The ART of Digital Marketing

7 min readOct 8, 2020

Talking with Liz, her passion for art and the shift to digital.

Since starting with my freelancing work, I have met so many amazing people. Who I admire for their passions energy and ideas. From start-ups, family owned businesses, Tech wearables, artists and even dog subscription food. 2020 With all it’s struggles has also created alot of opportunities for people who think outside the box. This has led to alot of opportunities for some businesses to grow into new areas. Alot of us has also taken this time to self reflect, grow and expand what we are currently developing to better adapt to the current situation.

For today and the purpose of this blog as the title describes I will be talking with Liz. One of my most recent clients and a friend whom I met a few years ago in Korea at a wedding. Liz — https://www.instagram.com/lizlaneart/ is a very talented artists based in the US.

https://www.lizlanegallery.com

The reason why I am excited to work with her, is my personal love for art knowing the process and time it takes to create her amazing work whilst being a mom, wife and entrepreneur. She has also recently expanded her creativity into creating wallpaper and some some exicting ideas to grow her business. Even though digital art / Social media is such a big part of our society, personally and I might be old school here, nothing beats the smell of fresh paint. We will be discussing the old and the new, online and offline, sales and engagement creating a harmonious balance for all the aspects of your business. Combining what you love with making money. ❤️🤑

The interesting case with Liz and her business model is that she is also focussed on promiting other female artist, creating a community to help promote each other as well as her personal art, launching her new wall paper series working on her CSR and building collaborations. She supports local schools and environmental organisations collaborating with them to crwate more awareness on the issues she cares about. Combining a many elements into one streamlined cohesive brand. So how do you streamline all your ideas into one showcasing all you are doing and promoting sales, connecting with audiences and growing your audiences?

Her question to me was, how do I streamline all the things I am doing. Should I be merging channels, and how do I communicate all this through social media content.

Firstly let’s evaluate where you are at what is the current status of your channels?

Check your current status:

Talking with Liz and her team, they are so passionate about the work they do and have so many great ideas. But where to focus energy is essential, as you only have so many hours in a day.

Spreading your self thin, is not a good idea. I have made the same mistake. Maybe it’s just human to want to separate all you do into different spaces. But making new channels for different aspects of your work is not a good idea. Having one instagram channel is tough enough to build up, imagine trying to manage tons of different channels, it’s exhausting.
Check all your channels, are they all communicating what you are doing and driving consumers to one central place? What does your consumer journey look like? Test it, ask a friend.

Always double check your links, have one central space, guiding customers out to where you want them to go. “Keep it simple” assume people are lazy, make it easy for them to find what they are looking for.

Look at your webstie analytically, get inspiration from other people in the same industry and give things a refresh to communicate all the elements of your business. You know it, now tell your consumers.

So many times I talk to people and get so excited about what they are doing. Then I go to their website! Everything they have just told me, is not reflected on their digital spaces. You might know what your business is all about, now make it clear online!

Fix up your SEO, once you have all your channels planned out and streamlined you can take it to the next step. Make sure all channels are interlinked and that the consumer journey is easy to follow.
Check the back end of your website, they have a very easy checker system to see how effective you website is, just follow the steps and your ranking will already be improved.
Make sure each image of your website has relevant tags to help in your search-ability.
Write a blog, I know I don’t enjoy this either it’s very time consuming especially if you are not naturally good with writing. But if you can find topics that your audience is likely to Google, and it’s relevant information this will help your searchability. My favourite tool for this is Google Trends. This will help you target your audience in any country and or topics to see what they have searched recently. To help guide you better in Topics, keywords and market insights.

Google Trends

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trends.google.com

Setup your Google business: This will also better support your ranking, and will seem more legit as you have a more detailed profile available for consumers, driving them from Google search to your website.

Sign up & review your business information

Get started Learn how to create a free Business Profile to add your business information to Google Maps, Search, and…

support.google.com

Backlinks, they are useful and come in many different forms. They will help your ranking and provide more proof for Google and consumers on the legitimacy of your brand, business. This is an entire topic on it’s own but to summarise what you need to do: Get Guest bloggers to write about you, create business profiles on free directories, get people to write reviews and get some press releases. Read more on backlinks HERE.

2. Promote and network

Now that it the above is all in order and flowing as it should, let’s look into Ads. Which channel is your strongest, where do most of your referrals come from, basically where is your traffic coming from? Liz’s Case it would be her Instagram. But dont neglect the other channels. Even a small monthly budget can help, for Ads.
Know your goals for your ads, dont just run them. Test your ads to see which type and (CTA) drove the most traffic, sales, followers. Always go back and evaluate your anaylutics. Don’t just throw money in the water.
No budget, dont worry let’s talk through this. What can you offer? Products, live Q&A sessions, guest speakers, interesting topics, discount codes. Find a way that works for you, remember it’s all about building a community.
Network, through looking into similair communities artists and people that inspire you. Reach out and see how you can collborate. Providing a combined service, giveaway or skill share for your audiences.

3. Streamline your brand communication

Let’s take Liz page as an example, she is a female artist, promoting other artists, hosting events, collaborations and working with other companies to drive her Corporate Social Responsibility. She is also expanding into home decor through her new wall paper line she recently launched.

Create social content pillars, (Topic buckets). 🙋🏽‍♀️ This will help guide you to make sure each week/ month you talk about all the different elements of your business, promoting engaging items, what you care about sales and more.
These same topic buckets should be reflected on your website, Instagram stories, blog etc. in different ways but consistency is key. it also makes it easy for your follower to understand what you are about.

I often build strategies to help clients understand their social pillar breakdown, plan ahead and build them a digital calendar to align with their teams going forward.

Talk about who you are, your team and what you stand for. The more real we are, the more our audience can get to know you as a person. This helps you to stand out from other competing brands as they buy into what you believe and who you are. This way you get customers / friends for life.

So for the next month I will be working with Liz as we delve deeper into her art community and build her Digital presence. Stay tuned as we delve into the ART of Marketing together, sharing, learning and growing together as we delve into supporting female owned businesses.

Email or message any questions, and I will blog or write to you giving some insights links or just chatting about how you can streamline your digital presence. Here are the topice we will be covering each week with Liz and her team: