What if I show you that a creative business can win with persistence and marketing?
Many of us creative types live in our right brains – creating, dreaming, hatching ideas. When it comes to the nuts and bolts of running a business and strategizing, we can be at a loss. Creating is fun. Marketing – meh.
But it is possible to learn the ins and outs from someone, ideally a fellow creative, who will understand your situation. Alternatively, you can hire someone to do it for you.
There’s never been a better time to be able to expose your art/products/services to so many potential clients, at a relatively cheap outlay. I mean, you have the potential to connect with the entire world, if you so desire.
Grow a tribe of followers, contact them on a regular basis with great content, make it easy for them to buy from you – and the world is yours.
You might have built an online portfolio, and that’s a great first step. But with millions and millions of websites out there, how will potential clients find you? Marketing to the world, or just your country, or even your region, is both a blessing and a curse. The number of potential clients is huge, but you will also get lost in the crowd without a strategy. Your #1 action here is to build a tribe of followers and get them excited about and anticipating your latest offering. You can do this by encouraging website visitors to subscribe to your newsletters and/or blog posts, videos, podcasts; whatever content you deliver on a regular basis. Teach them new things, show them what you’re working on, things like that.
Leverage social media to promote your business – 100% of the time. Create separate business accounts so you keep business and personal stuff separate. It’s good business to talk about what you’re up to – it makes you human and approachable – but it must always promote your business. Posting that you didn’t sleep last night because you stayed up all night to complete a commission for a client, but you’re so excited to deliver it! is great marketing. Posting that you didn’t sleep last night because of a wild night of drinking and partying is not ok. So keep your accounts totally separate.
Please, if you’re thinking of setting up your website, make sure it’s self-hosted. Otherwise, it’s not owned by you – it’s owned by a company. That means you have no ownership over your site, content, and heaven forbid, your emails if you set up a website-based account. Please use self-hosting! I won’t even work on a client’s website – much less build one from scratch – unless it’s self-hosted WordPress. There are other reasons, but those are the biggies.
So I sincerely hope I’ve offered some ideas that will get you started. Keep doing your creative thing – your future clients need it. I’m here to make sure it ends up in the hands of those who will appreciate it and need it.
Your success means everything to me!
Photo by rawpixel.com on Unsplash
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