Total Art Soul - for artists

I use WOM to great effect, I'd say it's generated 3/4 of my business so far although 95% of that is offline WOM so far. I'm a chatty person normally and often wear my products so get to talk about them quite naturally without feeling like I'm trying to sell to anyone.

I've given family members presents (on request, not inflicted something they didn't want!) of my products and them wearing something more unique has generated interest and subsequent sales.

I've chatted to mums on the school gates and that's generated alot of business. I've recently become a lollipop lady and intend to make myself a pair of fluorescent yellow fleece trousers for in the middle of winter lol! But it's quite possible that my boss may like them and order them for other lollipop persons - if he does who can tell where that may lead - he'll be doing the promoting for me

So it's all about getting yourself 'out there', being bold and speaking up WHEN appropriate - if you bang about your wonderful stuff all the time people will soon get bored and switch off or worse avoid you as you're now boring! As they say "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" make sure you've got something else to talk about so that you're a geniune friend not just a sales person. I rarely bring up work unless someone asks these days.

I've now been making fleeces for just over 18 months and by not talking about it all the time people who know what I do are now beginning to come to me to ask about things they already know I make, they've heard me say the various things that I make over time (months) and when they've needed a new item X they've come to me to get it made instead of buying it from the shops - at least those who want to bit more for an ethical, green product that supports their local economy - which isn't everyone by a long way!

hth
Sarah

When I joined this site recently, I wasn't 100% sure how it worked, but how refreshing - a community to foster creativity!
I think that is wonderful.. There are so many sites out there to market your work - I find it overwhelming and somewhat exhausting.

I agree, most of my sales have been word of mouth anyway. It's nice to stop and think about creativity and what inspired me to make art in the first place, vs. constantly trying to market my work etc...

Thanks!
Abby

So glad you share our sentiments Abby. What we've seen is that people get so fixated on having to sell that this is all they think about. I think it's a pity and I've seen some wonderful artists come through here but they've not been open to talking about the creative process of their work, their thoughts and their feelings.

I feel strongly, from my own experience, that as an artist it's important to keep questioning why you do the things you do in order to have more awareness and develop further. Marketing can really get in the way of this and is why we set up TAS.

Hopefully we have created this haven where you can be as artistic/creative as you like.

I am having a love/hate relationship with Twitter at the moment, I think it is extremely useful tool to post bulletins, and to show a little snippet of life and personality, but I'm getting quite tired of how many 'come and look in my shop' tweets I am seeing all day. I occasionally throw a shop link in there, but most of the time it it is something random, or a blog link. Ooh, do I sound grumpy? I'm not honest

Those posts, while annoying sometimes, are important. Just check your analytics and you can see from what traffic source you get the most hits to your website. Hits = viewers = potential clients.

Still, my best sales come from art fairs/shows.