Finding the right vehicle to promote and market your work — galleries, juried arts and crafts shows or print ads, for example — is the most important first step to developing sales.

There is often a lot of trial-and-error in marketing, as artists winnow down the potential avenues for sales to those that show the best results. Josh Simpson, a glass blower in Massachusetts, says that his first efforts to sell his work involved “piling in the back seat of my Datsun everything that I made in the previous two or three weeks” and driving south from his then-studio in northern Vermont.

“I’d go to any place that looked like a city, driving slowly down one side of the street, looking for any place that looked like it sold something like my work,” Simpson says. “If I found nothing, I’d turn around and drive slowly down the other side of the street. It was an ego-bruising experience.”

Eventually, he applied to crafts shows, and was accepted into Rheinbeck (New York) and later others, where the prestige of the shows helped elevate his standing in the field among buyers and other exhibitors.

Illustration by Larry Knox

On the other hand, Mark Bell, a potter in Blue Hill, Maine, had done crafts shows for a number of years but decided that he wanted to handle the marketing of his work in a more personalized way, selling through scheduled open studio events (preferable to people just dropping by and having to stop work).

Various long-time buyers, who would be given a free porcelain for coming, were invited to “kiln openings” at his studio.

At a recent opening, everything that was in his kiln was sold, raising $15,000, in what started out as “exciting” and turned into what was described as a “feeding frenzy of ‘Next one’s mine.’ ‘No, mine.’”

Susan Joy Sager, a career advisor to craftspeople in South Berwick, Maine, notes that many artists and craftspeople are becoming “more personalized in their marketing. Buyers don’t want just to buy something that looks nice or is functional. They want a piece of the craftsman, a story or an experience they can take away with them.”

If you have the budget, use print advertising

Gail Wells-Hess, an artist in Portland, Ore., spends roughly $6,000 per year on advertising her work in magazines.

Sometimes galleries contact Wells-Hess based on her advertisements, and some sales have resulted from that, but can anyone say that the ad created those sales or that the work of the gallery owners did?

Advertising has an ethereal quality, often defying simple cause-and-effect, which is why Wells-Hess claims that she is “not trying to sell a painting but to create a name and presence.”

Based on the increasing quantity of artists’ advertisements found in art and other consumer magazines, a growing number of artists and craftspeople have a similar idea. Seeing an artist’s work reproduced in a magazine, even though the publication received money to publish it, has the mysterious effect of elevating the stature of the artwork and the artist in the eyes of readers, many artists and gallery owners claim.

Use advertising to add credibility to your image

Bill Mittag, a painter in Phoenix, Ariz., who spends $10,000 per year on ads in American Art Review and Southwest Art magazines, notes that whatever painting he uses in the advertisement is usually snatched up early on by a buyer. As a result, he created a Web site in order to direct callers to other examples of his work. “I’ll advertise ‘till I die,” he says.

Most of the sales of Mittag’s artwork take place in 11 galleries west of the Mississippi River, but they only advertise his paintings when there is a one-man show, which doesn’t take place very often.

In addition, many of the galleries have only seasonal markets, and this leads to long stretches of time when his work is not getting public attention. The ads he places himself keep people interested in his work throughout the year. When called or e-mailed by potential collectors, “I refer them to whatever gallery is closest to them,” he says.

Some ads do result in direct sales

The ads placed by Camille Przewodek of Petaluma, Calif., in American Art Review (costing from $2,000 to $5,000 per year, depending upon their size) have produced “very few” sales through the artist’s Web site, where readers are directed.

However, collectors do visit her Web site (a “hitometer” counts those) and learn where the artist will be traveling next. Przewodek teaches between three and five art workshops annually and visits the galleries that display her work. “A lot of people like to meet the artist,” she says. “They don’t fly somewhere to meet me, but if I’m in town or not that far away they come out to meet me.”

Przewodek believes half her sales come about from meeting people who have seen her work in an advertisement. This approach raises the question of how many people would purchase her work if they didn’t meet her, but she is firmly convinced that advertising is the key element to her sales success.

“Advertising brings credibility,” she says. “It says to the world, ‘I am a serious, committed artist.’ People who look at the ad see success, because I can afford to advertise.”

Advertising: Stay in it for the long haul

The purpose and nature of advertising is a subject on which there is considerable disagreement, although there is one point on which everyone agrees: Advertising is a long-term, rather than a one-shot effort.

To develop name and artistic recognition, the same or similar images must be present in ads that follow one magazine issue after another. If the concept is to keep one’s name and images before the public on an ongoing basis, one-shot ads are not likely to produce the desired results.

Gallery owners have their own purposes in mind when they place an advertisement in a newspaper or magazine, and they may not be quite the same as the artist’s. Most long-term, successful galleries rely on a group of collectors to purchase the bulk of the artwork they put on display, and the gallery owners notify this group privately well in advance of an exhibition’s start date.

“Seventy-five percent of our sales come from our mailing list,” states Sique Spence, director of New York’s Nancy Hoffman Gallery. “The ads we place are a reinforcement for the information sent out to our mailing list.”

Bridget Moore, co-director of New York’s DC Moore Gallery, says “Advertising, especially advertising with illustrations, effects attendance, not so much sales.”

Other dealers report that ads with images result in a number of telephone inquiries as to price and the availability of works, which also do not quickly translate into sales.

Ads project image of gallery and artist’s work

Peter Ryan, director of New York’s Joseph Helman Gallery, states that “advertising projects an image to the readership, and a lot can be projected.”

That image “can be the inherent qualities of the particular exhibition or just a feeling of what the gallery represents.” Taking out an advertisement, some dealers believe, also increases the chances of seeing a write-up of the exhibition in the particular publication.

“An advertisement attracts attention,” says New York gallery owner Thomas Erben. “It secures the gallery’s position in the market. People have to see that we are still here. In effect, I’m advertising myself through the market.”