Becoming a Professional Artist: 10+ Marketing Tools You Must Have

Photo caption: If you dream of becoming a professional artist, having the right digital tools can help. Image by ptra from Pixabay.

If you want to learn how to become a professional, self-employed artist in the 21st century, it’ll be helpful for you to learn about some tech tools. 

True enough, we do embrace traditional media, like graphite and oil paints here, but we also know that remarkable and innovative art careers come from keeping up with current technology.

Fortunately, Jake Dunn, creator of the Milan Art Institute’s social-learning platform, Art Club, has some advice about which tech tools for artists you should think about incorporating into your art business. 

Marketing for artists can sometimes be a challenge. Fortunately, these tools are designed to help artists with all aspects of art marketing. 

After all, creating art is only one aspect of becoming a professional artist. Some of your time will be spent marketing your work as well. 

This post represents the first post in a series of posts that cover marketing for artists. 

Marketing for Artists: First Things First

For any marketing campaign to be successful, it’s important for you to know your goal for the campaign. In other words, what’s the desired outcome that you want? 

If you don’t know your goal for your marketing campaign, how can you measure the success of the campaign? 

It’s kind of like they say in Alice in Wonderland...

If you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there.

What’s more, knowing your goal allows you to determine which digital tools you’ll need. 

Marketing Tools for Artists

You don’t use just one tool when you’re trying to create an exceptional painting. The same is true when you’re working on becoming a professional artist. The most successful self-employed artists use a number of digital tools, including social media platforms, blogs and more. 

The following list of marketing tools for artists will allow you to mobilize your fan base and help you gain momentum. 

Here are a few of the tools Jake recommends. This list represents an overview of each of the tools and the marketing methods. In later blog posts, we’ll cover the different categories in more depth.

Website: 

If you want to become a professional artist, you’ll need to have a website so that people can find you on the web. 

Here are some possible companies to choose from as you’re developing your artist website. Most of these websites are low-cost, have fairly good speeds, business features and most come with easy-to-use templates. 

That said, we do recommend you do more research to decide which one would work best for you.

Squarespace

Shopify

Webflow

Web Hosting:

Go Daddy

Social Proof Art Marketing Tools:

Fomo

Print-on-Demand:

Printful

Art of Where

Printify

Pixels

Email Marketing Platforms:

MailChimp

sendinblue

Social Media Marketing Tools for Artists:

ManyChat (Send newsletters via Facebook Messenger) 

Facebook Pixel

The above tools for artists count as just a few of the tools that Jake recommends. They should work whether you work in digital art or fine art. 

Finally, a business plan is an important step in your art business. If you need more guidance for this, you might consider signing up for our Mastery Program, which teaches artists the steps to becoming self-employed artists.

Final Thoughts on Marketing for Artists 

Becoming a professional artist requires you to have gained mastery over your art materials, as well as mastery over some important digital tools for artists. 

These include having a website where you can post information about your art, your artist statement and free stuff to give to your collectors. Your site is also the place for you to publish valuable content, like creative blog posts about your art to attract new art collectors.

Additionally, you’ll want to think about your email marketing strategy. Most website-building platforms allow you to create a branded email address for yourself. Some even allow you to send a newsletter to the people on your mailing list.

Finally, no marketing plan for artists would be complete without social media. If social media marketing doesn’t play a major role in your marketing plans, you may want to consider adding a social media component to your art business. 

Doing this allows you to inspire and motivate your collectors, as well as to put your artistic proficiency on display. 

Stay tuned for future installments of this series.

Check These Out to Learn More About Marketing for Artists

The Top 5 Personal Development Books for Artists

3 Simple Steps for How to Get Your Art in a Gallery

5 Proven Time Management Principles to Help You Build Your Art Career