touch a business You know, like that, that is going to have that expectation because I can't make them successful. I just can't with that right with that mentality. And so that's, that's also like a deeper, it's a deeper problem that makes this problem very hard, you know, because,

Patrick Shanahan: and ultimately to like another, another really important thing to point out.

And again, pattern recognition, we talked a hundred G a week, we have a huge customer base now. There's an 80 20 always, right? 80 percent are likely not full time. They have a side job. Their art career is their side hustle, right? Maybe 20 percent are full time. Maybe those percentages get skewed a little bit for, you know, the service based businesses, right?

Their service based business and the fine art is like a tiny little piece. But when you're not full time at your job, at selling art and photography online, and you have a full time job, you probably have kids too. Like, that's not easy. That's not easy. Like ultimately there's, there's, there's like, I just don't have the time, but I want to build this thing.

I eventually want this thing in an aspirational fashion to take over as my main job. Right. And I love that by the way, I love the fact that we're, that we're, that we're pushing people to, to, to, to get into that 20 percent and realize those dreams, it's an extremely rewarding thing for us, but it underscores even further.

Like, look, I do have the right perspective. I do know that this is going to take years. I do have a full time job and a wife or a husband or a partner or kids. And I would like to step on the gas harder, right? I would like to step on the gas and invest in this thing and get this thing going. Even in that scenario, you know, independent of what we do, there's no clear off.

There's no clear option out there for him. Right? Like, could you imagine an agency sitting down and saying, welcome, thanks for joining. Here's the contract and you look down at the contract term and it says three or five years, bring it back. You know, this is, I mean, this is a Horowitz book all over. This is the hard thing about hard things.

It's tough.

Nick Friend: Yeah. And, and I think also that like, you know, the last thing, like, like what often happens with an agency or a consultant is that somebody comes, like a business owner comes in, right. And an artist photographer, what we're talking generally now. So like any business owner comes to an agency and the business owner has tried to do everything they could.

Yeah. And they can't get the business going at all. Their product is essentially not selling. Right. It's like, they don't have traction yet. And they're expecting the marketing agency to rescue them. Right. And that never works. It's dead on arrival. Right. So you have to completely avoid that because a marketing agency can't get you traction.

You know, that's like, look, here's, here's, here's a, here's a, a major truth, a major truth for any entrepreneur that's listening to this right now. Okay. If you can't sell your product, nobody ever will. If you can't sell it, that's so true. If you can't sell it, if you can't go out there and sell three photographs.

Or three paintings. Nobody else ever will. Not me. And I consider myself pretty good at this stuff. Not you, Pat or anyone else, but you and I know long enough. We don't want to touch it with a 10 foot pole, right? Because at the end of the day, it has to be you. Okay. Nobody can sell it better than the creator themselves.

And so everyone else is going to be worse. You know, and it's going to create less of a connection and all of that stuff. And so if you can't sell your pieces, something is very, very wrong. And, um, and you shouldn't move forward until you fix whatever that is. Right. And you shouldn't be hiring anybody. You shouldn't be throwing good money after bad.

You should just go sell three pieces. It is not that hard to do. Right. It's hard for people who aren't willing to get out there. Yeah. Yeah. It's not, it's really not hard. Like I can take any photographer artists right now. I could go even in COVID, even in COVID. Right. And we could figure out a way to go sell three to five pieces, right?

Like we can figure out a way or not or not, or you won't sell it, but there is a way to get in front of people digitally. And if you don't have a following at all, like even friends and family and people who can share some stuff, like we know that that works, right? We have a validation playbook specifically for that.

But even as I was talking to you the other day, right. Cause you're, you're in Southern California and I'm like, are people still walking on the boardwalks, like on the piers and on the boardwalks and like, you know, like main street and Huntington beach and Newport beach and Laguna beach. Are people still walking around with masks on?

And you said to me, you're like, yeah, they are like, maybe it's not as crowded, but yeah, they're out there. Right. And I, and I was like, are they up in LA? Are they up in Venice beach? Are they up in Manhattan beach? Yeah, they are. They are. Right. So you could get out there with a couple of prints. And a major sale and, and use the exact same language and tactical and say, Hey, it's COVID right now.

I'm, you know, I'm having a COVID sale with your mask on with three pieces. You know, right there, ready to go at 50 percent off in person and, and you will have eyeballs walking by and Hey, guess what art is selling like crazy right now, like crazy. You know what I mean? Like we have all the proof, all the numbers, the data's everywhere.

It is literally everywhere at this point, right? Like in everywhere, like even Etsy, like they came out with like record, you know, numbers, you know, it's everywhere.

Patrick Shanahan: I've got the screenshot. I should read from it. But you.

Nick Friend: Do you know what I'm saying though? Like, it's like, if you can't do that, you can't do it.

You're not going to be able to do it. You have to be able to have, to have the gusto, at least a little hustle in you to get out there and sell those pieces. And it's not like you're going to have to do that every single weekend or every time, but you've got to be able to do that. And if you don't do that and you instead try to hire this agency and hire this and do all of that, you're running around the problem.

You're running around the problem and you are wasting your time.

Patrick Shanahan: A sort of a premise, not a premise, but like a pattern that we see again and again. And to give an analogy, it's like an art specific marketing agency, right? A whole bunch of people would want, would want to join one, would want to do it, would want to, would want to sign up today.

And to Nick's point, it's sort of like, to do that, If you've not been able to sell it on your own, it's sort of like you're, you're, you're going to like a college level soccer coach and saying, teach me to play soccer. And you've never played a game in your life, right? Like you have to play the game yourself and get those fundamentals yourself a little bit before you can even go and work well with the coach.

Sort of a bad one because the coach could still help out someone that's never started. Until you've qualified the product yourself, you're in no man's land. You're in a world of hurt. Now, let me tell you, our, our customer base is literally littered with stories of people that were about to hang up their boots, they were about to quit.

They're about to, they were about to say like, look, this is just, this is just a hobby. It's never going to be a business for me. And it's not that they were a bad artist. It's just the niche they were going after the medium that they were, they were working in the market. Didn't want. The market didn't want to figure that out, figured it out.

The market told him it just couldn't get traction. You know, both of those cases, they pivoted and look where they are now. Both of them are killing it. And you know, it's even crazier. I'm not going to go names on this one. We have a gal that was painting a specific type of a style. Okay. Getting nowhere, uh, eight hours a day in the booth, right.

On her feet away from her family, not making a bunch of money. She's like, what am I doing? Pivoted. Okay. Business took off, it exploded. You know what she's doing now? She's right back to the stuff that she was painting before. But because she's built up such a brand and a halo effect, it's actually working out just wonderful for her.

Because it's not just about the style of the art. It's her. It's her. Yes, exactly. That's a wild story. But again, it really is,

Nick Friend: you know, as we've seen these businesses, as we've seen these businesses grow, like at our storefronts, you know, um, like that's, that's been one of the more recent phenomenon that I like patterns that I've seen that I'm just falling in love with.

Right. It's just like, It's, it's, it's like food for your soul to see that, um, when, when an artist or a photographer is doing the right marketing, right? Like they're doing it the right way and they're, and they're building the connection between them and their audience. You know what I mean? And, and the only way that you do this is by going direct.

It's direct to consumer, right? When you do it the right way, what we are seeing is that the people who are successful, um, you know, and even moderately successful, it's not even like, you know, at the highest level we're seeing that, um, the clients who came in and bought a piece of one niche that they had.

Right. I'm just going to use some examples. Right. So like, maybe it's like, you know, beaches or something like, so this person is marketing their beaches because they couldn't get their, their, their African wildlife to sell. Right. Couldn't sell it. Just couldn't get it to sell. And so their beaches are selling.

Now, all of a sudden, some of their customers, some of their collectors, right. People who bought one piece or more are starting to buy the other stuff. Right. And we're seeing that happen. And it makes me so happy because like, what does it tell you? Like, what is the lesson in that? The lesson is Find a niche that works, right?

Find a niche that works. Don't be overly emotional about it. And then you'll end up selling everything that you have, right? You might say you're going to sell more of something than others. It's just the way that it is, but it kind of comes full circle. And why does this happen? Right? This only happens.

This only happened. This magical situation only happens when you're doing great marketing. End of the story. That's it. When you're doing great marketing and you've solved the marketing problem, that's when that happens. It doesn't happen

Patrick Shanahan: any other way. So true. Like this is not going to be the last time we cover this topic.

It's too deep. It's got too many layers. It's, it's too hot button, but it is a hard problem. It is a hard problem. And by the way, as we look through the comments, I don't see them littered with agency names. Do you? I do not. I don't either. Well, I think we, I think we cover it more in future episodes. I think, you know, if, if you're out there and you're listening to this, or maybe you're getting it on the podcast feed, we're really fired up about this show, our business mornings.

We love talking through these hot button art issues, and we've got a ton of great ones coming. The mechanics on the show is that we're going to be dropping it. A minimum twice weekly to start out. We're playing around with with times, but it's gonna be Tuesday, Thursday mornings. It's gonna be live on all the socials.

It's gonna go on the podcast feed. You can get it on YouTube after the fact. It's gonna be on our website. You can find it on all the, on all the best places. But I would say, you know, a better step, a better next step than just watching. And of course, I want you to watch. Of course, I want you to listen. Of course.

I want you to enjoy it, and I hope you enjoy it. Is to get on an art business workshop. We run those things thrice weekly. It's a zoom call with Nick, myself, and some various other members of our marketing team. And we talk about these issues. We talk about your specific situation. Uh, we try to get your drains unclogged and it's free website.

Yeah. And it's free. You can request a demo, get those any which way you want, but that's it. The art, the art specific marketing agency will one exist. In today's day and age ever. I'm just not sure, but we will see you again on Thursday. Well, one final announcement. Are you going

Nick Friend: to, well, we got to say, I mean, what's, what's coming right around the corner, the fourth quarter, the fourth quarter is coming, you guys, fourth quarter is coming.

So fourth quarter, if you didn't know is the biggest art selling time in the year, October, November, December. Okay. The marketing that you're supposed to be doing to properly execute. Um, it begins in October. Okay. And so, um, what, what we try to tell everybody, like right now, it's August. This August is normally our biggest month in like historically, right?

We get the most people signing up for our storefronts in August. They should have signed up in January, but you know, procrastination is what it is. And August is a very big month because it's like, you still got enough time to like get live, get your, get your, you know, your bearings, get everything set up, get your marketing going a little bit, and then you're right into Q4.

So um, yeah, fourth quarter is coming up. So if you're interested in learning more about our storefronts, check them out. You want to learn more about what we do and get some details. What you want to do next is just request a demo. Um, you can do that. Um, if you go to our website at artstorefronts. com, there's always a, a big button in the upper right hand corner that says request a demo, fill that out.

It takes like 20 seconds and somebody will get back to you. But I also mentioned this because we are running a A Q4 special, a Q4 special, right? It's like an early bird special that if you're going to get on board early and, uh, and get in this month, then we're going to give you a deal because, uh, it becomes sort of a mad dash, you know, in those final, the final months, right beforehand, September and October.

That's when the real procrastinators are like, I gotta go. I gotta go. I gotta do this. I gotta do this. And it gets a little crazy for our team. We literally have to staff up like we're already staffing up like for the holidays, you know, like we have to be thinking about that just because so many people are trying to get their website live before Black Friday.

So, um, yeah. So anyways, um,

Patrick Shanahan: that's a pretty good thing that's going on. Good stuff. We got some feedback that maybe we want to get these things going on Mondays instead of Tuesdays and Thursdays. Take that into take that into account. But. We're feeling our way through it. The first live art business morning.

Oh, it's not going on. Who knows first, but the fact that we're doing it live, a podcast live multiple days a week on all the socials. I'm pleased with it. So on that

Nick Friend: note, yeah. Share it with your friends to share it with your friends. We get more people. We might, we might end up doing it five days a week.

Who knows? I don't, I don't want to commit to that, but Pat and I are known, we're known to go live a lot, you know? So yeah, share it. Let's get some more people on these things and, uh, then it'll get really interesting.

Patrick Shanahan: It will indeed. All right. Thanks for listening. And as always, have a great day. All right, guys.

Take care.