Branding For Artists and Creatives
Successful artists have one thing in common. And it can bring success in all the ways you can imagine: more website traffic, more sales, a bigger following on social media, higher engagement with your newsletter, more marketing opportunities and collaborations and much, much more.
Want to know what it is?
Personal Branding.
I like to think of branding as two things coming together – visual communication – picking colours, fonts and all the aesthetic details that together send a very specific type of message, be it elegance, playfulness, meditative, and personal narrative – that is the person behind the art, their story and ideals. When you combine visual communication and personal narrative together you get a personal brand. And this is what potential customers connect with.
A personal brand talks about YOU. You as an artist and as a human being. And how your business connects the two together.
And perhaps you’re thinking, “I don’t have a personal brand”. And I’d tell you, of course you do, whether you’ve thought about it or not. And if you’ve never tried, unfortunately your personal brand is probably confusing and not aligned with your potential buyer. That’s why it’s important to be intentional about how you are seen so that you can craft your own image, not let someone else decide who you are or what you stand for.
Why It’s Important To Craft A Strong Brand
In the online world, we’re competing for attention, visitors and sales. Those sales are largely dependent on whether we can connect with our customer. We can sit by and hope that our target audience finds us, or we can curate our website and social media platforms to attract the right customer. Truthfully, I don’t worry about the number of followers I have on social media unless those followers care about my work and connect with my brand. The same goes for website traffic. That’s why I’m so passionate about helping entrepreneurs design their brand and create beautiful and functional websites with that information so that their visitors are more likely to convert.
It’s important to build a recognizable brand; one that helps to build an emotional connection for the following reasons:
1. Trust And Quality
The amount of work you put into delivering your unique voice and artistic style in a careful way says a lot about you and your business. If you’re inconsistent and sending mixed messages, your customers will feel that same confusion and hesitate to make a purchase. Confidence in what you present and how you present it is one of the most powerful tools you have.
2. Identity
How you present your work should reflect who you want to see your work. Your unique identity (or brand identity) is comprised of a few things; personal story and how you share it, your creative vision, brand statement, brand colors and all the visual elements that collectively define your business. When all of these work together and complement each other, that’s when your brand identity is reinforced and clear.
3. The Right Audience
Understanding your own brand means you understand your target customer. This means having a clear connection between your brand and the client it will attract. Or better, knowing your customer and then presenting your brand to align with them. You might have a few things in common; such as core values, hobbies, shopping habits, demographic similarities… or not. What you don’t want to do is force or hope that a wider audience will align with your brand without having the knowledge. It should all be very intentional. What happens if it’s not? You’re posting, emailing and sharing artwork to an audience that doesn’t understand your work or your brand and it’s unlikely they ever will. Start by defining who you want to sell your work to, study them and their habits, likes, dislikes… and then build a brand that relates to them. Leverage your online community and ask them for answers.
But, how do you do this? Research, listen, ask questions… Find out what people like, what they don’t like and what others need. Your business should respond to a need or problem, what is that problem and who needs help with it?
4. Scale and Positioning
When you know your own brand and your ideal customer, you’ll also know where your potential clients are. Having this knowledge will allow you to make more accurate decisions on where to spend time and marketing efforts. Is your customer on Instagram? Pinterest? Facebook? How do they search for products such as yours? What wording do they use? Where you position your brand and also, put in your hard earned advertising dollars should be an informed decision.
Addiitionally, as your business grows you’ll have a better understanding of how to scale and expand.
For example, if your branding presents high-end, bespoke wedding invitations you might not want to digitize your designs and sell them on Amazon Marketplace. You’ll likely not only dilute the quality of your brand and the message but also inadvertently misalign your work to the wrong customers.
Alright, So How Do You Create A Brand?
Establishing a strong brand identity is crucial for any business, and the art industry is no exception. Your brand is what sets you apart from your competitors and helps you connect with your target audience. To build a strong brand identity as an artist or art business, you need to define your unique selling proposition (USP) and communicate it effectively.
Start by identifying what makes your art or art business special. Is it your unique style, the story behind your work, or the values you stand for? Once you have a clear understanding of your USP, incorporate it into all aspects of your brand, from your logo and website design to your marketing materials and artist statements. Consistency is key in building a strong brand identity.
In addition to visual elements, storytelling plays a crucial role in establishing your brand. Share the inspiration behind your art, your creative process, and any personal anecdotes that make your work more relatable. Use your website, social media platforms, and artist interviews to tell your story and connect with your audience on a deeper level. Remember, people don’t just buy art; they buy the story and emotions that come with it.
How The Good Canvas Can Help
First step, we’re going to start by looking at your artistic goals – what are your ambitions for your business? Your why.
In other words, if you were as successful as you can possibly imagine, what would that look like? How would your life be different? What would make all the work worth it?
Then, we’ll take a look at your unique style, your creative expression and your analytics. What does well and what doesn’t? What are you willing to let go of in order to become more successful? What are your non-negotiables? This is the art of balancing what you love with what sells. We’ll create a mood board to define and articulate your brand image.
From there, we’ll take a look at your customer, your target audience and whether those two are the same. Using all the information we have on your business so far, we’ll determine how to brand your business so that you’re attracting the right customer for your work. Knowing your potential buyers is the key to a successful brand.
You can stop there and take your Branding Kit and apply it to your website and social media on your own or we can go a step further and (re)design a website for you!
If so, we will then use that information to design your site in a way that works FOR you – drives organic traffic, converts, helps you build your mailing list and is really the most valuable resource in your business. Through regular coaching sessions, we’ll work together to make sure it’s aligned to your creative journey and is an art website that everyone loves, including you! We will implement your branding strategy for you. It will also be optimized for SEO and a true reflection of you as a visual artist. We’ll also explore different perspectives and tools on your website to help reaffirm your brand. Supplementing artwork with additional pages on your website to help enrich your site are critical to your website’s success.
We will also take a look at your marketing strategy. If you don’t have one, we’ll design one – that includes a strong social media presence but also using search engines like Pinterest to bring traffic to your website so that you’re not relying on platforms that you don’t own. I’ll show you how to create content that can be used across all of your platforms, optimizing your workflow so you have more time to do what you love. We focus on platforms that are designed to direct traffic to your site not away from it. We’ll also take a look at email marketing, and set up a email newsletter so that you can begin building your email list. A secret weapon for any entrepreneur, your mailing list a powerful tool to help you make sales and generate engagement.
How To Get Started – Key Steps
To learn more about you (and you about me), you can book a free 30 min discovery call below. We’ll go over your artistic vision, your current obstacles and state of your business and where you can start to make small improvements immediately. These calls are absolutely no-commitment chats and I continue to offer them because I love connecting with others. If what we discuss resonates with you and you want to learn more, we can discuss how to do that for your unique objectives. Being an entrepreneur is one of the most fulfilling careers as it offers you so much flexibility and decision power over your life. I would just love that for everyone so I encourage you to book a call and see how to make this happen!
Alternatively, if you’re ready to get started head to The Creative Business Framework and get yourself on the waitlist! After joining the list, you’ll receive an email notification to schedule your first on-boarding call.
I hope to hear from you soon!
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