Marketing Vol 1: Who is the Buyer and Why They Buy

Ok, so I picked what I would start w/ for the first informative marketing post. I will begin w/ who our target audience is in a broad term.

The Audience

From DanHeller.com we find four basic groups: Collectors, Aficionados, Consumers, and the Spontaneous Buyer.

Who are in these groups and what draws them to purchase a peace of art? Well, here is what I found at Dan's site and a few other sites I forgot to write the name down of.

Art Collector

• collect well known works
• purchase for investment reasons
• extremely well informed on art
• may purchase for intrinsic beauty and other qualities
• hope to eventually make a profit from the work
• money is rarely an object
  

This group sticks w/ well known artists and photographers, because these tend to bring the highest investment over a period of time. They are generally not interested in the new or emerging artist. My personal opinion is to not market to this group. At least until you are more established and your works are bringing in big bucks or become very recognizable or if you do as an artist. Otherwise, again in my opinion, it would be a waste of marketing money that could be better spent on more financially productive target marketing.

Art Aficionados

This is a group according to Dan Heller that subsets of three sub-groups. As a whole group they tend to buy art for arts sake and resale value of the art is secondary to why they purchase it.

1. High End Aficionados

• know the art world well
• do not collect or invest due to limited funds (I will throw in that I think this may or may not be the case since I have met many people w/ funds and limited knowledge on art, let alone other things, no offense meant, but you can also find people w/ less money who really know their artists)
• provide and opportunity for the accomplished, yet still relatively unknown artist who's works have been well received
  
• To get this group to notice you exhibit at TV or Radio events, high brow events (use your imagination), educational events, elite functions, or even by donating some of your art to charity and fun raisers

2. Pretend Aficionados

• this group doesn't know much at all about art, however they act like they do (so don't embarrass them if they make a misspeak on the subject of art, because that could alienate them from you as a customer. Use tact if you decide to correct them or just let it slide, because really, how important is it to be right all the time? Plus, it is possible you come could come across as a know it all and no one likes one of them whether you are or not)
• they buy from artists that are good, but not yet "experienced"

3. Aficionado Wanna-be

• ambitious about art
• they are still learning about it
• tend to be overly cautious when picking out the art they want and often take a long time to decide what to get and end up taking a lot of time from the artist during a possible sale, be patient w/ them as hard as it can be, but be wary of not wasting to much time w/ them, because you could be missing out on real sales while this person is taking forever to decide to buy from you
• their tastes are inconstant and undeveloped
• they aren't worried about the price of the art, however tend to spend less expensive work
  
• accessible to emerging artists
• you can find these consumers at: fairs, street markets, and other places that exhibit art

So... in my opinion this would be a great group to target your market to if your starting out or have yet to really make a name for yourself. They are ready to buy and interested in what's out there and learning about it.

Consumers

• have NO appreciable knowledge of art, and the tend not to want any
• this group prefers to buy their art as: postcards, calenders, posters, photo books, trinkets, and from tourist shops
• tend to spend $50.00 or less on art
• though they don't buy high priced items they tend to buy in volume
• they require a large quantity of art to choose from
• It is suggested that the best way to sell art to them is through distributors of retail or stock photography (unless you want to do your own distributing of products you put your art on)find them at: art fairs, art venues, and competitions looking at who has recognition value

I think this is an ok market to target to, but only if you have other ways to sell your art, besides prints. However, some of these people may need to decorate and choose to purchase prints at some point so always keep that in mind.

Spontaneous Buyer

• buy on vacation
• buy because they need something
• they are unpredictable and unreliable in terms of their purchases and whether they make purchases or not.
• they can account for appreciable sales
• OFTEN buy from unknown artists
  
• do NOT push them outside their comfort zone, let them look, let them decide when they are ready to buy

You must learn to recognize this group of consumers, because they can be time wasters. Plus, they tend to not want you to sell to them. They may want to buy, but they don't want pressure used. In my own experience, these people tend to tell you how much they love your work and can't believe how you can even do something like create art, but will not buy anything at all. They tend to be more into the social aspect of it. As in, just talking to someone for conversation rather than because they are interested in making a purchase. I've seen this type a lot. In my opinion, I wouldn't set them as a target market, but I wouldn't discount their importance to possible sales either. Just don't get sucked in to the conversation when you could be making real money w/ interested customers.