Every year brings opportunities to connect with new collectors and artists, sell more art, and grow the gallery’s reputation as your community’s cultural leader.  A comprehensive and robust art gallery marketing plan is a crucial element in the growth of your business and your artists’ careers.

In this article, let’s look at how to get organized to create your art gallery marketing plan and what you should include making that plan a valuable tool throughout the coming year.

If the thought of putting together a written marketing plan for your gallery makes your skin crawl, don’t worry.  It doesn’t need to be a daunting task with flowcharts and pivot tables.

Your marketing plan merely needs to be a document that states:

• Your marketing goals
• A list of steps to accomplishing those goals
• Deadlines or timeline for implementing
• Define how you will measure progress

Review your art gallery’s current marketing reality

Reviewing your gallery’s marketing successes and failures is a great starting point for developing your marketing plan for the year.  As part of your review process, try to answer the following questions.

• Does your current marketing strategy support your overall business goals?  What works well and what needs work?
• What were the results of your marketing efforts?
  • mailing list growth
  • newsletter and website stats
  • event attendance
  • social media followers and engagement
  • partnerships, and collaborations
  • lead generation sources
  • etc.
• What marketing channels have the most significant return on your investment in both time and money?
• Are there marketing initiatives you want to eliminate because they are not performing as hoped or doesn’t have the right audience.

Reflecting on lessons learned from previous years is good practice and helps you set priorities for the new year.

Keeping track of lessons learned year after year is also valuable for seeing your accomplishments or identifying patterns that could help you make strategic decisions in other areas of running the gallery.

Step by Step: Creating an Art Gallery Marketing Plan

1: Marketing Channels

It can be overwhelming to think about all the different ways you can increase awareness about your gallery business and artists.  You can’t do it all.

List each type of marketing channel that your gallery business will implement in the coming year. Your list might include:

• Email marketing
• SEO
• Website content (Blog, Videos, Viewing rooms, Virtual Exhibitions, etc.)
• Social media channels
• Referral program
• Direct mail
• Advertising (Print and Digital)
• Strategic collaborations
• Community outreach
• Marketing automation (nurture or education email series)
• Networking

Defining each marketing channel helps you think about your gallery’s marketing strategy more comprehensively.  You might realize you’re missing opportunities or spending time on a project without any real goals in mind.  You may also want to add new or eliminate channels within your marketing mix.

2: Marketing Goals

It is helpful to break down the process into smaller pieces.  For example, begin with big picture marketing goals that support your vision for the gallery’s future.  Next, determine what goals you need for each marketing channel.  Make accomplishing those goals realistic by then listing specific action steps required.

Make your marketing goals as specific as possible.  Doing so will help you communicate expectations more clearly with your team and ensure progress can be measured.

Setting marketing goals by quarter helps you from getting too overwhelmed, and you can better manage your time and resources this way.  Focusing on short milestones makes it easier to track and manage your progress as well.

3: Action steps to achieve your art gallery’s marketing goals

Now that you have your goals set for each marketing category your gallery business will use, it’s time to create actionable steps necessary for achieving each goal.

Treat this like a checklist of tasks that must be done, in a particular order to accomplish your goal.  For example, if your goal is to increase engagement on Instagram, your checklist might include:

1. Research types of posts Instagram users engage with most often
2. Identify how the gallery can create more of these types of content around our exhibitions
3. Complete any training or adopt a new program to make this content more easily
4. Create X number of these posts types per month with either XY or Z calls to action
5. Include these new hashtags
6. Write image captions are at least X amount of words
7. Etc, etc. – You get the idea

Making a checklist like this will help you see how much time will be needed to accomplish this goal.  It will also make you aware of any required resources that you may not have considered and how many staff, contractors, or artists you will need for assistance.

You may also find you use this checklist to have greater continuity with repeated processes as well.

4: Set Marketing Priorities

At this point, it can be easy to bite off more than you can chew.  I recommend selecting three or four projects as your priority that has the potential to make a significant impact on your business. Some examples might include:

• redesigning your website
• launching a video series
• adopting a new marketing technology
• expanding your art fair opportunities

You don’t know what the year will bring.  Prioritizing now allows you to focus on what is most beneficial.  It is too easy to spend time on a project only to realize it wouldn’t help you accomplish a big goal.

Elements in your plan that do not make the priority list are still valid, and if you do not make much progress on them in the coming year, you have set a good foundation for the following year.

5: Assign Resources and Budget

Once you have identified your top marketing priorities for the year, consider the resources you will need to accomplish them.

• If you need to outsource a portion of the projects, what can you budget for those services?
• How much do you plan to invest in advertising?
• What costs will be associated with potential technology upgrades or art fairs?
• Do you need any new marketing tools or programs, such as a social media scheduler, email marketing provider, video production equipment, etc?

If the numbers don’t match up, now is the time to reconsider your plan.

6: Define Success Metrics

Lastly, establish within the plan precisely how you will measure the success of each marketing project. These measurements must be able to connect back to your overall gallery marketing goals.

Determine which metrics are most important to track, how often progress will be measured and who is responsible for maintaining a record of results.

Writing your gallery marketing plan

I do not believe a marketing plan needs to be a formal document with charts and graphs, but I know your plan will be more likely to be successful if you put it in writing.  I like to use a simple spreadsheet, but you use what works best for you.

Below is an example of how minimal your plan could be structured.

Channel	Goals	Strategy (actions)	Measure/ROI	Timeline
Social Media
Email Marketing
Referral Program
Website Content

Don’t forget to also write down your observations from last year and your gallery’s current marketing reality.

Marketing Calendar

An essential part of your gallery’s plan is a marketing calendar.  Your calendar should be driven by your planned exhibitions and events or what artists you plan to feature throughout the year.

The benefit of using a marketing calendar is that it helps you decide what and when you need to create content for your gallery’s email marketing, on your website, and throughout social media.  Planning on a calendar helps you ensure your important messages are repeated often enough for you art buyers to hear them over all the other noise in their lives.

A marketing calendar also helps you see if you are offering various types of information that appeals to your subscribers and followers’ broad range of interests.

To the Point

Creating and implementing a marketing plan for your gallery is critical to your business’s growth and the success of the artists you represent.

As you think about what you would like to achieve from your marketing efforts, consider how your marketing goals align with the gallery’s long-term vision.  Connecting marketing goals to business objectives can help ensure your priorities are in the right place.

Often art galleries spend too much time trying to implement marketing trends that don’t work for their target collector.  Creating a plan and regularly measuring results will go a long way in identifying what initiatives positively impact your art gallery’s sales success and business growth.

Keep your art gallery’s marketing plan smart and straightforward.

 

You might also want to check out these related articles

The Content Calendar and your Art Gallery’s Marketing Plan

Creating an Art Gallery Social Media Strategy

 

 

Did this article add fuel to your gallery business?