The digital revolution has transformed global commerce. From retailing to recruitment, food to finance, the internet has revolutionised almost every industry. Businesses everywhere are now under increased pressure to provide the best possible experience for their customers. What does this mean for the fine art industry? How should art galleries and dealers refine their marketing strategies in order to thrive in the digital age?
2019 – time to take stock
For art galleries and dealers, the start of each year marks a period of relative calm in an otherwise busy calendar in the art world. It’s therefore a perfect time to assess the state of the market, as well as think about trends that might affect the industry during the year. It also provides an opportunity to examine and perhaps realign your own business with the fast-evolving art world.
The challenge, of course, remains the same as ever: to increase customer numbers and sales. But in the digital age, the tools available to art galleries and dealers have evolved into the online world, just as they have in virtually every other industry.
In this article I’ll be taking a detailed look at current marketing trends within the industry. In particular, I’ll be giving you some insight into how art galleries and dealers are embracing the online world in their marketing strategies.
I’ll provide an overview of some of the recent marketing trends and I’ll consider some of the main areas where I believe art galleries and dealers should be reassessing their marketing strategies.
I’ll discuss the importance of your website and how to increase your level of engagement with your customers. I’ll also talk about how vital it is to embrace social media (please keep an open mind!), as well as why video content should feature prominently.
I’ll try to keep things as non-technical as possible. In fact, none of this is rocket science, but it does require planning and persistence in order to be effective.
My conclusion is unequivocal: marketing within much of the fine art world lags well behind other industries. Many galleries and dealers still rely heavily on traditional marketing methods and seem reluctant to embrace the digital revolution. I firmly believe they’re missing a trick.
Art galleries and industries have a huge opportunity to expand their businesses by embracing and harnessing the power of social media and other modern digital marketing techniques. For those businesses that stand still, nimbler ones with tech-savvy marketing teams will continue to increase their market share at the expense of more traditional but slower moving incumbents.
My objective for this article is simple: to provide a general overview, and hopefully to help art galleries and dealers to appreciate the enormous opportunity that online marketing provides in the digital age.
But I won’t focus exclusively on digital marketing. Traditional marketing such as print advertising still plays an important role in the fine art industry, so I’ll also look at how to combine modern marketing can be combined with traditional methods to deliver maximum benefit to your business.
So if you’re thinking about how you can most effectively increase the visibility of your business, along with customer numbers and sales volume, you’ve come to the right place!
But before I get into the detail, let’s take a moment to look briefly at the state of the fine art market in 2019.
Market performed well in 2017-18, but 2019 looks less rosy
The global art market seemed to turn a corner in 2017 after two years of declining sales. According to Clare McAndrew’s 2018 Art Market Report,[1] published by Art Basel and UBS, global art sales in 2017 grew by 12%, reaching an estimated $63.7 billion.
We won’t know the 2018 figures until the next report is published in March, but most within the industry expect to see another year of growth. 2018 sales were up at both Sotheby’s (+11%) and Christie’s (+6%) so the signs are positive, although this doesn’t take into account sales at fairs, galleries and online.
The outlook for 2019 appears to be less certain, however. Global economic growth is slowing, especially in China, which narrowly beat the UK into second place in terms of global art sales in 2017. Combined with this, rising interest rates, economic and political uncertainty in both the US (which retained its number one spot) and UK (bronze medallist), are all weighing heavily on markets across all asset classes, including art.
Meanwhile online activity in the art world continues to grow, in line with every other industry. According to the Hiscox Online Art Trade Report 2018,[2] online art sales reached an estimated $4.2 billion in 2017, up 12% from 2016.
Moreover, online buyers are making more frequent purchases and spending more money too. In 2018, 25% of online art buyers paid an average price in excess of $5,000 per fine art piece, up from 21% in 2017.
The industry is also becoming more international, with demand from the Middle East and Asia in particular continuing to surge. No one missed Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman set a new world record with his 2017 purchase of da Vinci’s Salvador Mundi for more than $450m. (Nor the fact that the painting is now rumoured to have disappeared, but I digress…)
And in Asia, it’s not only China where demand for art is growing. Hong Kong, Singapore and Indonesia are also seeing robust growth.
With all this in mind, it’s more important than ever for art galleries and dealers to get their marketing right. Buyers are increasingly global, and it’s no longer realistic to continue to rely exclusively on traditional offline marketing techniques.
Commerce in the Age of Amazon
Art collectors have more choices than ever before as to where and how they acquire art. Often their decisions are driven by who can provide the best purchasing experience.
This shouldn’t be a surprise; after all, we’re all well aware of how Amazon has revolutionised retailing. Now approaching its 25th birthday, it’s easy to forget that Amazon began life as an online bookstore operating from Jeff Bezos’ garage. But only a quarter of a century later, Amazon offers more than 600 million different products and is the world’s largest online retailer.
The Amazon revolution has had far-reaching effects well beyond the retail sector. All industries share customers with Amazon, so businesses in all sectors now face higher expectations from their customers in product and service selection, simple and effective online experiences, near-instant product delivery, and seamless customer service before, during and after the sale.
The art world is no exception. Just like any other industry, art collectors and buyers have raised the bar in terms of their expectations for modern, multi-channel, intuitive and enjoyable digital shopping experiences.
The problem for many businesses in the art world is that those customer expectations are often not being met.
Marketing trends in the fine art world
It goes without saying that every art gallery and dealer wants to attract more collectors and increase sales. It’s also clear that marketing is critical for finding new collectors and buyers.
There are many more tools available today to increase the visibility and customer awareness of a gallery and its artist. But buyers and collectors are also evolving rapidly in how they view and buy art. It can therefore be difficult to stay on top of the shifting industry landscape.
What, then, does this mean for fine art galleries and dealers? Where should you be focusing your marketing efforts (and pounds/dollars)? How to stay on top of current marketing trends, and how to know what is the most effective form of marketing for your business?
I’ll now take a look at what I consider to be some of the most important topics in fine art marketing in 2019. There are others I will mention in passing and perhaps address in the future. But for now, let’s stick to the most important ones.
- Your website – make it the best it can be
The starting point for any marketing strategy should be your website. This is your virtual shopfront and often the first point of contact for potential customers with your business.
First impressions count, so web design can be the one thing that sets you apart from your competition. Design really matters because it reflects how you project your business and brand, and how they are perceived by your clients and potential customers.
Make a bad impression, and the chances are you’ll lose a potential customer. But make a good one, and you might gain a customer. Better still, make a great impression, and you can potentially keep a customer for life.
Ultimately, though, it all starts with how you design and present your content, since this will go a long way to shaping the experience you give to your customers.
Why is a good website so important?
- Global reach – maximises your potential customer universe.
- Professional way to showcase your inventory.
- Potential clients can browse and buy at their own convenience.
- 24/7 shop window, catering to all time zones.
- More inbound customers – buyers will reach out to you by themselves.
A well-designed, customer-focused and responsive website is essential if you want to grow your business, both locally and internationally. If you follow any of my recommendations in this article, please make this the first one!
- Increase engagement with your customers
These days, customers expect quality communication with businesses they are buying from. Just think about how many times you receive an email from Amazon after completing a purchase. It might be a request for a product review, or perhaps it’s product suggestions based on your previous browsing or shopping history.
All of this helps to build a connection and then cultivate relationships with your customers. So try to find ways to engage your prospects and collectors, in even small ways. It will help you to align your services more closely to your customers’ preferences. Responding to and fulfilling those preferences then paves the way for a long-lasting relationship.
One of the best (and easiest) ways to increase your level of engagement with your customers is to create email mailing lists. This can easily be done through a simple sign-up form on your website.
Once you have a mailing list, you can then send out regular content. This might include new items you are offering for sale, perhaps a weekly or monthly newsletter, an opinion blog, a summary of auction activity, or market analysis and statistics. Whatever it is, make it high quality, useful and interesting content – anything your audience is likely to be interested in. It definitely should not be self-promotional or too pushy/salesy.
Reaching out to your customers regularly with high quality content not only strengthens your relationships with them; it also goes a long way to establishing and maintaining your reputation and credibility as a trusted industry expert.
- Embrace social media
These days it seems that everyone is using social media. Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat or any of the other platforms out there, almost everyone with an internet connection uses social media on a daily basis. We use social media for everything; in our personal lives, for news feeds, for staying in touch with friends and family, or finding a job or a new employee.
A decade ago social media was used almost entirely for personal connections and communication, or for sharing funny cat videos. While this probably won’t ever change, there’s no doubt that social media is now far more commercialised. More and more businesses are recognising the awesome power of social media to reach their target customers and conduct their business online. Especially when compared to traditional marketing channels.
What’s also clear, however, is that many businesses within the fine art world are lagging way behind other industries in their adoption of social media.
Why? Many seem to fear reputational risk. “Social media may be okay for all these trendy young online businesses,” they tell me, “but it’s too frivolous and not professional enough for us.”
Others seem to take an ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ approach, believing that moving towards online and away from traditional marketing and business development will be a waste of time and effort. Also, who within the business should actually look after social media marketing day to day?
One really important thing to stress is that social media is no longer the exclusive domain of young people. While young adults are still the largest demographic group to use social media, older generations are catching up fast. According to Pew Research Center,[3] 37% of over-65s now use social media, compared with only 2% in 2005. The silver surfer is now truly social.
LinkedIn also deserves a special mention. Unlike most other social media platforms, LinkedIn is geared specifically towards business and professional use. Though light on funny cat videos, LinkedIn has become an essential part of every business’s marketing toolkit. It can be a really effective way for you to establish a network and a community, and generating customer leads. Not only that, but by consistently posting high quality content, you will establish yourself as a credible and trusted authority in your field.
Whatever your current attitude towards social media, it’s here to stay. Ten years from now it will be difficult to imagine the world before it. Right now, we’re still at the stage of mass adoption. Think the internet circa 1998 – it’s exactly the same thing.
But plenty of people still refuse to go near social media, particularly older folks. A lack of expertise and experience, not knowing where to start, plus fears over having to recruit and run a social media marketing team, leads many businesses to do nothing. It’s a classic example of analysis paralysis. For those businesses, in the ever-evolving world of social media, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose…
The Two Rs: Relationships and Reputation
Art galleries and dealers rely on the ‘Two Rs’: Relationships and Reputation. They use their expertise and track record to build credibility, and this enhances their industry reputation. With their reputation established, they are then able to build long-term relationships with clients.
It’s easy to forget that people do business with people, not businesses. This means that you need to humanise your business and your brand as much as possible. Social media gives you the opportunity to do exactly that, by engaging and communicating more directly and frequently with your audience.
I’ve already mentioned that online art sales exceeded $4.2 billion in 2017, up 12% on the previous year. Unsurprisingly, smartphone purchases feature heavily, accounting for 20% of sales in 2018, up from just 4% in 2015. That’s a five-fold increase in just three years!
There’s no doubt in my mind that social media has been instrumental in driving this trend. Social media platforms can provide a valuable way for art galleries to communicate with their audience, promote their artists and advertise events. And as investors become more comfortable buying art online, they will also be browsing art online. It will inevitably become self-sustaining.
Instagram leads the way in art gallery marketing
Instagram seems to lead the way in social media marketing for art galleries, with almost two-thirds of Hiscox survey respondents choosing it as their preferred platform in 2018. It’s a mobile-led visual platform which acts as a virtual exhibition space.
Social media management can also help your brand to be perceived by potential buyers as friendly, helpful and appealing. Make sure you monitor social inboxes and respond to direct messages quickly, providing a personal service when your audience shows interest or needs advice. Try to incorporate some time into your daily schedule to dedicate to dealing with social media interactions and messages. It will soon become second nature, something you do with your morning coffee or evening glass of wine – whatever works best for you.
Social media interaction with your target customers can also provide very effective market research. Twitter and Instagram, for example, both enable you to run polls within your community. This provides an invaluable opportunity for you to ask questions, gauge customer preferences, and so on.
Social media is not just a cost-effective way of growing your business. It’s also one of the most productive. And it needn’t be intimidating or scary. After all, your clients and prospects are already using it, and so are many of your competitors. You should be too.
- Video marketing
Video has quickly become a very powerful medium for marketing online. It’s already the largest source of data traffic on the internet, and it’s still growing at a frightening rate of 26% per year, according to Cisco. [4] By 2022, Cisco estimates that more than 80% of all consumer-related internet traffic will be video. And according to brandwatch, 400 hours of video content are uploaded to YouTube every minute! [5] An entire generation of children is now growing up watching YouTube videos alongside, or even in place of, regular television broadcasts.
Why has video content become so dominant? Short and easily digestible videos are a perfect way to convey a lot of information in less time and with less effort than reading a long post or clicking to a blog. And yes, the irony that you’re reading a 4000 word blog is not lost on me…
Within the art world, it seems that every function I attend, every gallery opening or a new exhibition, includes a videographer (often two) to record the event. Partly it’s for posterity and to record significant events. But increasingly, much of this video content is being edited, curated and shared by galleries via social media.
Again, video marketing is all about interacting and engaging with your target audience. People can comment on videos, which generates a conversation, and that’s how a community is built.
For art galleries and dealers, video content can provide a far better and authentic insight into your brand than any text you write. It therefore has the power to make your social content look more authentic and to present your gallery as an attractive and inviting space. Remember, plenty of people still feel intimidated by the art market, so it’s your job to welcome them in and show them around – whether in person or through the use of video.
So make use of video where you can. Whether it’s for a new exhibition, to showcase a new piece that comes into your gallery, or to feature a particular artist, there are many ways to make use of video in your marketing strategy.
When it comes to art gallery marketing, there are so many different ways you can use video to fully utilise the creative content you have around you. After all, if your whole business is about visuals and aesthetics, doesn’t it make sense to showcase this in a visual and aesthetic way?
- Inbound marketing and data
Outbound marketing is anything that pushes your products or services. It’s closely associated with paid advertising.
Inbound marketing is everything else. It includes your website, social media channels, blogs and other content. It also includes any press written about you. In short, anything that will help to grab people’s attention and tempt them to visit your gallery or website, or to get in touch with by email or social media.
Inbound marketing for art galleries isn’t straightforward. But while it’s tempting to shout from the virtual rooftops about all your forthcoming exhibitions and events, it’s even more important that you listen to what your audience is saying.
Listening is really what inbound marketing is all about. By understanding your prospective customers’ preferences, needs and interests, you can better target your inbound marketing strategy by giving them what they want.
How do we do this in practice? One important way is through data such as people’s purchasing habits; which social media posts they’re reading, liking and sharing; which web pages they’re looking at, and so on. In short, anything that tells you something about that person’s preferences and behaviour.
Amazon has led the way in using data dynamically to interact with its customers. Just think how often you receive those ‘Since you bought that product, you might be interested in this one’ emails. There’s no doubt that so-called ‘big data’ can revolutionise the way businesses interact with their customers.
By collecting and analysing data, then, you’ll be better able to understand your audience and their preferences. And that puts you in a far better position when it comes to attracting them to your gallery.
In fact, data overlaps with everything I’ve talked about so far. It includes website analytics, or data about your website visitors; which pages are viewed most frequently, and for the longest time? Where do visitors go after leaving each page? This can provide valuable insights into your customers and whether they find your content engaging and compelling.
As can data on your blog posts or other content; which emails are being opened and read the most? Which see the highest click-through rates (to your website)? Which social media posts receive the most “Views”, “Likes” and “Shares”, and so on? There’s a vast repository of data out there, and plenty of tools to help you collect and analyse it.
The final word
Some businesses in the fine art industry seem to be afraid of pivoting towards online marketing and social media. I’m not sure why – online customers are just as likely as offline customers to develop loyalty to businesses they’ve had a good experience with.
Having a well-designed website and embracing social media can generate so many opportunities for your art gallery. And the trend is only moving one way; it’s easy to envisage social media becoming the most significant factor in a customer’s purchase decision in the near future.
Engaging with your customers, creating a community and providing them with high quality and regular content, will help you not only to develop stronger relationships with your audience, but will also help to establish and maintain your reputation as a trusted authority in your field.
And don’t forget offline marketing. There will always be a place for print advertising and other forms of traditional marketing, especially in the world of fine art. But aim to cross-market; that is, link your digital marketing to your offline marketing. Make sure you promote your social media channels and online content where possible in all printed materials and brochures.
Doing this will create an effective bridge between your online and offline marketing efforts, so that they become a seamless and powerful integrated marketing machine.
I’ve only really scratched the surface of each of these topics, and each one really deserves its own blog. Think of this as an overview of digital marketing, why it’s so critical for business success, and some of the things to think about as you assess your own marketing needs.
There’s plenty I haven’t mentioned here at all, including:
- SEO (search engine optimisation): making sure your website and content are highly ranked in Google searches
- Influencer marketing: partnering with other relevant social media channels to broaden your reach and increase your target market
- Virtual and augmented reality: ‘do you want to see what this painting will look like hanging on your wall?’
- Live chat: enabling you to communicate in real time with your website visitors.
These are all tools in the digital marketer’s toolbox, and will all help you to attract new buyers, expand your business and increase sales.
No matter how long you’ve been in the art business, treat every day as an opportunity to learn more, to expand your contact list and to think creatively. Take courses on social media, sales, marketing and business strategy. Join your local chamber of commerce and networking groups, and get involved in art and business events in your community.
Don’t be afraid to embrace change, and if it all seems a little overwhelming, don’t be afraid to call in the specialists!
[1] https://d2u3kfwd92fzu7.cloudfront.net/Art%20Basel%20and%20UBS_The%20Art%20Market_2018.pdf
[2] https://www.hiscox.co.uk/online-art-trade-report
[3] http://www.pewinternet.org/2018/03/01/social-media-use-in-2018/
[4] https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/service-provider/visual-networking-index-vni/white-paper-c11-741490.html#_Toc529314172