Artist Branding vs Marketing vs Advertising

As artists, understanding the difference between branding, marketing and advertising – in the context of art – will enable you to thrive and prosper. Successful artists who have achieved six-figure sales understand the difference and know how to utilize it to grow their tribe of followers and scale their sales.

The problem is that traditional marketers offer artists the wrong branding, marketing and advertising advice. Their recommendation is to start with an audience of art buyers and understand their interests. Then, as an artist, you will need to become someone that art buyers would notice, engage and respect. For a moment, that approach might sound as a helpful advice. But, it’s far from it.

From a product or service perspective, it makes sense. You always start with the audience, then you develop the needed product or service. But, art is neither a product nor a service. Art is an expression of the belief inspiring the artist. You cannot expect an artist to start with an audience, and then establish the belief inspiring their artwork based on the audience interests. It is immoral and unrealistic to ask artists to lose their creative freedom just to please an audience.

Many artists have given up on branding, marketing and advertising their artwork as a product or service; because they refuse to betray their authentic self. However, there are a few artists who have successfully implemented a new approach to branding, marketing and advertising their artwork as art – not as a commodity.

Let’s define and explore branding, marketing and advertising that works for artists; and why you need to implement it to establish your tribe of followers and grow your artwork sales.

Branding

Artist branding is establishing the belief behind your artwork. Once the belief is established, then the brand becomes an intuitive destination for the people who are inspired by that belief. The beauty of branding – correctly done – is that it taps into the human emotion and values. The artwork is no longer a physical commodity, but rather a much bigger, meaningful and influential belief that people inspire to attain.

In business, there are many great brands who have perfected the establishment of belief-based brands. For example, Coca-Cola is joy, Apple is genius, Volvo is safety, etc. It doesn’t require any mental effort for us to recall the belief associated with any of these companies. Thanks to a well-established belief behind their brands.

In the world of art, there are many artists who have mastered establishing belief-based brands. For example, visual artist and photographer, Joel Sartore, founded and launched a 25-year project to show the beauty of biodiversity and inspire action to save species. Joel and his tribe of followers believe that the world must take action to save endangered species before they become extinct. Joel has an estimated multi-million-dollar net worth. He is a genuine artist with a belief-based brand, a tribe of followers, and a shared belief to change the world for the endangered species.

Artists who have established belief-based brands, don’t "market" their artwork. They share their creative work with people who care, i.e., their tribes. When artists create their genuine artwork, communicate the belief inspiring their artwork, and share their work with audiences who support the same belief, then artists flourish and prosper.

Marketing

As an artist, marketing is communicating your brand to the public. Once there is a well-established belief behind the artist and artwork, the next step is to communicate that belief to the public through video, image, audio and text. There are three keys to effective marketing: understandable, genuine, and consistent.

The marketing message describing the brand or the belief inspiring the artist must be understandable. This means it should be stated in an easy-to-comprehend language. It is recommended to use third-grade-level language with a brief and concise text description of the brand and what it stands for.

The marketing message has to be genuine. The belief communicated through the marketing message has to be truthful, meaningful and reflected in everything that the artist creates, shares and communicates. Audiences or customers are outstandingly talented at detecting fake, overstated or shallow marketing messages.

The marketing communication must be consistent. Regardless of the communication channel, whether it’s video, image, audio or text, the core of the intended message must be consistent. Consistent messaging enables the brand to become trustworthy, memorable and easily identifiable in the mind of the customer.

Advertising

Advertising is marketing through paid channels. There are two limitations to organic or non-paid marketing: scalability and reach. Advertising enables marketing to scale at a much faster rate with a corresponding budget. In addition, advertising can reach specific audiences that are not easily reachable through organic marketing, but accessible through paid advertising campaigns. Needless to state that advertising follows the same marketing guidelines in terms of understandable, genuine, and consistent messaging.

To summarize, branding is establishing the belief inspiring the artist and artwork. Marketing is communicating that belief to the public. Advertising is communicating that belief through paid channels.

Start today! Learn how to build your own belief-based tribe and generate six-figure sales. Then, convert your tribe members into lifelong customers. And finally, automate the selling of your artwork without any technical skills (access webbooks & audiobooks).

The belief-based tribes approach to branding, marketing and advertising was developed by artists for artists. For years, traditional marketers have failed us. As artists, we had to figure it out on our won, and so we did.

Join the movement! Many artists. One community.