Whatâs the next social media marketing trend?
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Last month I spent a few hours with Kicki Storm, who excitedly told me about the potential she saw in Instagram reels. I was buried in bubble-wrap at the time and more focused on getting a mountain of paintings into a U-Haul trailer. My pal Bobbi Heath, who carefully follows social media marketing, has talked to me about lookalike audiences for Facebook paid ads. Iâve tried them, but not to great success.
Ralph Waldo Emerson is credited with saying, âBuild a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door.â I doubt that was true in the late 19thcentury and itâs certainly not true today. The successful artist has always had one eye focused on self-promotion.
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Like you, Iâm overcommitted, overstressed, and overwhelmed. There are lots of people out there interested in taking my advertising dollars, and I donât have the market savvy to measure their claims. How do I negotiate this constantly-shifting landscape and still have time to paint?
The people who work in the field recommend that small businesses spend anywhere from 7-8% of their gross revenue on marketing. In actual fact, small businesses tend to spend more like 3-5% of gross revenues on advertising. That includes everything to put out their message, such as website hosting, Mailchimp, and other recurring costs. But it also inevitably means paid ads.
Spending that kind of money when youâre starting out can seem overwhelming, and itâs tempting to fall back on organic social-media marketing, whichâby the wayâis invaluable. But itâs an inevitable part of growth that youâll need to learn about paid advertising somewhere along the way. The trouble is, thereâs no easily-digested textbook.
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Iâm seeing a shift in my advertising results this year, a decline in response. This may be an economic problem, as there are worrisome issues that might give people pause about big-ticket purchases. But itâs enough of a shift that Iâm looking at different ad platforms, including print media.
Ten years ago, I thought print advertising was moribund, but Iâve noticed that I see consistent results from the Maine Gallery Guide. Thatâs emboldened me to dip my toe back into other print advertising.
At the same time, the cost-per-click on Facebook continues to rise. According to Wordstream , the average cost-per-click is now $1.72. That may not be a big barrier to LL Bean, but it is to an artist.
What Facebook used to be able to do superlatively was target customers. However, a global shift toward consumer privacy has made Facebook targeting more difficult.
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As Facebook has grown into the juggernaut it is today, fine artists are now too small a market-niche for targeting. There arenât even categories of âlandscape workshopsâ or âplein air paintingâ in their current interest groups. When we tell it to match for people who are âinterested in art,â thatâs too broad a brush.
Where does this leave us? Looking elsewhere. And that includes niche publications directed at artists.
Years ago, Bobbi Heath told me to never neglect my own lists. This shift in marketing is a strong reminder to build up your own lists so you can market directly from them. And Iâm the pot-calling-the-kettle-black on this, because I havenât had a sign-up box on this blog since the start of the year. Iâll get to it, I swear.