Finding a target market for your art is important to connect with people who love what you create and purchase your work. However, since you are not a full-time marketer, you might have a hard time identifying your target market as an artist. This post shows you 4 easy steps you can use to determine your art audience!
Have you ever wondered why some artists seem to be incredibly popular, sell a lot of art, and have huge social media followings, while others have as much talent but are not even half as ‘popular’?
The only reason is that ‘successful’ artists have identified a market for their art and provide value to their target audience.
We all feel happy and fulfilled when we can inspire others with our artwork. It fuels our creativity when people like our art. In return, we want to create and serve more. This is the purpose of us being creators.
However, a lot of artists struggle when it comes to identifying their target market. They just don’t know where to start and how to find their niche.
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In a nutshell, the target audience for your art is the people who benefit from the offerings you create as an artist.
Now, you might be asking yourself, how do I find a market for my art? Who wants to buy my works? Where do I find collectors?
These are the questions we are going to look into in this blog post, and they are not as hard to figure out as you might think…
Just read on and you’ll find out how to identify your target market as an artist!
What is a target market for your art?
The target market for your art will be the people who have a passion for what you create and who are interested in purchasing your artwork.
They are the people who will understand the meaning of your art and derive emotional value from it.
One can say that your target audience is a reflection of yourself as the artist. They are the people who share the same enthusiasm and fascination for a particular artistic style.
Let’s say you enjoy creating digital art. Then the people who have a passion for digital artwork would be your target market.
You can narrow it down even more. What kind of digital art do you like to create? Digital paintings, collages, photo manipulations, 3D animations?
For example, I like to create photo manipulations that tell surreal stories. So my target audience is people who are interested in digital surrealism.
Identifying your target market as an artist will save you endless hours of promoting your work to people who are not interested in what you create.
The good news is that reaching out to your target market is not as hard as it used to be.
Nowadays, art lovers and collectors can discover artists from all over the world on the internet. Especially during the past two years, art trends have shifted even more towards the web, galleries and exhibitions have become virtual, too, and online art sales continue to increase.
The major challenge is to get your artwork seen, so your target audience can find you!
How do you identify your target market as an artist?
As a rule of thumb, it is better to have a smaller target audience for your art, instead of trying to cater to the taste of each and everyone. You won’t sell more or be more successful as an artist, if you seek to please a huge number of people.
First and foremost, you create art for yourself, but you must know what kind of art you want to focus on, so you can determine your target market.
That’s why defining your art is the first step to identifying your target market as an artist! So let’s start with that…
4 Major steps to determine your target market
STEP 1: Define your art.
What kind of art do you like to create? If your art is all over the place, you will have a hard time selecting a target market.
You don’t need to tie yourself down to the same theme or the same color palette you are going to work with over and over again, if you don’t want to. But usually, it is a good idea to stick to one or two consistent themes.
For example, I for my part am into surrealism. This is a theme that appears almost throughout my entire body of work. Another theme that you can make out in my artwork is nature. Natural elements appear in all of my collections, be it Surreal Stories, Lip Service, Headshots, or Nature & Macro.
But you can pick whatever theme(s) you like. Maybe you like to paint a particular character. Maybe your theme is abstract art in pastel colors.
Once you’ve figured out what you want to focus on, it will be much easier for you to address a certain niche of art lovers.
STEP 2: Get to know your customers.
The second step to identifying your target market as an artist is getting to know your customers.
Who are your customers likely to be? Visualize your perfect customer and try to figure out as many attributes as you can. In marketing, this is called creating a ‘buyer persona’.
To create this fictional customer use what you already know about your previous customers and your best guesses. Here are some questions you can ask yourself:
- Where do they live?
- Where do they work?
- How much money do they make?
- What do they do for fun?
- What education do they have?
- What books do they read?
- What music do they listen to?
- Where do they eat out?
- What gender are your customers? Are they mainly women or men?
- What age are they?
- Do they belong to a specific ethnicity?
The more specific you get, the better. The more you know about your target audience, the easier it will be to connect with them and the more successful you will be at marketing your art.
STEP 3: Use online analytics.
There are a number of free online tools that help you identify your target market as an artist.
These tools can provide you valuable information about what ideas, topics, and products your audience likes the most. Some of the data that reveals this information is your website traffic, in case you have your own artist website.
Your website traffic will show you which pages, blog posts, and products are the most popular. Likewise, you can take a look at the shares and the engagement on your blog posts to get an idea of what your audience resonates with the most.
But you can also use your social media to find out more about your target market. What kind of people follow you on Instagram? Who likes and comments on your posts? Who shares your content?
You may discover that a certain demographic is most interested in what you create. This is your target market.
Here are some free online tools to help you learn more about your potential art audience:
- Google Analytics (for your website)
- Instagram Insights
- Facebook Insights
- Pinterest Analytics
- Sprout Social
- Iconosquare
I built my entire artist website on my own, including a web store where customers can purchase my products. I used WordPress, the OceanWP theme and the Elementor page builder. If you want to know how exactly I built this website, you can learn everything I did to create this website here.
STEP 4: Learn where your target audience hangs out.
As important as getting to know your customers is learning where they tend to hang out – both online and offline.
For example, if your art audience tends to spend most of their time on Instagram, it wouldn’t be helpful to focus your marketing efforts on Facebook. The best marketing materials would be useless, if your biggest fans don’t get to see them.
Once you’ve figured out where your potential customers spend most of their time, you can use these places to reach out to them.
If your target audience likes to watch your Instagram stories, use these to market to them. If your buyers prefer to hang out on Pinterest, then hop over there and invest your time and effort into creating attractive pins.
→ 15 Must-Know Tips For Artists Using Pinterest
The same is true for the ‘real world’. For instance, if there’s a cool art gallery in your city and you know your potential customers frequent that gallery, also go there and take the chance to meet them in person!
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I hope that this blog post helped you to identify your target market as an artist and I wish you lots of success connecting with the people who love your art!
Are you still weary about marketing your art? I know that putting your art and yourself out there can be daunting. If you want to learn more about marketing your art, I have two more posts for you to check out: Why Marketing Is An Art & How To Market Your Art and Online Marketing For Artists: Use The Rule Of Seven To Your Advantage.
More tips and tricks are available in the Showcase & Sell Your Art section.
Please leave questions and comments below or reach out to me directly via email or on Instagram. I’d love to hear from you! Make sure to sign up for my email list below so you don’t miss out on new blog posts and other cool stuff. ♥
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The article is really helpful for Artists who are looking to sell their art online. I like the part where you said it is important to keep in mind who your customers will be while creating the art piece. Thank you for sharing!
Hi Michael, thanks for your feedback. Glad the article was helpful!