Marketing and promotional materials serve you best when they are easy to update, produce and disperse and when they reflect a professional image of you and your work that makes sense. In all of your materials you should include professional photography of your work. If the photograph quality is poor, this immediately reflects on your own artistic eye.
Before you begin, establish in your own mind the goal of these marketing materials. If you are a portrait painter, perhaps a postcard showing a very clear image of your best work is the right approach.
It is more likely that your clientele hires you for your skill and not for the size of your body of work, so quality is more important than quantity.
If you are an abstract painter and want to use this campaign to bring more people to your studio, you might benefit from showing 5 or 6 works in a brochure, increasing your chances that people will resonate with something they see.
I think it’s important to include text in your promotional materials. Keep descriptions of you and your work brief and succinct, but certainly include them. There may be something about your own history or approach that strikes someone.
Make certain that the statement you include speaks to the medium you work with. Also caption your images with the work’s title, date and dimensions.
It is important that your materials represent you in an authentic way, while also helping you sell work.
If your intention is to send a mailing to a series of art galleries, be persistent.
Galleries are committed well in advance, and they may have to see many postcards from you before they are ready to talk. Do not hound them; simply keep the conversation alive by including them on your mailings.
Again and again I hear stories of aspiring artists fresh out of art school walking in cold to art galleries, expecting the director to grant them an audience. It’s never going to happen. Do yourself a favour and do the gallery a favour, by simply following standard protocol and plan in advance. If you do this you will find yourself with the right gallery or galleries representing you.
