048: Smart Artists don't run ads... instead they do this. Introducing "The Loop"

In this episode of the art marketing podcast, Patrick introduces 'The Loop,' a powerful marketing strategy for artists and photographers that involves running giveaways to generate attention, capture email addresses, start conversations, and drive sales. He explains the two-prong effort of the loop: offering something to win with actions required for entry and announcing a winner with discounts for non-winners. Patrick highlights its versatility for online and offline scenarios, discusses the importance of consistency, and offers creative ways to implement and supercharge the loop. He also addresses common questions and the effectiveness of leveraging giveaways over traditional ads.

Podcast Transcribe

Patrick Shanahan: [Music] Coming up on today's edition of the art marketing podcast, smart artists don't run ads. Instead, they do this: introducing the loop [Music]. I will define the loop, what it is at its core, how to think about it, and how to use it in different scenarios both online and offline. Also, how to supercharge it. Long-time listeners of this pod will know what the loop is, or I should say, have certainly heard about it before. The loop is known as a print, merch, commission, original, whatever giveaway. The objective of the loop is to generate attention. It's a general marketing activity to capture email addresses, start conversations, and, yes, generate sales. In succinctly defined terms, it's a two-prong effort. One, something on offer that they can win, they have to do something to enter to win, and there's limited time to enter. That's number one. Number two, you announce the winner, and everybody that didn't win gets a discount that expires quickly. That is the loop, this two-prong marketing initiative. It's two beautiful psychological plays combined into one simple and elegant marketing initiative. It can be applied with a great level of diversity, situational variety, and creativity. It works in all sorts of scenarios. The loop is kind of like your favorite hot sauce; you can put it on everything. I love hot sauce; I put Sriracha on everything, but some other hot sauces on everything as well.

Moreover, this concept of the loop has been applied and is applied regularly by a whole bunch of different industries. I came up with this, or I should say, on my door before I started recording, there was a door hanger flyer—one of those ones that hangs on your doorknob—by some realtors in my neighborhood giving away a stand-up paddleboard if I do some such nonsense before August 25th. There are a lot of people out there doing this, and there's a reason they're doing it. It works. It's worked for a long time. It's extremely effective. I titled this thing, "Smart artists don't run ads, instead do this," and I meant that. There are two types of artists and photographers that run ads. Number one, artists that understand the game, namely, art is not an impulse purchase. To get an ROI on ads, they need to have regular and consistent marketing systems in place to nurture the attention the ads are generating. Lastly, to win in ads, you have to be consistent over a long period. These folks are serious operators, understand their business, and will win, but it's still really hard. Making paid ads, Meta, Google ads, or in your local paper, doesn't matter what it is, making that work for an art or photography business is the first group of artists and photographers that run ads. The second group are those looking for the shortcut. There's a reason why I always tell people and yell at them not to boost posts. It's not that it just doesn't work, but I know the majority of those folks are just not serious about growing their art business. They're looking for something quick and easy, thinking it's going to get them there. Everyone knows it; you don't want to work on your marketing or do any of the hard stuff, and you somehow think there's a shortcut out there. They think that boost post button is really just a shortcut button. It's not. Here's the beautiful thing in all of this stuff: the premise underpinning both the smart operator, the smart artist that understands ads, and the shortcut artist is a sound one. It's a sound premise even if the paid ads route is a difficult, damn near impossible, bad way to get there. That premise is specifically that, in order to operate an art business, you need to pay for attention. It doesn't all just happen organically, and it takes way longer to do it organically. Investing in the business is a sound way to go about it. I sort of like to think about growing plants in pots. I love gardening; I love putting plants in pots. I know that if I feed those plants with fertilizer, I'm going to get healthier, happier plants that grow quicker, which is what I'm looking for. You are looking for the same results in your business. You want them to be growing quicker. Your business is really no different.

The beautiful thing is, when you're able to update your thinking to realize a simple truth, the cost of the print, the merch, the commission, the original giveaway is really no different than the money you might invest in an ad on Facebook, Instagram, Google, Twitter (now X), YouTube, or a magazine. When you learn to look at that cost, what it costs to print and ship that thing as an ad cost, it tends to change the way you think about it. As simple as it sounds, most people can't wrap their heads around that fact. The cost to print and ship the thing is just a more effective way of running an ad. It's just an ad. Let's go deeper on this. I want to really unpack it. By the way, it's amazing on this podcast just how much in this whole journey we use the C word, isn't it? Consistency is everything. When my customers are doing well, let's say, folks we've struggled in art storefronts, like, what's the line that an art business crosses until you should openly and honestly have the ads conversation with them? We've struggled to come up with all kinds of thresholds, revenue thresholds, follower thresholds, and it's still hard. It's still hard to this day because it's really, really hard to teach people to properly leverage ads and how to use them. But let's just assume for a second that when my customers are doing well, over $50,000 in sales a year, and they are selling consistently, meaning month in and month out, multiple transactions a month, that's a good time to start the ads conversation.

Patrick, am I ready to start running ads? I want to invest in the business. What are your thoughts? Do you have a workshop? Do you have a playbook? How should I do it? For the last couple of years, I've answered that the same way. Yes, you're ready. The key is consistency. If you're at that $50,000 threshold, if you're selling consistently month in and month out, multiple transactions per month, you're likely ready. An art business of your size should be running Meta ads to your warm audience and traffic consistently. I'm not going to go into the difference between warm and cold, but if you get it, you get it. Specifically, these business owners, when they ask me these questions, need to start thinking about their warm ads in the same way they think about their studio rent or a power bill or a cable bill at home. Once your business reaches a certain threshold, the assumption is, because you've gotten to that level, you know you have art that the market wants. You're already marketing consistently; otherwise, you wouldn't achieve those results in the first place. You have a business that is starting to hum. Knowing that, it's time to approach advertising for your art or photography business, treating it no differently than your monthly rent or a monthly power bill or a monthly cable bill. When you frame it that way, it sort of rewires your brain. The fourth quarter is coming up, and I know this is a great time to be selling my art, so I'm going to come up with a big ads campaign, and I'm going to spend $2,000 on ads over the course of a month, a month and a half. Not that I'm going to see how I do. Well, that's a good idea; there's no better time to be advertising than the fourth quarter. It's a bad idea because what you're doing is training your head to think that somehow paid ads and paid advertising is a game that can be won in short little sprints. In my experience, it is extremely difficult to do that. You need consistency. You need to make it part of your regular business. You need to treat it like that cable bill, in which case, you know you're going to be spending $150 a month for 12 months, and it's just a cost of doing business. You do that, and you're going to win.

I go back to consistency, this notion of consistency, and how important it is for the loop, for the giveaway strategy. It's no different. I go back to the episode I did five or six episodes ago, ten episodes ago. In that one, what did I mention about doing shows? There are in-person shows. You've got to do three to five of them a year to win. Why is that? Because inevitably, the math works out that some of those shows and fairs are going to be hits, some are going to be duds, some are going to be home runs, some are going to have inclement weather, and some are going to be in the middle. The way that you hedge for that and ensure that you win is by doing enough of them so that you have a couple of good ones, a couple of bad ones, and on balance, you win. The loop, this notion of the loop when running a print giveaway, same gameplay, it's no different. Sometimes the loop will work incredibly well, sometimes it'll work okay, sometimes in the middle. The key is the frequency and consistency in which you run it. That is how you win on the loop, no different than the shows and fairs, no different than your marketing period. A common refrain I get when we're teaching our customers to do this or talking about it is, "Hey, Patrick, I ran the loop. It was crickets. Barely got anybody. Not only that, but I messaged the winner to give them what they won because they entered. Only seven people entered, including my mother, and I didn't even get a response. I didn't even hear back." In my mind, because

 I've been doing this for a long time, I hear what they're saying, but I actually don't hear what they're saying. All I do is think back about all the hundreds and thousands of ads I spent hours and hours working on over the years. Not just the ads, but the landing pages, the lead magnets, all of it. Do you have any idea how many of those ads utterly, totally, and completely failed, some of which got large investments? Guess what? That's okay. That's part of the game. Not every ad you write is going to be a home run. Some are going to be utter, total, and complete duds. It's part of the game, and it is exactly part of the game with the loop as well. That's why you need to think of it as just running ads. You get going on it, you mix it up, and you never stop running it. It needs to be done consistently. Often, I'll also get, "Well, you know, Patrick, I ran this thing. I ran the loop, and I did it here, I did it at a show, and you know what I got? I got a bunch of looky-loos and tire kickers, the types of people that don't have any money, that are not interested in art, and all they want to do is just enter to win something. So it was worthless; it was a worthless endeavor." Guess what? That happens too. That happens all the time with ads too. Do you know how many ads we run at Art Storefronts where people show up who have no intention of ever selling art, or any understanding of selling art, or have ever sold a piece of art? They're tire kickers. They're never going to sign up. It's okay. That's just a cost of doing business as well. A hundred percent of the people you attract are not going to be home runs to the business. It doesn't matter. You don't need 100% of the people to win; you only need a couple.

I want to talk about some creative ways that this whole thing can go down, some applications you might not be aware of, and then I want to teach you how to supercharge it. Let's talk about variations of the loop. This thing, like I said, hot sauce earlier, goes on everything. It's the Swiss Army knife of marketing tactics. It works online as well as offline, as well as a combo of both at the same time. It works primarily for going for the email address but also to incentivize other behaviors, which I'll talk about in a second. You have complete flexibility in what you're choosing to give away; it doesn't even matter what the "it" is. Also, in the terms, how long you run the giveaway, when you announce the winner, you have complete flexibility in the discount and the scarcity at the end. Knowing all that, the awesomeness available from the loop in its various different variations, let's roll through a few. I'll give you some good ideas. You know, I'll start at the top. A retail store opens in a strip mall or a shopping center in your neighborhood, and you know the whole thing went out, a new thing came in, right? Sometimes they'll hire one of those sign-tossing guys, you know, that spins it up, spins it down, to get you to stop. Sometimes it'll be balloons, sometimes it'll be one of those giant air-compressor-driven little dancing things with the legs and the arms that go flailing all about. Look at me, look at me. The point of it is, those are great ways for those individual stores to introduce themselves to the neighborhood and get some attention. We use a digital version of that for everyone that signs up for Art Storefronts. When your site goes live, it takes credit cards, your art is up there, you're ready to open the shop. What do we do? We have them run the loop. We have them run a loop as a way to introduce themselves to the neighborhood, so to speak, to let folks know they're open for business, to generate some attention. It's great in that capacity. You can run the loop for no other reason than you're in a good mood. Hey guys, it's Friday. I had a great week. To celebrate, I'm running a Friday-to-Sunday giveaway on tote bags. Go here, enter, winner announced on Monday night. You can do a story of the moment. You can run the loop as some extra hype when you want to promote a thing. You're releasing a new series or a new merch product, or you're having a show, and you can drive some extra attention when you bolt the loop into that existing marketing. So you're introducing the new thing, you're having a show, you have a new series, you just won an award. It could be anything, and you start promoting it by throwing the loop on top of it. Because at the end of the day, it's just another way to get some additional attention and some eyeballs on your marketing message. It's a fantastic way to do it.

Another question I get all the time in office hours is, "Hey Patrick, I got featured on the news or written up in a newspaper or won an award or did something else. How can I best promote that? How can I best get the most ROI out of that?" Tell you what, tell everyone you know about it and run a loop on top of it to celebrate it. I just got featured in such and such, to celebrate I'm giving away a such and such. It's a fantastic way to drive additional eyeballs to make the marketing effort interesting. You can run the hybrid loop. No different than your Prius; it runs on gas and electricity. In this case, you can run the loop in the real world, in the real-world physical in-person art selling scenario, in conjunction with doing it online. I talked about this in the Ultimate Guide to Shows and Fairs a few episodes back, but the idea is that you're doing an in-person fair show, you've got the fishbowl in the booth, you're asking people to drop their email address inside the fishbowl for the opportunity to win a print. You can also, to get extra ROI out of that effort, return on investment, you can let your entire existing list know, "Hey guys, doing a print giveaway down here. I know not everyone can come to the show. I know you're not all geographically in the same town, so I figured I might as well give you a way to enter as well. All you have to do is reply to this email, reply to this social post, go here to the webpage, put in the email address, and you're entered to win too." So there's the hybrid; it's working both places at the same time. The versatility on this guy is just absolutely incredible. You can switch up what you're asking them to do. Yes, I prefer email. Email is usually best, but there are opportunities to leverage the loop when you need something else going on. Long-term listeners of this podcast will remember years ago when chatbots were a big thing—they're kind of coming back now, by the way—but when chatbots were a big thing and before Facebook killed this, I would have my customers run the loop, in which case, to enter to win, not only did they have to like a post, not only did they have to share it, not only did they have to comment on it, but they had to do all of that and give up their email. Which is really, when you think about it, why the loop is so brilliant at the end of the day. These people are entering to win something. How are they going to find out if they are the winner? They're going to give you their email address. You can have a number of different things that you're asking these folks to do to enter to win. Oftentimes, the number of things that you can ask these folks to do is proportionate to the size of the thing that's being given away. You're not going to get so many people to do so many things if you're just giving away a mug or a tote bag. But what if you're giving away an original or a huge limited edition or two limited editions? The point is, you don't have to do that every single solitary time. Just understand the versatility of the loop and how many different ways it can be put into play. You live in a busy town and you drive a bit? Put a QR code on the back of your car with the piece and tell people, "Scan to win." You're doing a print giveaway. Maybe you're driving across the states in your RV, you're doing your Snowbird thing. Get it going on the side of the RV. Don't want to put it on your car? Okay, fine. Is your art hanging in a doctor's office or a restaurant or a cafe, a coffee shop? You can leave a little placard that says, "Enter to win free print by talented local artist such and such. Scan the QR code." There are so many interesting ways to put this into effect.

I opened it up talking about the fact that down here on my floor is this door hanger that the realtors put on my door, right? To enter to win a stand-up paddleboard. Well, are you somewhere where there's a ton of new developments going in? You could find some kids on rollerblades, you could make one of those door hangers, you could say, "Welcome to the neighborhood. Doing a print giveaway. By the way, I also paint and photograph houses that make great wall gifts in a new home," and pay those kids to go rollerblade the neighborhood. Honestly, there are so many different ways to deploy this. I could go on for days and days. I know I'm the marketing guy, right? But honestly, if I was the marketing guy and someone just gave me art and said, "Hey, say that this is your art, you need to run a business," I would be running the loop 52 weeks a year. I would be cycling through all the different offerings that I have to educate my customers about them: acrylic, canvas, paper, metal, wood, commissions, and all the various different merch items. Or maybe I'm selling classes, or maybe I'm selling tours in the national parks, or whatever I'm selling. You can use this just about anywhere, you can use it all the time, and let me just tell you, it is so much more powerful than ads. It is so much more powerful than that. But inevitably, while teaching this, while encouraging people to do this, I do get a number of common questions. I want to address those, and then we can get into how to supercharge it.

The first question that always seems to come out is, "Patrick, what do I do about my existing list?" The whole point of this thing is to capture new leads because, well, the whole point of this thing is a number of different things, but you think the whole point of it is to capture new leads because that's pretty much 99% of artists' and photographers' biggest problems: you don't have a big enough audience, i.e., you need new leads that you can email, you can let know, you can market to, you can run sales to. Okay, great. So the whole thing is to capture new leads, so why would I email my existing list? That seems like a really stupid idea to do that. These people already know me, they've already bought, they've already purchased, already had their email. It's a great question, and how I answer it is with a quick point. Number one, the loop is flexible. You can alert your customers or buyers or not alert them. You can alert some of them and not alert others. Totally up to you, totally flexible. My contention is that you should, though. The beauty of the loop as a marketing technique is the optionality of it all, and the optionality in this case is you have multiple ways when you run the loop to win. You have the opportunity to win the leads, capture new email addresses, you have the ability for conversations to get started, and yes, of course, after the fact, you're trying to make sales as well. But at the end of the day, the whole damn initiative is really just marketing in a fun way for you to let people know you exist. You're creating art to stay relevant, to stay top of mind, to give yourself an additional leg up than just an average everyday social media post or average everyday email. The giveaway spices it up.

I want to talk about conversations, though. Yes, I think you should always email your list. These people, your friends, your family, your followers, your buyers, your collectors, they deserve to have a little fun. They deserve to want to win things, even if they have purchased something from you. I think people often underestimate that your job as an artist or a photographer is to have as many conversations as possible. Have them with folks that have not yet bought your art, have them with folks that have. Never shy away from having one, try and have more of them, lean into them, cultivate them, go after them. I'm reminded of the Jonas little strategy from a few episodes back. Now, given his price points are really high, right? What did he say? Can't remember, eight thousand, nine thousand, ten thousand, twelve, whatever it is, multiple thousands. He tries to have a face-to-face Zoom call with every single solitary person that inquires about his art, all of them. He wants to have a Zoom call with them, assuming he thinks they're qualified. My position is that regardless of where you are and what price you charge, until you're selling at such a level of volume that it would not be feasible to have those conversations with everybody, my point is, my idea is, that you should be doing it. You should be doing it too, because it's how you get to know folks, it's how you start to build a relationship, how you turn buyers into collectors, how you work on upsells, how you cultivate those relationships, which will turn into greater and bigger opportunities. All kinds of good comes from having a conversation with your potential buyers, right? Buyers and potential buyers. How you facilitate it is irrelevant. I don't care if it's a phone call, I don't care if it's a Zoom call, I don't care if it's a FaceTime. It could even be an email, although I'd prefer you talk to them on the phone. If you can get face-to-face or voice-to-voice, you're winning. You're winning, and it's way better than just sending them to your website. I feel like the notion of having an e-commerce enabled website, having a website, is that you can hide behind that thing, that somehow you create the work, it goes up there, people magically find you, and they buy it, and you don't have to have a damn conversation. The conversations are the most valuable thing you could be doing. I don't want to go too far down the conversations rabbit hole, but the loop is extremely effective at getting the folks on your list and new people's attention. If you have someone on your list that's a collector, Patrick, they spent $10,000 with me. These folks are not going to want to enter to win a stupid set of coasters. First of all, how do you know that? And number two, I don't care if they don't want to enter to win the stupid set of coasters. I care that you got their attention when you wouldn't have otherwise, and as a result of that, they realize they've got some more wall space they do want to talk to you about. So have the conversations. Absolutely, absolutely send it to your existing list. Understand how powerful that can be, and it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what they purchased, what they didn't purchase. It looks and it comes off not like a sale, but like a fun marketing activity, despite the fact there's a sale at the tail end of it. People just really thoroughly enjoy it.

The final FAQ that I get on this all the time is really just the chicken and the egg problem. You know, the old, which came first, the chicken or the egg? Patrick, I've tried doing this giveaway, I've tried running the loop, but my audience is just not big enough, or it's always the same folks. They already follow me. I'm looking to leverage it to grow my audience. What can I do about that? I don't want to reach the same old people; I need new ones. Now we're talking. I love that question. So let's talk about how to supercharge the loop. The loop is just so insanely versatile. It is the wheel that you can roll around with you just about anywhere and deploy it every time you think it can help. One of the beautiful ways to do this is you find accounts that have a ton of attention. Internally, we refer to these folks as curators. We had the curator strategy. If you're an Art Storefronts customer, you've heard that plenty of times. I'm sure some of you that are not customers have heard about it. It doesn't matter. The idea is that you contact a brand, an account, an influencer, an Instagram account, a Facebook account, a YouTube channel, a podcast, anyone that's anywhere that has a large account, that has an audience that you believe is representative of the type of folks that would be interested in your art. You've got a person with a huge IG following; you send them a direct message. You've got somebody that's on Twitter (now X); you send them a message or you at mention them. You've got a podcast; you email the podcast. Anybody with attention, if they have a large audience, they are creating content for their large audience. These folks are always looking for ways to entertain and provide value for their audience. You contact these folks and you pitch them the loop. "Hey, so-and-so, you have an audience that looks like my audience. Love what you're doing. How would you feel about doing a giveaway?" You shut up. You see what they say. You make it easy on these folks to do it. Super easy for them to say yes, and you will be blown away at just how easy these deals are to get over the line. I didn't ask Meg about this on the last episode. I'm going to send her a message and find out, but my guess is she was probably one for one on it. She had that Ted Lasso look. She found a Ted Lasso account with whatever she said, 450,000 followers. She offered the person that runs that account the opportunity to run the loop. She would give the Ted Lasso mug away for free, and what ended up happening? She sold so many of them she essentially broke the internet. Her credit card company shut it down for fraud because she sold so many of them. In addition to acquiring a bunch of additional customers, she went and picked up a ton of followers, some small percentage of which will eventually convert. She ran the loop and then supercharged it. Instead of paying Facebook or Meta, YouTube, or Twitter, or anyone else for ads to target fans of Ted Lasso, no, she found a Ted Lasso account. She contacted that person directly. She ran the loop and she won. Huge. It does not matter what your niche is either. There are so many niche accounts out there that even you, abstract, difficult, how do I find an account types, can get this done. It just takes a little bit of creativity on where you think your audience might be hanging out. It could be an interior decorator, it could be a wall paint company that uses the color wall paint you like, or it doesn't. It's very easy to spend some time doing some homework on people that you think will like your niche. It could be local, local to a city, local to a state, musicians

 that you enjoy, or publications that would dovetail with what you do. Any and all of the above all works. I realize I could do an entire episode, and likely should, on the tradecraft of how you go after these big accounts with the loop. How to find them, how many you need to contact, how often you should do this, what to do before, during, and after. If I get motivated, I'll make that episode. In fact, leave me some iTunes reviews, five stars, and tell me to make the curator episode. If I see some of those, I may actually do it.

Here are the takeaways. Two takeaways. If you want to win on this, independent of how you go about it and all the tactical stuff I normally like talking about, in most cases, what I see when people do this out there is, if you make it as easy as possible to do it, the account will say yes. Do not include a bunch of friction. If they're like, "Yeah, I just want to give it away, and I'll only give you an ad mention," say yes. Go do it. If you can somehow work it out so they come back to your site and put in an email address, great. Just make it easy on them. Don't make it a pain, don't make it a headache. Make it seem awesome and easy, and something fun that they make it easy to say yes to. If you do that, you'll win. If you realize that the way you win is how many arrows you fire at the target, not one or two, but ten, you'll win. Those two things and you're in business. In most of the cases that I've seen, the folks that intuitively, naturally get this, you win once and you have the ability to go back to the well again. Meaning, you ran the loop, you made it non-friction for these folks, it was easy for them to say yes. Non-friction is not always... you didn't introduce any friction. You made it very easy for them to say yes. You made it very easy for them to say, "Yeah, I'm going to do this. I will expose you, artist, you creative, you photographer, to my massive audience that I worked my butt off to generate because you just made this so easy." What ends up happening is, it's a win. Everyone has a good time, we're all feeling warm and fuzzy about it, and then three months down the line, six months down the line, you do it again. And then another three months down the line, you do it again. And then they want to do something fun for a charity at Christmas, they're going to call you. What I see time and time again is that when you get one of these over the line, you look at the results, you're like, "This is a great account, I want to do it again." You can do it again and again and again, and sometimes over years and years and years, the relationship just deepens each time.

That is the loop, you guys. That's the loop. Q4 is coming, the biggest art selling time of the year, and we still have a couple of months. I think 50 days, 49 days, something like that. This is absolutely a great way ahead of the biggest art selling time of the year to start building an audience, to start letting people know you exist, that you have learned photography for sale. The expense of shipping the thing is just the cost of running an ad. That's all it is. I want you to think about it that way. You'll understand it, it'll click. You're not giving away your art; you're just running ads. [Music] On that note, thanks for listening, and as always [Music]. Alright [Music].