Growing a successful art business requires much more than doing seasonal art fairs and throwing some images on Etsy and related websites (which don’t work).

With Art Storefronts, a website is not just a website – at least, not as many artists traditionally think they are.

When you have an enterprise platform that is designed for artists to help you sell more art, you are instead leveraging your website as software to grow your business. It should therefore be utilized as much as possible with your offline strategy.

Here are a few ways that other artists are currently using the ASF platform to augment their offline sales strategy:

1. Have an iPad at your booth – At a local art fair, allow people to browse any image, any size, any media type right there at your booth.

2. Use a TV monitor connected to your laptop – When manning a booth at an art fair, blow people’s minds by showing them your art displayed on a wall over a couch.

Do it for them, or let them play with it. Ask people who are just browsing, “Would you like to see how this will look in a living room setting with your wall color?” You’ll create a more personal engagement, and be one step closer to earning their business.

3. Offer to email images directly to the customer – Just use the email tool on your product page – it will email the image to them directly and link back to the buying page where they can purchase it.

At the same time, when you use this email tool, a contact is automatically created in your contact manager, which means you’ve got them in your database and can use our amazing Social Pro Feature to become friends with them on Facebook. And, in doing so, expose them to all your future Facebook posts which they can then share with their friends, creating virality.

4. Connect with interior designers – let them know they can use your website as a design tool to outfit homes, offices, restaurants, hotels.

5. Bring your entire catalogue – Pricing, and designer tools with you at all times in your pocket so you can close a deal anytime, anywhere without needing your computer, printed out pricing lists, etc.

Don’t explain how a print will proportionally fit into a space and look with a specific wall color (and frame, if you offer them) – show them.

6. Utilize your contact manager – Notify contacts when you are doing an art show and have something new and exciting going on at the booth, and encourage them to come see you (even provide a coupon they can use at the booth if they come). Use the share emailing tool to show them a teaser image.

7. Have a signup list – A drop-your-business-card in the fishbowl works too at art fairs. Do anything you can to collect leads at your shows offline so you can try to convert them into customers after the show – and, so you can contact those who actually bought something to buy more.

You need the contact manager and a way to accept these transactions. This is all about leveraging your offline traffic and one-off sales and actually turning them into online, repeat customers who are connected with you as an artist on an ongoing basis.

8. Email the signup list you collected at the show IMMEDIATELY after – Within a few days at the most, give your new group of contacts an insane offer (like a buy 1 get one free).

You will convert more sales and actually get new customers rather than never getting a dollar from those people ever again.