I work with artists to solve a variety of problems. Some of these artists are just getting started launching a new project. Others are in the prime of their careers: consistently getting offered exciting, quality opportunities.
No matter what career stage they are in, no matter how many previous successes they have had, almost universally, one of their top concerns is effectively marketing their work. Marketing might as well be a four letter word. It’s the part of the job that everyone knows they have to do, but they hate to do it.
These are the concerns I often hear from artists about marketing:
I don’t know what tool or platform is the most effective.
I don’t know what to say that will get people interested.
I don’t want to feel inauthentic.
I hate feeling like I’m always selling something.
I don’t love being in front of the camera.
I never have enough time to stay consistent.
I get it. I am a musician by trade, turned accidental arts marketer, now turned manager. I have worked jobs for multiple organizations where my role had “Marketing” in the title, but I still felt odd calling myself an expert on this work. I have attended digital marketing conferences as one of the only attendees with an arts background, and I felt like I square peg in a round hole. If you put me in a crowd of other “marketers,” the title can feel ill-filling and disingenuous.
But, if you get me talking to other artists about how to connect with audiences, how to build sustainable careers, and how to make public work that feels aligned with their mission, I light up. And all of those topics…are also related to artists effectively marketing their work.
I had to reframe the practice of marketing in order to accept it as something I could master and even enjoy. And I’m here to help you start doing the same thing.
Throughout the month of March, I’ll be sharing weekly newsletters that touch on some point related to marketing for artists. This isn’t going to be a comprehensive course or guide. There will be tangents and side quests. But hopefully I can help you to pull back the curtain and see that this topic isn’t mysterious or scary, and that you already have a lot of the tools you need to get started.
Let’s dive in.
This week I want to focus on the idea of audience development. Building a supportive, engaged, and dedicated audience is one of the fundamental keys to sustaining a career as an artist.
All of us have audiences for our work, even if we don’t view them as literal ticket-buying show patrons. Maybe it’s people who buy your albums and come to concerts. Or it’s corporate clients who hire you to do design work on their next campaign. Or it’s grant-making organizations who fund large-scale public art projects.
A fundamental mistake I see a lot of artists make is thinking that their audience has to include everyone. (I also see this a ton with non-profit arts organizations. Let’s collectively stop creating fundraising events that we want “everyone” to attend.) Making work that everyone likes is exhausting, inefficient, and impossible. No wonder artists get overwhelmed thinking their messaging has to reach the widest possible audience!
A much better way to frame your audience development goals is to follow the rule of finding 1000 true fans. The “1000 True Fans” concept has been written about extensively in tech, arts, and business spaces (you can read the original essay from writer Kevin Kelly here). Here’s the core idea: a creator doesn’t need millions of supporters to achieve sustainable success. They really only need about 1000 people who are engaged at a deeper level and consistently investing in their work. 1000 true fans may not build superstardom, but it WILL sustain a creative career for decades.
Let’s do a little math based around this idea:
Let’s say you plan to release an album next year. You’d ideally like to gross $100,000 in revenue from that project over a calendar year. Woah - seems like a big number, right? But $100k breaks down to 1000 fans spending an average of $100 each on merchandise, content, or experiences related to your release. A fan could hit that $100 threshold through a $20 vinyl purchase + a $20 concert ticket + a $5 per month ($60 total) subscription to a Patreon channel with exclusive behind the scenes content. $100 is not a huge investment over a year for your most deeply-engaged audience. Suddenly, that $100k target starts to feel more achievable, by breaking it down into bite sized offerings you can create for your audience. And you only need 1000 people engaged in a meaningful way, vs. literally millions of streams needed to generate a minimum wage on Spotify.
You can tweak this 1000 True Fans equation to fit your discipline and creative output, too. If you’re a studio artist who specializes in large canvas pieces that sell for at least $2500 (plenty of people are buying large original artwork at this price point), you only need to sell to 40 people to hit six figures in revenue. OR, maybe you sell 20 paintings at $2500 ($50,000), and another 500 people buy an art print for $50 ($25,000), and another 200 people subscribe for $10 a month to access online art classes you’ve created ($24,000).
There are a lot of ways to slice the 1000 True Fans equation, and the great thing is that you can tweak it to fit your desired revenue goals, your audience, and the type of content you’re great at creating. And beginning to consider audience engagement in this way helps you start growing fans from someone who buys a $10 CD, to someone who pays $10 each month for your videos, to eventually someone who hires you to create a backyard concert experience for $1000. Consistent engagement with this core audience can literally pay dividends over years and years.
Honing in on who these 1000 true fans are and how to reach them also helps focus your marketing. Why waste time on Twitter if you already know your core audience spends the most time on Instagram? Do you need to worry about growing a YouTube channel if you already have a deeply engaged, paying subscriber base on a platform like Patreon? Are your true fans more likely to engage with a live-streamed performance, or asynchronous high-quality video lessons they can watch on demand? Suddenly, you do not have to worry about being everywhere and doing everything. You can focus in on the handful of activities likely to make the biggest impact with your audience, which hopefully will also be aligned with the kinds of things you most enjoy creating.
In the coming weeks, we’ll dig into how can start consistently communicating with that core audience of true fans. We’ll talk tools and platforms and content. But I encourage you to start thinking about how you could build your 1000 true fans. Take a pen and paper and start jotting down ideas: where do these people spend time (in the physical or digital world)? What characteristics might they share? What work would you be most excited to share with them?
You do not have to reach everyone - just YOUR people. Find them, start building those relationships, and trust them to support your work in meaningful ways.
Stuff I’ve been liking in the link roundup:
How I Built This is a great podcast I’ve loved for years, and this episode with the founders of Patreon got me thinking about audience development recently. (Hint: Patreon was founded by a musician, which is why it’s so artist-friendly! Artists should build more tech.)
Silk Sonic (Anderson .Paak + Bruno Mars) is everything I hoped it would be: groovy, goofy, over-the-top, FUN. In the era of at-home quarantine streams and lo-fi recordings I have desperately missed some cohesive ART DIRECTION.
Creatives Learn Law is a Colorado-based law firm for creative businesses and entrepreneurs. They have a super helpful blog and Instagram channel where they share a ton of free resources on things like intellectual property and entity formation.
Influencer Pay Gap is a super illuminating channel bringing transparency to pricing and rates for influencer marketing. I don’t manage any influencers, but artists can work with brands in similar ways. Sharing pricing within your industry is ALWAYS helpful and creates a more equitable market for creative work.
Shameless self promo! I launched a new instagram channel for Harris Artist Management @harrisartistmanagement (separate from my personal @brianaharrismusic page) where I’ll be sharing more in-depth industry insights and also some of my clients’ work. If you find this newsletter valuable, I’d really appreciate a follow over there.