Creating Your Promotional Strategy
(The following is an excerpt from the eBook and Audiobook, 15 Steps to Freelance Illustration.)
(Illustration by Melanie Matthews)
Do you have a Promotional Strategy?
Promotion plays a major role in the success of your freelance business. In fact, you may find yourself spending more time on this task than any other, even creating art. After all, if you don’t continually find new clients, you won’t have anything to Illustrate aside from your own personal projects, which means you won’t be able to pay your bills.
In order to get the most out of your marketing efforts, it’s important to create a strategy that you’ll follow in the days ahead. That way you can simply execute your plan rather than reinvent your approach again and again.
Here are some common steps involved in a basic promotional strategy that you can consider applying to your own business:
Build a mailing list.
If you’re aiming for a specific market, make sure you’re promoting yourself to the people who work in that field and only show the type of work that fits their needs. To do this, you’ll need to build a targeted mailing list of relevant contacts.
Create and send your marketing materials.
Design promotional items such as business cards, postcards, e-mail newsletter templates, etc. It’s a good idea to try a combination of direct mailings and email marketing to see which methods work best for you. You will find links to many printing and marketing services in EFII’s Resource Library.
Announce your arrival.
Immediately send out your promotional materials to establish contact and introduce yourself to your target audience.
Promote on a schedule.
Don’t make the common mistake of sending out one promotional mailer or email and then sit back and wait until somebody contacts you. Keep your marketing efforts on a regular schedule while being careful to not send updates too frequently. Somewhere between every 60 to 90 days is a commonly accepted frequency.
Manage your mailing list.
Add to your list of contacts as you find new potential clients and check the information regularly to be sure that it’s up to date.
Use social networking.
Seek out and introduce yourself to the artists and Art Directors in your target market. Build real relationships with people and become a part of the larger Illustration community.
Making it Work for You
How you apply these concepts to your own business will depend on your budget, your personality, and your available time. If you follow these guidelines when promoting your business, you will have a much better chance of being noticed and remembered amongst a growing sea of Illustrators who are trying to make their mark in the industry.
What’s your promotional strategy? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section.
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Special thanks to Melanie Matthews for providing the artwork for this post.
Related Posts:
- 10 Rules of Effective Self-Promotion
- How to Build an Effective Mailing List
- How to Stand Out and Be Noticed
- Should You Work with an Art Rep?
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great post!
I am currently working on my first promotional blast. I’m thinking of a combination of direct postcards and email blast. I was wondering if anyone has any advice on this matter. What do you write on your first email newsletter. How do you introduce yourself? Do you mention that you are a new illustrator? What do you say when you don’t have no client list or prizes to promote yourself? Also I was wondering if anyone wouldn’t mind showing their us their actual promotional items. I think it would be a great help to see the real thing
thanks everyone and thanks efii for bringing up this topic.
I am doing pretty much what you are describing but just do it more often, I send an email with my some of my latest photos to the people on my mailing lists about once a month and now when I have been doing this for some months I’m just sending promotion emails to the those who actually have opened my emails in the past and/or showed interest in some way. I’ve had a few responses so far and my plan is to ‘insinuate’ my work and my name into people’s minds so when they need what I shoot, they will remember me!
Karo design- I just stated who I am and what I type of work I do, I’ve been told not to write too much but try to include the most important keywords what you and what your work is about. And I add different photos, in your case illustrations, in every email so that those who I send the promos to know that they will see new work every time.
Awesome post. I am NOT good at being consistent and have the misguided opinion that spending time on promotions means I am not working (simply because I don’t track ROI on my lame promotion efforts). I think your comment that you may spend more time finding work than working, is an enlightening comment that I may just have to tape to my display so I can feel good about the time devoted to it.
I’ve been terribly lax about promoting, which I’m really trying to remedy this year. I’ve got two different promo cards ready to be printed as soon as the paper samples arrive. I have a lot of trouble writing promotional copy about myself without feeling awkward or egotistical, but I guess that’s par for the course.
One new thing I’m trying this time around is sending different promos to people – one for a more general market and one geared specifically to children’s illustration. We’ll see how it goes!
@karo design – I really like seeing other people’s promotional items too. I think I’ll be posting mine on my blog once I get them ordered.
Offer discounts that are competitive to your competition.
Show your best work.
Try to track your email responses and direct mail pieces to know what’s working.
I certainly can’t speak for all art buyers, art directors, or anyone else who hires illustrators, but I DO NOT like getting e-mail promos.
My inbox gets pretty cluttered on a daily basis with messages from writers, editors, illustrators who are working for me, art directors, pre-press, ad services, and spam. Unlike g-mail or yahoo, my work-issued inbox is of limited size, so I have to clean it out pretty regularly.
The other problem, is that I get a lot of stuff that isn’t particularly appropriate for where I work, which is a weekly business magazine with an older and conservative audience. Perhaps, because e-mail is free and unlimited, people don’t do their homework before hitting send. The idea of casting a wide net might work, but for me at least it results in getting a lot of e-mails I don’t want from artist that I’d never be able to use.
I am soooo glad this topic came up because this is something that I am struggling with. I am also doing a promotional blast, and I’ve already sent out the emails, but I don’t think it was very helpful. My next step is to send postcards, but i don’t want to send them out aimlessly to art buyers who don’t want them. I also don’t want to make phone calls either. Is there any other way? All the comments thus far have been very helpful, and John, thank you for your honesty, would you rather someone call you and ask if they can send you an email. By the way, I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Kristen, I’m based in Chicago, and I draw storyboards for television commercials.
I like getting postcards.
They allow you see the work in print (which is helpful if you design for print, like I do) and decorate your cubicle wall (if you like them.) Something on the wall also has the potential to grab the attention of others in the office who might hire you before I get the chance to do so.
During slow times at the office, I’ll go through postcards I’ve received and check out websites. That might be the day I get them or a week later. I do go through them. There’s a significantly smaller chance I’ll do that if it comes in e-mail, especially if our spam blocker blocks your images.
The link above about building a mailing list is spot on, in my opinion, especially the part about who to target.
It’s nice to hear that artdirectors keep the postcards and use them as a memory game. It’s much more real than an email. I made 8 postcards and bound them together as a present. People really like to receive them…so that’s nice.
I also made a little movie from 30 seconds with all kind of illustrations. Each image 1 second. I don’t want people to be bored, but see the images so quick that they are like “wow what was that?” I send the link to an artdirector of a worldwide magazine through facebook. (i did some research) and i’ve got a job a few weeks later!
I’m not using the email promo’s a lot because it can be annoying… It can be nice if you have a sale, or an anniversery or it’s christmas…something like that.
Thanks for your comment. It’s so great if you can do something unique that catches an Art Director’s attention like that. Kudos to you for taking the extra step. An Art Director wants to see that an Illustrator is inspired to great clever ideas, rather than just paint a pretty picture.
I agree that physical promos are generally better, more memorable than an email or straightforward mailer.
Yes, i agree, it’s about clever ideas!
It’s also very easy to make a little movie in Imovie. You don’t need to be an expert in that.
For other promotion stuff:
I’m thinking about sending a little printed calender, so you make your print promotion usefull for the client.
Other idea is a mousemat, or little bounded book for the special clients. Like this:
http://www.mypix.com/mypix-mini-boekje-foto-objecten/4_1_2_23_188_00007345-nlnl_art.html (sorry about the dutch info)
Do you have any information about cheap printing outside your country? For example China to name something?
Illustration marketing is time consuming but you better do it or you
will be pounding the floor.
I usually send out e-mails with an attached piece of artwork and
Modern postcard for the most effective results. When I am having
a good few months will have samples in a directory.
Paul
This was so helpful to me – I wasn’t sure the snail mail way was an up-to-date approach, but realizing how emails can be so infringing on an art director’s inbox I can see why it’s the way to go! I’m in the process of sending out postcards for my new campaign. I’ve been mailing out 81/2″ x11″ self-promo sheets for years, and have had great success in getting responses and work from art directors! I do my own design and printing because the quality is fantastic with my Epson printer! Now that I have a portfolio website I’m trying something different. I bought a package of forty 8 1/2″x11″ matte coated postcard sheets that come perforated into 4 sections to accommodate four 4 1/4″ x 5 1/2″ postcards — but instead, I’m creating TWO 8 1/2″ x 5 1/2″ cards per sheet. This way by folding each card at the middle perforation, there’s a front, middle opening, and back to each one – more content than a flat postcard. The front has one of my favorite illustration images with my name and tag line. The opened part has my work/contact and website info at the top section, and the bottom section has a reply card that the A.D. can briefly fill out, tear off and mail back to me (stamped and self-addressed on the back) to let me know their level of interest. Having a website portfolio available for them to view is the key – they’ll pretty much know by my postcard illustration if they want to explore further. I plan to send the folded card in an envelope using a catchy illustrated address label. I’m hoping this is effective! Any feedback is welcome!