4 (FREE) ways to promote your art

And get noticed!

Whether you love it or loath it, marketing is a must-have skill for us as artists!

I’m actually in the ‘love it’ camp – the marketing side of my art business is a part I enjoy and find exciting.

I love finding new ways to promote my work and reach new audiences.

It’s possible to spend a lot of money on marketing and promotion but I believe it’s totally possible to market your art effectively without spending any money.

In this post I am going to share 4 great ways to promote your art and get noticed as an artist without spending a penny!

Before I dive into specifics, here are two key points to bear in mind:

• Promoting your art is something that needs to be done consistently. It’s not enough to market your art once and then sit back for a few months. It needs to be incorporated methodically into your work routine. Little and often is a good rule of thumb! Whether you are a full time artist, or just making money on the side with your art, find a little bit of time each week to spend specifically on promoting your work.

• Marketing is a long game. If you’re looking for quick wins with quick results, this post may not be for you. Getting noticed takes time and effort and you may not see results straight away. (Think in terms of months and years rather than days and weeks!) But it has great rewards for those who stick with it!

So with that being said, here my top 4 ways to get seen and noticed as an artist:

1. Instagram

Instagram is probably my favourite way to put my art out into the world, and I have grown two art accounts over the past 6 years: @jasminehnatkova and @the_lettering_tree. (I no longer post art to The Lettering Tree but it still links to my printables shop on Etsy which ticks away in the background!)

Instagram is a visual platform and a great place to be found by clients looking for art for their products. I’ve secured a number of licensing deals through being found on Instagram.

A few tips for finding success on Instagram:

• Post consistently. This doesn’t have to be every day, but choose a schedule and stick to it. (E.g. commit to posting a new piece of art every Monday and Thursday)

• Interact with others on the platform. This could involve finding new people to follow each week and interacting with their posts, and it should also involve replying to people’s comments on your own posts.

• Don’t feel your art has to be perfect in order to post! This is so important. Both my art accounts have helped me develop a ‘signature style’ simply by having the discipline of creating and posting consistently, even if I’m not 100% happy with what I have created.

• Reels have been the main way I have grown my accounts. Showing my process as an artist in the reels has brought in more followers than anything else.

(I have SO much more to say about Instagram, if you’d like a more detailed post on Instagram growth strategies for artists, do let me know in the comments!)

2. Pinterest

Although Pinterest is classed as social media, it’s techinically more of a search engine and can be a great way for people to find your exact style of art. You can take a look at my Pinterest account here.

Every pin you create contains a link back to your website, portfolio, or social media account meaning it can be a great driver of traffic to your products or content.

If you’re just starting out on Pinterest, make sure you are set up as a business account and that you have your website / Spoonflower shop and other social media accounts linked in your bio.

Set up a few boards that are relevant to your art and start pinning little and often. You should be repinning other people’s pins and regularly creating your own ‘fresh pins’. Fresh pins are images you personally make and add to Pinterest with a link to your website or other content. I usually create my pins in Canva.

When you are just starting out there is no need for a scheduler, but if you have the budget later on, a Pinterest scheduler is well worth it, as you can batch your pins and don’t have to be manually pinning each time. In the past I’ve used Tailwind for my other business The Lettering Tree which has been a huge time saver and helped grow my account quickly. So far though I haven't paid to use a scheduler for my surface pattern account, I've just used the free version of Tailwind which gives you a few slots to schedule out each month. The rest I do manually!)

I have found that the pins that get the most attention on Pinterest are video pins. For me, these are just the reels I have created for instagram, and have reposted to Pinterest. When you have a couple of social media accounts, it can be easy to reuse content to maximise your reach and save time!

3. Spoonflower

Obviously this is one for surface pattern designers only, but as that is my niche, I wanted to include it here as it is such a great way to promote your patterns!

A Spoonflower shop is totally free to set up and is a great way to showcase all of your patterns (and earn money at the same time!). Many artists use their Spoonflower shop as a portfolio and send clients and customers to their shop to get an idea of the art they create.

A number of people have told me that clients have found them on Spoonflower and it has led to collaborations and licensing opportunities. (This hasn't happened to me yet though!)

If you’re new to Spoonflower or are thinking of setting up a shop, I have a post on some of my key reflections from my first year on Spoonflower.

4. Sending pitch emails to companies

Sending pitch emails is a great way to personally get in touch with companies you are interested in collaborating with.

(Just a heads up: in my experience it takes a lot of time and perseverance to get anywhere with this one!)

When you contact a company, you have the opportunity to personalise the art you send to match their brand and aesthetic. You could either send a personalised portfolio, send a PDF of a collection you think they’d like, or simply direct them to your Spoonflower shop.

In my experience, most of the emails I send to companies do not even get a reply, and it can be easy to get discouraged and demoralised.

However, every so often I get a breakthrough which encourages me to keep going. Just today I got an email from a company wanting to collaborate that I had contacted 6 months ago. I’d assumed a long while back they weren’t interested in the art I’d sent so it was very exciting to receive a reply all this time later!

If you are keen to contact companies individually, it’s worth creating a document on your phone, computer or iPad that you can add ideas to every time you come across a company you think you might like to work with.

Then when you have a few on your list you can set aside some time to sit down and contact each company personally. Make sure you make a note of who you contacted, when you contacted them and what art you sent. (This doesn’t need to be anything fancy, I just have a basic spreadsheet where I record all my interactions).

I am far from an expert in this one (I'm learning as I go along!) but I have a few more insights I could share from what I have learnt so far about sending pitch emails. Again, if you're interested in this, let me know in the comments!

If you’re feeling overwhelmed…

It’s very common to feel overwhelmed when it comes to promoting your art.

You might feel like you need to do ‘all the things’ straight away.

The good news is that you don’t!

It’s impossible to do all the things!

You just need to do one thing at a time.

Try to focus your time on quality marketing over quantity.

Choose one platform to work on consistently first and after you see some progress, venture into the next one.

Try not to give up before you have really given it a good go (and by this I mean consistently working on it for a number of months!) It’s very unusual to find instant success on any platform if you’re starting from scratch. It takes time and perseverance!

But just think, if you don’t start now, you’ll look back in a year’s time and kick yourself that you didn’t start today. Think how far you could have got by this time in a year if you just got started now!

I would love to hear your thoughts on promoting your art and what has or hasn't worked for you. Let me know in the comments!