Basic Promotion Concepts
This is my side of a Facebook Message conversation I had with an artist asking for tips to bring their business to the next level. Hope it helps you too.
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Laz: You should calculate your hourly rate – what you need to pay bills. Make sure to you also consider all operating and growth costs. Need $2000/mo for bills? Well if you spend $1 on product and sell it for $5 that means you’ll need to sell $2500. But you’ll need to spend more to make more so selling $3000 would give you enough to spend on $1000 of product next time which could fetch $5000. Of course to sell more you’ll have to promote yourself, so that’ll increase operating costs.
Laz: Echo spends about [edit] on self promotion every year for websites and annuals. That doesn’t include cons. General rule is to spend 15% of gross income on promotion [edit]. In retail companys spend as much as 20% and in pharmaceutical it goes over 40%!
Laz: You only need one mailing list site: adbase.com. It’s a list of all the art buyers, art directors, creative directors, senior designers, marketing directors, etc. in the country. Just make sure your email is clean, attractive and enticing because they are mostly artists themselves and know what to judge you by. A good mailing can get a fan base going of peers and potential clients. A bad mailing will be harshly criticized.
