Shiva OutreachArt is messy but beautiful. Artists make others see what they feel.
Doesn’t it fascinate you? How People perceive you through your colors, textures, and figures.
Only those with an inner desire for art can perceive the artist’s emotions. But only a few people are into making or appreciating art. Provide a successful learning platform for those who are interested in artwork.
Starting your new art business is easier than you might think. As an art enthusiast, you can teach art or sell your compilation of art. Both are easy when you have a structured business model.
Arts are messy, but managing the art business needs to be clarified.
Keep reading on how to start a successful art business.
Step 1: Make a Business plan
Making a living out of business overnight is simply an exaggeration. Maily, an art institution, needs time, effort, dedication, and planning.
You don’t intend to travel without a well-organized destination map, do you? The same goes for businesses too. Establishing a business plan is like defining a roadmap of goals to achieve.
First, define your mission statement, a brief explanation of your services, and your goals to achieve.
Second, licensing. Register your business under the Companies Act. Specify a name, location, type, and bank account. Make sure your name is unique. Make it legal.
Third, give an objective statement. It provides detailed information on the short-term and long-term need for accomplishment. The need for loans and funds is stated clearly in this section.
Fourth, the type of services you offer. Provide detailed information about the services or the products you offer. Are you teaching art or selling the artworks of others? Specify that.
Fifth, marketing and sales plan. Your strategies in persuading your clientele to purchase from you are defined here. Even your sales channels used for making a sale are detailed here.
Finally, make a financial statement of your costs and set up prices. These give you a stronghold on the cost of production and profits earned. However, it refers to the cost of purchasing art to resell or to create your works.
Step 2: Define your target market
Finding your business prospects is easy when you know the answers to these questions
- Who is willing to buy your artwork?
- What type of art are they trying to learn?
- What is their level of investment in art?
- Where do they live? Can you reach them? And how?
- What is the best online platform to lure them?
Ensure you know every aspect of finding your target audience. You need to know what to search for and where you will explore. Exactly. Know and understand the needs and requirements of your clients and satisfy them with your resources.
Step 3: Conduct a Competitor analysis
You can not just step into a forest without knowing what killer animals might live there, Agree? Competitors are like that, who eat us alive or encourage the desire to survive.
Competitor market research is as vital as customer market analysis. Analyze the companies who sell similar services and products as you and make immediate changes to look unique.
For example, there is a business that only sells abstract art. People might be interested in acquiring other art pieces like oil paintings, watercolor paintings, pencil sketches, and many different types. Try to sell and work on the art of various kinds to attract a divergent customer base.
Step 4: Design a marketing plan
Define your marketing platforms based on your clientele profiles. The process of a business promoting its goods and services is known as marketing.
Include various marketing outlets for your dispersed clientele.
If your art business is full of simple and minimalistic art, go for Instagram posts and stories. People love it when their search feed is aesthetic and minimal.
Whether it is a small business or personal art room, use art fairs and blogging. Set up your art fairs in public places to lure customers towards your artwork. Design them in a similar aesthetic to your art pieces. Write blogs about what inspired you to create this art, the materials and tools you used, and how you felt about it.
Such small notes or information can encourage your followers.
If you are not selling your art, go for the teaching field. Establish your art place to teach students and make a stout online presence. We are going to talk about this in a much more straightforward way.
Step 5: Develop a sturdy online presence
A solid online presence reinforces your purpose in the industry. It helps businesses to develop reputations and trust levels of customers. Learn how to build a sturdy online presence.
Create an official website. Creating a business website is essential for establishing your online presence. It showcases your identity and branding, facilitates communication with customers, and enables online sales.
Master in SEO. SEO is one essential thing that puts your company and services on top of the search engine. When someone looks up to an art institute, you wish your business is up first. To achieve a top position in the search engine, develop SEO systematically.
Be active online. The customer wants a timely response from a company. If they receive a timely response, they are most likely to prefer your business over any other. Generate an email list to keep track of customer queries and needs.
A good online presence of an art business can reach out quicker than other businesses. Well, we know art is a universal language.
Step 6: Generate financial planning
The art business is easier than you might think. But its financial operations are confusing compared to other fields. But restrain yourself from being overwhelmed by this statement, be calm and focused.
One must decide on many financial aspects like an investment for infrastructure, funds for holding art fairs and galleries, fee structure for classes and courses, and pricing methods. Everything must get done to avoid discrepancies.
Initially, focus on the vision and mission of your business. Whether your business is something that invests in other art pieces to resell them or if it is an art institute that needs materials. A rough outline of these costs will lead to profitable pricing.
Also, try persuading financial institutes to fund your events. Tell them the purpose and importance of holding these and the need for funds. You are obtaining investors for your art business.
Last but not least, pricing. What exactly taps your mind to the word pricing? Yes. Put up a value for your work. But being in a business drives you to generate profits from your work. Try pricing your work for profits.
For instance, you purchased ten distinct works of art for approximately $100. You want to earn 50% of profits ($50) from the sold art pieces. So, you start pricing each art piece for $15. That spawns $150 in total. Hence it results in 50% of profits. You call it profit-oriented pricing.
Every business aims for profits. Remember, your profits are the results of your financial planning.
Step 7: Appointment booking access
Your creativity is the prime asset for instructing your students who approach you for learning.
But if you are busy handling all those recurring phone calls, it can be burdensome for them along with you. Well, you have Picktime.
Picktime is a online scheduling software for art classes that lets your clients book appointments, classes, or special courses by simply accessing your customized booking page. Picktime also enables you to limit the number of students who attend your classes. It can be a great assistant to your art business.
Picktime also manages:
- Automated email reminders
- Individual and group classes
- Multiple location access
- Your favorite online calendars
You can glance at the schedule board during your recess for further reservations.
Step 8: Outline your distribution channels
Distribution channels are the foremost medium of contact. Having a marketing plan and services is only primary encouragement for sales. Hypothetically, You need a ladder to connect the ground and tree to pluck a fruit from it.
Here communication channels are ladders to business. Use productive mediums for distribution like online websites, social media profiles, art events, and art exhibitions.
Online booking pages are here to assist businesses with recurring bookings. As a two-end interaction medium, customers can place their purchase orders or classes through their respective booking pages. And the managing directors are accessible to the scheduled bookings.
Have you ever known a scheduling software that enables the book now widget on your social media profiles? Well, now here it is. Picktime.
It enables a book now widget on your social media accounts. Through this, clients can easily access your booking page without any interruptions. No app installation, no middle-man, no brokerage, just a few clicks. Easy order placement and simplified class booking.
Not to forget art events. Havens for in-person sales and promotions. Due to the emergence of technology, the passion for art events and exhibitions declined drastically. For a better understanding of the client, these are the best.
Step 9: Avail payment structures
Whether it is an online order or an in-person order, offline or online class, payments are vital. All sales orders, course fees, funds, and per-class fees are done only through a payment medium.
Defined fee structures are supreme for students who take up classes. Specify the layout of the charging amount. Is it per class, month, or course? And also avail them with a specific medium of payment.
Also, mark up figures for the artworks to avoid bargaining from the customer end.
Three ways of remittance are bank cheques, liquid cash, and online money. Make sure to have different mediums for accepting deposits.
Conclusion: Initiating your art class successfully
Do you prepare your resources before drawing something on your whiteboard? You do. It is necessary to do so.
As an artist, you and your art itself become a mess. You wouldn’t want things around you to mess up too. We advise you to keep a scheduling program on hand to make your artist’s life easier by managing the accumulated information.
These assist you with resource management, class scheduling, appointment scheduling, personalizing your booking pages, and many other tasks.
Initiate a scheduling software like Picktime and ease your business operations.
