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Yesterday I had the privilege of sharing with my fellow Cape Ann Artisans30+ years of marketing experience wrapped up into a customized marketing workshop. I developed  the workshop to help a diverse group of creatives wayfind through the maze of marketing lingo, tactics, and best practices needed to prosper (or even survive) in today’s hyper-digital environment.  Gone are the days of just throwing stuff out there and hoping it sticks.  The tastes and expectations of consumers of everything have been raised based on the instant feedback we now get (like it or not) from social media.  There’s no going back, but there are plenty of lessons to be learned and opportunities to try things for free today that were inaccessible to the last generation of marketers.   However, my learning and observation as a traditional marketing professional that has stayed the course is that one still needs a “framework” for approaching the new tools.  For they are simply tools.  Strategy and content still drive everything. 

Having set this up as a “workshop” also made sense because “presentations” with no feedback are just like blog posts with no share this  button!  It’s ever so important to learn from our audiences – whether it be beforehand through preparatory, warm up questions, or ongoing research.  I am a big fan of research to dive into almost any project.  Artists in particular can truly benefit from research.  There is a ton of best practices research out there to gobble up and digest.  Kudo to some great new sources that I found when preparing – NYFA/Artspire The Profitable Artist; CopyBlogger; and ArtsBusiness.com.

As I would expect, I learned from my colleagues through their responses provided in the prep work.  Common challenges and fears included the need to balance pure creativity and commercial aspects of being an artist; discomfort with selling oneself; understanding what really works among all the choices of marketing tools, etc..  But the one thing that I found interesting is the lack of understanding of our audiences and the huge untapped world of “segments” that could drive an artist’s future direction.  Just in one small discussion we had the talent in the room to run a business-arts partnership between and artist that works with “trash”and a local waste management company; an artist that is a subject matter expert on marinas and local boat history(painting many of the most loved vessels in the area) and a local yacht club; a block printmakerpreserving and paying forward the beloved history of the Folly Cove Designers and all that is linked to that historical milestone. 

Despite the immense gratitude shared at the end of the session, likely the group left a bit overwhelmed.  My hope, however, is that each person will digest and morph the intake to work within their own personal marketing framework (a term I made up for the workshop).   If there is only one takeaway that should make this incredibly talented group feel good, it’s that today’s marketing environment is driven by CONTENT.  Content is driven by authentic, expert, thoughtful, and experiential musings.  Artists are natural subject matter experts with incredible stories to tell.  Combined with all the free channels out there to help us get the word out, the opportunities are limitless. And best of all, you don’t have to talk about yourself.  The social network world allows for others to do it for you!  Thanks for sharing……