Marketing
- Coral Ryder
- Feb 9, 2024
- 7 min read
Updated: Jun 13, 2024
Marketing what is it?
According to dictionary.cambridge.org:
Marketing is: "a job that involves encouraging people to buy a product or service".
Marketing is about reaching your target audience and presenting the world with your products and services in order to drive people towards your creative business, thereby reach potential customers and build your clientele. It is productive in promoting your brand and showcasing what makes your services stand out above your competitors. It involves researching the market, knowing your target audiences and how to reach them, as well as getting to grips with your competitors and to what makes them successful or not.
Marketing is important in actively growing interest in your business and boosting sales. We cannot grow our business if no one knows we exist or how to find us. It is thereby prudent to have an online presence and keep up to date with networking and what is trending, especially considering modern day societies obsession with social media. It is therefore important that we understand how to use technology if we are to utilise this essential tool in promoting our enterprise to the international market.
Marketing involves utilising various methods to promote your business, peak peoples interest and guide them to where they can book your services or buy your produce. It generates interest locally, nationally and internationally through advertising and networking. To reach a wider customer base it requires we understand how to use social media and marketing sites such as Instagram, Facebook, Blogger, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Esty, etc. We can further promote through writing a blog or recording a vlog, through building a website and online shop and via connecting our brand across all our platforms with links to our products and services.
So, how do we utilise it? We do this through creating a marketing strategy, coming up with a plan and enacting it.
Marketing Strategy:
About your business: My creative business is centred around spirit and psychic art, mediumship and Spiritualism. It provides private sittings, demonstrations, workshops and seminars on the subjects of psychism, mediumship and spiritual arts. It now also includes a range of products of my own design aimed at Spiritualists, lightworkers and those who are spiritually minded.
What you want to achieve: I would like to expand upon my teaching role as a tutor of mediumship and spiritual arts, and pass on my knowledge to the next generation of budding spirit artists. I'd like to see mediumship and Spiritualism accepted by society and the historic stigma and subsequent bias towards my kind to cease. "Normalise not Stigmatise". To this end I also design spiritual products that serve as conversation starters and a fun way of educating people through visual merchandise: such as T- shirts, hoodies, aprons, mugs, water bottles, cards etc.
Who are you trying to reach: My work is aimed at those interested in mediumship and all things spiritual, from those seeking spirit communication to those wishing to learn and explore their own natural mediumistic abilities through the creative mind. My products are aimed at reaching said interested parties in spirit communication and Spiritualism. I aim to breach the gap in the market with my spiritual designs merchandise in relation to mediumship and Spiritualism so lightworkers and their family and friends can purchase gifts for their spiritually minded loved ones designed by a Spiritualist for Spiritualists.
Product: in essence I am my product, what makes me unique is that I am a spirit portrait artist and the first person in history to gain a CSNU from the Spiritualist National Union in demonstrating Spirit Art. Accomplished spirit artists like myself are few and far between, thereby my skill set and knowledge on the subject is sought after. I also create various pieces of artwork and Spiritual designs in relation to psychism, mediumship, spirituality and Spiritualism etc.
Price: From my spiritual designs merchandise print on demand I currently get 20% to 40% profit from each item sold. From workshops and seminars I get between 50% to 80% of the takings although my travel expenses are deducted from the profit. When working from home I get 100% and have the luxury of not having to leave the comfort of home. I am still working on how much to charge for individual pieces of art.
Place: In relation to my spirit work, I work online and in person for an international clientele. I work from home online doing workshops, Church services, demonstrations and spirit art for Churches and Centres. I also do the same in person, locally, nationally and internationally. You can visit my website at spiritwithinart.net contact me for bookings via email to coralryder@gmail.com or spiritwithinart@gmail.com, or call me on +44 079864598. To browse my online market and purchase some of my merchandise visit Spirit Within Art.
Website: spiritwithinart.net
I have done some research into varying websites but have decided to go with google as I already have a website with them that I know how to use, and its free!! It also has the added advantage that I can access and edit it on varying devices with relative ease, compared to other sites where I could not edit my blog on my tablet. Therefore Instead of creating a new website I simply revamped my old one with my new brand colours, logo and added a link directly to my online shop.
I have been using the name Spirit Within Art for many years but had not gotten round to buying a domain name. By the time I finally decided that I needed a domain name, the most popular .com was already taken. Therefore, as I wanted a domain name associated with working internationally I went with .net, which I bought through google who renew it for me every year.
SEO:
SEO stand for Search Engine Optimisation, and it is utilised when making searches on search engines such as Google to find websites. Understanding how to take advantage of SEO's will help drive people towards your business. In order to do this we need to consider what keywords people might use to search for businesses like ours. Knowing the right words to connect to our website is paramount in growing our online presence and thereby to the success of our creative enterprise.
On Google Keyword Planner I searched: spirit art, spiritual art, psychic art, medium, mediumship, psychism, evidential art, spiritual, and designs; which were not as widely explored as I'd expected. I then searched my own name on Google keywords to discover that 10 to100 average searches a month are done on my name. I then checked out my business name Spirit Within Art which showed no average searches. I then looked up other key words in relation to my other work and spiritual merchandise I've been designing. To get the most out of SEO I have concluded that I need to use a combination of words from both genres in order to promote my works and website to a wider audience. I noted that the word Hoodies gets a lot of attention, therefore maybe worth further experimentation and designs.
A few free ways in which to help draw attention and drive people towards your website:
Inputting key words that people might use to find your business into Google keyword planner. Then use the popular keywords established, on your website and in text and titles to help Google recognise what your business is about.
Regularly update and check your website, blogs, listings, sales and product descriptions etc.
Name your pictures and videos to make it easier for Google to identify what they are.
Keep up to date with customer relations and respond to queries promptly.
Link other sites of interest to your website, and link all you sites together.
Utilise Google Analytics to discover how many hits your site gets and what keywords is drawing visitors to your site, then adjust your strategy accordingly to help expand your creative enterprise further.
Product photography: showcasing our creative products is an artform in itself. Trying to get quality photographs can be achieved through hiring a professional or by doing it yourself. Hiring someone can be expensive but should guarantee the images are of a high standard. Alternatively we can do it ourselves using our mobile phones or personal cameras. Mobile phones digital cameras nowadays can capture millions of pixels and produce some high quality pictures. A few things that can help capture a good product image is using the right lighting and setting. Natural light gives a warm light where as cool light is brighter. A light box can be useful as it gives an equal distribution of light, avoiding shadows and is good for jewellery. Using a lightbox with an adjustable setting, from cool to warm, can help in determining the best lighting to use on your product and setting. Once you have your product photography images, you can then edit them using programs like Canva, Krita, or photoshop.
In context photography is when you put it into the context of where it would be used or seen, for instance one of the ornaments I've painted could be pictured on a mantle piece or unit shelf. Paintings could be captured on the walls, clothing could be pictured whilst wearing it, or have friends and family model them. Props could be utilised to enhance and portray the contextual scene such as miniatures could be captured on a D&D or Warhammer book, or gaming board (copyright permitting). In relation to my spirit portraiture and psychic art it could be images capturing me working whilst demonstrating to a live audience.
Useful links:
After researching and testing my products I found several links that could prove useful in advertising events and selling products. Some I will utilise in the near future and some I may expand into once I have gotten my creative enterprise established.
Eventbrite useful for advertising, ordering and sending out tickets for events.
Etsy: An online marketplace useful in reaching an international market. However, I have found it is presently not for me, due to the ongoing listing fees. The fees maybe small per item but with multiple listings it can become quite costly to keep your items listed. It soon builds up if your not offsetting it by making many sales yet.
Printify Print to order service, that works through connecting to your online stores such as Etsy, Shopify and Ebay. The downside to Printify is that you have to sell through specific online markets, all are very competitive and charge listing and selling fees that cut further into your profit margin.
Instagram does not charge to list or sell your products. They charge fees for ad campaigns and to drive sales towards your store. ("complete guide to Instagram marketing") Facebooks marketplace is free to list and sell if your an individual but there are some fees for registered sellers and merchants.
Creative fabrica: useful for fonts, images, patterns, etc. Purchases comes with the licenses for commercial use, and you can also sell your designs for others to use.
T-shirt studio: offers a print on demand service, and a free online store to sell your designs. It costs nothing to list or sell, the profit you set is the profit you get minus taxes. (e.g. T-shirt costs £10, you set £5 profit, it sells at £15, T-shirt get £10, you get £5 minus tax).
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