How to Build a Profitable Art Brand With Content Marketing
Let me guess… 🧐
If somebody asked you what you aim to achieve with your art business, you’d probably answer greater visibility, increased audience engagement, more social media followers, more leads, or higher income.
Right?
But how many of you would add brand building to the bucket list?
The thing is, none of the above comes true without a solid personal brand.
You won’t get the attention you deserve nor attract your ideal audience if you don’t focus on your identity first.
Data don’t lie:
Consistent branding across all channels can increase revenue by 20%. (State of Brand Consistency)
74% of Americans are more likely to trust someone with an established personal brand. (Brand Builder Group)
46% of consumers pay more for trusted brands. (Salsify)
By investing in personal branding, you’ll differentiate yourself, gain trust and credibility, strengthen your reputation, and grow your exposure.
What’s more, you’ll give people a positive perception of who you are; creating lasting, quality connections with them.
But how do you do this effectively? And how do you start a brand, as an artist or art business owner, that pans out?
The most sustainable way is to craft a comprehensive content marketing strategy.
In today’s post, I’ll show you five core steps for successful art brand building with content marketing.
Let’s do this!
Why Choose Content Marketing for Your Art Brand Growth
It’s undeniable: the number of companies using content marketing to scale is rising yearly, with 46% spending up to 9% of their budget on this powerful tool in 2022. (CMI)
For new and growing art brands, content marketing is a profitable way (costing 62% less than traditional marketing) to promote themselves with valuable, customer-focused content that nurtures awareness and loyalty.
It sets you apart from the competition by spreading your expertise and authority in the field and encourages your target audience to familiarize themselves with you through consistent content tailored to their needs and interests.
So, if you’re wondering, What is the role of content marketing in brand building? Or how does content build a brand? Consider this marketing type as your trump card to:
Improve the searchability and organic ranking of your website.
Share your brand mission, story, and beliefs through storytelling.
Add value to your services and offers.
Bond with a faithful audience that keeps coming back.
Generate quality leads and customer retention.
Grow your revenue.
Amazing, right?
Building an art brand with content marketing will make you memorable and relevant to those you strive to serve the most, paving the way for business growth!
5 Key Steps to Building an Art Brand With Content Marketing
It’s time to dive into the best strategies to build a healthy brand with content marketing!
The five essential steps listed below will give you clarity on:
Your true personality and worth as an art brand.
The desired goals you aim to achieve with your activity.
The direction to take when marketing yourself online.
How to ideate content that engages and converts your audience.
Leveraging your business will be a no-brainer with this approach - keep reading, and you’ll understand why! 😉
Define Your Expertise
One of the fundamentals to building an art brand with content marketing is to know your area of expertise (aka what makes you an expert in your niche).
That’s fundamental to growing your brand recognition and developing an authoritative, ROI-focused online presence.
It’s the starting point for defining the core topic area you’re knowledgeable about and should center your content creation around, like abstract painting if you’re an artist, art marketing if you’re a blogger, or selling contemporary art if you’re a gallery.
From there, you extend your expertise to all the subtopics that interest your audience - this way, you’ll brainstorm content ideas based on their preferences/wants/questions.
Ask yourself:
What’s your audience curious about?
What are their challenges or expectations?
Are they looking for specific solutions?
What could they learn from you?
Similar questions will drive your entire online content strategy and clarify your brand vision and goals!
By finding the “sweet spot,” or intersection between your expertise and people’s desires, you’ll create helpful content that resonates with your targeted niche, giving them a valid reason to connect and put their trust in you.
Remember: only from a deep understanding of both areas comes effective content marketing that retains leads and drives profitable action.
2. Identify Your CDF
To build a promising art brand with content marketing, you need to define what makes you stand out in the marketplace.
That’s where the Content Differentiation Factor (CDF) comes in, representing the unique perspective you bring as a business.
It highlights your one-of-a-kind approach to the industry topics you write about and the personal angle from which you communicate your content to the audience.
Simply put, it’s your brand mission statement, that distinctive factor that can’t be found anywhere else.
CDF is what separates your brand from all the other competitors out there. (Express Writers)
But how do you craft a strong statement?
A few tips:
Define the four key components of your base content strategy (who you’re reaching/impacting; how you can help them better than your competitors; how you can create content that speaks to them; why you create content).
Focus on the benefits and outcome (what your audience will do or know thanks to your helpful content and offers).
Keep your CDF simple and to the point (what you do differently and that places you as a reference point in your field).
Find your own voice (what style, words, or phrases you use; how you express your brand’s message; how your audience speaks).
Once you determine your CDF, this becomes the foundation of all of your marketing efforts and what urges your audience to interact and, potentially, buy from you.
Take time to figure out this key point and go full-force into content creation only afterwards - it’ll be worth it!
3. Discover Your Dream Audience
You might ask, “How can I promote my art brand?”.
Well, the best way to level up your digital presence and draw more leads is to know your audience. Thoroughly.
You won’t go anywhere with your content if you don’t research the market first.
This implies digging into people’s thoughts, doubts, and aspirations to set a strategy that fulfills what they’re looking for.
It’s about “filling the gap” with content solutions that ONLY you can offer.
The content core meets your audience’s interests while simultaneously generating demand for your product or service. (CoSchedule)
Here’s how to do it:
Talk and listen to your audience through calls, live chats, or surveys for direct validation of what they want and struggle with.
Connect with them on social media to understand their behavior, favorite topics, recurring conversations, who they follow, and what they say about your brand.
Build a realistic buyer persona from the info you gather to outline your ideal prospects.
Align your offerings with your market research to better serve your audience.
Single out their common traits and where they’re at in the marketing lifecycle to ideate purposeful content tied to each stage (awareness, consideration, or decision).
The three stages of the buyer’s journey. (Hubspot)
This way, you’ll have a tried-and-true method to build a brand with content marketing that satisfies your audience’s demands and boosts conversions!
4. Create Content Based on Three Main Goals
Now that you have documented your expertise, purpose, and audience, it’s time to define measurable content marketing goals for your online success.
This is crucial to choosing valuable topics that reflect your overarching goals and improve the performance of your content strategy in the long term.
More specifically, you need to focus on three main goals or “goal buckets” for your topic ideation:
SEO rankings
Sales and connections
Brand awareness
Every content piece should serve at least one of these three objectives to reach increased audience engagement, higher ROI (Return On Investment), and real, quantifiable growth.
The “three-bucket topic strategy.”
What this means for your art brand:
SEO rankings refer to quality content ranking in the top 10 of the SERP for a specific keyword that is relevant to your target audience. It provides users with the best information on a topic they’re interested in. So, if your piece is beneficial and engaging, you’ll earn qualified website traffic and visibility.
Brand awareness suggests grabbing people’s attention for brand exposure, recognition, and lead generation. You use remarkable content to show your identity, values, and activity, and to position yourself as an authority in the market.
Sales and connections are about getting trust and engagement with your content. The interest and conversations you drum up with blogs, emails, or social media posts move engaged people from the awareness stage to the consideration stage to the decision stage of the buyer’s journey, bringing sales and revenue.
In case you struggle to find realistic goals right off the bat, take your time and keep brainstorming.
If the idea doesn’t fit into any bucket, it’s not a worthwhile content topic and needs ditching; if you find a viable one that you later realize to be unsuitable for your current situation, adjust it to your needs.
Focusing on a growth-centered goal strategy makes it easier to build an art brand with content marketing. And you’ll stop depending on vanity metrics like the number of likes, comments, page views, or going viral that are irrelevant to your business development.
5. Build a Branded Website
What is the best platform to promote art and build a brand with content marketing?
Two words: your website.
There’s no better way to market yourself online, pull in prospects, and gain ROI than through your unique “content house” filled with your best, original quality content.
According to a survey by Visible Logic:
87% of users check out the website of a new product, service, or business.
96% admit a website highly affects which product or service they choose.
100% leave a website if it’s poorly designed or difficult to use.
A solid “house” is a game-changer for your growth - especially if equipped with key content strategy components like integrated SEO for qualified, organic traffic, catchy CTAs, compelling lead magnets, mobile-friendly web pages, great visuals, and the right tracking metrics for content optimization.
That and a strong CDF, that distinguishes you from the crowd, will put you on the sure path to success!
A well-structured website will benefit your art brand immensely, helping you expand your online community, customer base, reputation, influence, and loyalty - something hard to achieve if turning only to social media to build a presence.
Why?
Because those platforms are proprietary, meaning you don’t fully own the content you share there nor do you have control over the algorithms. (What if your favorite social channel suddenly shut down? You’d lose everything from your account to the following and the authority you've built up!)
The best method is to use social media and any other marketing tactic (podcasting, guest blogging, YouTube videos, etc.) as secondary roads leading to your content estate.
All roads should lead back to your website. (Content Hacker)
The core of your business longevity lies in your website - invest in it and make it your greatest target audience hotspot!
Build an Art Brand With Content Marketing to Reach New Heights
Kudos to you! 👏
Brand building is an indispensable, yet challenging step in growing a business online - 90% of new startups don’t even survive the first year of their activity!
But what if you could be in that 10% that succeed?
That’s where building an art brand with content marketing comes in - and the five guidelines listed above are all you need to start scaling!
Remember to:
Identify your expertise and standout factor.
Deeply know your audience to create thoughtful content catered to them.
Set clear and measurable content marketing goals.
Craft a branded website that draws quality leads and potential customers.
A similar growth mindset will make for improved visibility, awareness, trustworthiness, and long-term relationships.
Trust the process, and you’ll be on your way to a personal brand content marketing strategy that works! 💯
