How To Promote Your Online Art Store (2024)

Want to shine a spotlight on your online art store? It's time to tap into the power of smart promotion. This article is your practical guide to using straightforward, tech-savvy methods to boost your store's visibility.

We'll dive into easy-to-use tools and strategies that help your art stand out, attract more visitors, and start conversations that lead to sales. Ready to turn browsers into buyers? Let's get your art the attention it deserves!

Now that your store is live, your primary focus should be marketing and promoting your store. This step is crucial if you want to attract visitors and hope to convert them into customers. After all, just because your store is live, that doesn’t mean people will know your art is ready to be purchased.

You need to tell them and that’s where marketing comes into play. There are several ways to market your store which include:

Let’s go over each of these methods more in-depth below.

1. Building Your Email List

The most important marketing tip is to start building your email list from day one. This will allow you to capture the information of visitors who are interested in your art but aren’t quite ready to make the purchase. By capturing their email address, you can send them news and updates about your store and art and nurture the relationship until they are ready to buy.

A good way to build your list is to offer something in exchange for their email address. You can offer them a discount code or a special offer such as buying one print gets them half off on a second one. Alternatively, you can offer a smaller version of your artwork as a phone or computer wallpaper for free in exchange for their email address.

Once you’ve decided on what you’ll offer as an incentive for someone to sign up for your email list, you’ll need to sign up with an email service provider. A few popular choices include SendinBlue and Klaviyo. Both of these allow you to start building your list for free and they can be embedded into your store pretty easily.

If you prefer to keep everything in one place, you can use Shopify Email to email your subscribers. This is a new service from Shopify that’s currently free for all users and makes it easy to create email campaigns that match your store’s design.

On top of that, there are numerous apps on the Shopify App Store that will help you create newsletter sign up forms that integrate with various email marketing providers.

2. Being Active On Social Media

Another effective method for promoting your art store (and the fastest way to get the word out) is to have an active presence on social media platforms. There are many platforms to choose from but the best course of action is to actively participate where your ideal audience hangs out.

Keep in mind you don’t have to be active on all the platforms. Start with one or two and get familiar with them and then expand into other platforms.

Some things you can post include behind-the-scenes sneak peeks into new artwork, special offers, sale announcements, fun memes related to your niche, questions that will help you learn more about your audience, and similar.

Mix plain text posts with images and videos to keep your accounts more engaging. Comment on your followers posts, answer their questions, and actively engage with your audience. This will help you establish a personal relationship with potential customers and help you create a loyal community of fans.

The most popular platform among artists is Instagram due to its highly visual nature. Instagram also provides you with ample methods for promoting your art. Firstly, you can promote your art in your Instagram feed. This gives you a perfect opportunity to build a visually engaging Instagram profile.

You can also enable shoppable posts that make it easy for your followers to click through to your Shopify store and make a purchase.

Secondly, you can use Instagram Stories to share behind-the-scenes posts of your creative process.

Lastly, you can use IGTV video to answer customer questions about your products or to showcase different art pieces you have available for sale.

3. Creating Content To Promote Your Store

You can also promote your store by making use of the blogging features Shopify offers. You can post blog posts that explain your creative process as well as share tips on how to display your artwork in their home or office. You can also create gift guides that feature your artwork.

The nice thing about blogging is that it tells the search engines that your site is regularly updated with fresh content which means they will scan it more often. On top of that, search engines love sites that are regularly updated.

In addition, each blog post you create is another opportunity to include keywords relevant to your art which means more chances for your store to show up in search results when potential buyers are looking to buy art online.

4. Using Pinterest To Pin And Promote Your Products

Most people think Pinterest is a social media platform but in reality it’s a search engine. This means that you don’t have to worry about engaging with other users outside of pinning their content. What matters on Pinterest is optimizing your pin descriptions and titles with keywords that are related to your products.

This is a good platform for any artist as it allows you to easily promote your products simply by configuring rich pins for products.

Once you enable this option and set it up, people can be taken directly to the product page on your site and complete their purchase.

The best way to get started on Pinterest is to sign up for a free business account and create boards that your ideal audience would be interested in. This can be boards like home decor or interior design. You should also create a dedicated board where you will pin your artwork.

Pin your content but remember to pin content from other pinners as well. Aim for 80/20 ratio in terms of content distribution and be sure to create several pins for each product in your store as this will give your products more chances to be discovered, not to mention different pins will appeal to different people.

5. Streaming Your Art Process

When it comes to marketing, video is one of the best ways to promote your products. Video posts get more engagement than text and photo posts and 72% of customers would rather learn about a product or service by way of video.

When it comes to video marketing, live streaming is a great way to promote your art. You can easily stream your art creation process to get your audience interested in your artwork and motivate them to make a purchase.

What makes live streaming so great is that you can quickly and easily build a relationship with your audience. They can get to know you and get a feel for your art which will make them more likely to want to support you.

The most popular live streaming platform is Twitch. Twitch is primarily geared for gamers but they do have a dedicated section for creative streamers so you can fit right in.

If Twitch is not your cup of tea, consider using the second most popular search engine — Youtube.

Your third option for live streaming is Facebook which touts over 2 billion users so you’re bound to find your audience on there.

Keep in mind that if you decide to go this route, you’ll need to invest in a more powerful computer as well as a decent webcam and a microphone to ensure your audio and video quality aren’t subpar.

Another thing to keep in mind with live streaming is that you’ll need to establish a regular schedule and show up often if you want to build a loyal audience.

If your budget is limited or if you don’t have a lot of free time, live streaming may not be the best option to market your art store.

6. Influencer Marketing, Contests, And Giveaways

If you want to gain traction quickly, influencer marketing, contests, and giveaways are a good way to get noticed.

With influencer marketing, you’ll be paying someone with a large following and established presence on social media to promote your art for you. This method works well on Instagram. You can pay for the influencer to give you a shoutout or you can arrange for an Instagram takeover where you post on their account for a day.

Remember that you’ll need to establish a relationship with the influencer first as well as ensure that their audience would be interested in your art, otherwise this method won’t bring you good results.

You can also use contests and giveaways to promote your store. These methods work best after you have grown your following and have an established presence on your favorite social media platform.

It also works great when used in conjunction with influencer marketing as this exposes you to a larger audience.

You can give away a smaller print of the original artwork or you can go big and give away an original piece of art in its original size.

Be sure to set up rules for your giveaway and specify how the winner will be chosen. You’ll also need to ensure your contest or giveaway is following Instagram’s official giveaway terms and conditions and any local regulations.

7. Promoting Your Online Store With Offline Marketing Methods

Just because you have an online store, that doesn’t mean you can’t use offline marketing methods to promote it. Some of these methods will require you to spend money while others can be done at no extra cost to you other than time.

The easiest way to promote your product is to add your store’s website address to your email signature.

You can also create brochures that showcase your artwork and include your store’s website so people can check it out.

A few other offline methods include:

• Traditional newspaper or billboard advertising
• Posting flyers in your neighborhood
• Adding a decal to your car with your store’s address
• Sending your customers handwritten thank you notes to capitalize on word of mouth marketing
• Asking your friends and family to help you spread the word about your online store

Remember to get creative and experiment with different marketing methods to see which one brings you the best results.

8. Promoting Your Art Store With Paid Advertising

The last marketing method that you can use is paid advertising. This method can work wonders when done well and can bring you sales and customers rather quickly. However, it’s also the most expensive marketing method as the ad costs can be quite high so opt for this method if you have a large marketing budget to work with.

There are various online advertising platforms that you can use to promote your product. The most popular ones include Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, and Pinterest Promoted Pins. Shopify also makes it easy to create ads for Facebook and Snapchat directly from your store’s backend.

With Google AdWords, you get access to their entire partner network which means your ads can be seen everywhere on the web. Depending on the type of ad you choose, you can have your ads seen on search engine result pages, on partner websites, in Youtube videos, and more.

Facebook advertising allows you to promote your products not only on Facebook but also Instagram. You can create text ads as well as carousel and video ads which typically bring more engagement. Facebook also has a very robust ad manager that allows you to really fine-tune your audience based on their demographics and interests.

Given the constant changes in Facebook’s algorithm, some claim ads are the best way to ensure your audience actually sees your posts.

Lastly, Pinterest Promoted Pins are relatively new when it comes to paid advertising so this option is still the most affordable one. Promoted Pins work similarly to other paid advertising methods — typically, you’ll pay per click to have your pin seen by more people.

Conclusion

No matter which paid advertising option you choose, you’ll need to make sure that your product pages are optimized for each platform. You’ll want to use the same imagery and branding to provide them with a consistent experience and ensure your audience that they have landed on the right page.

You’ll also want to keep track of your ad performance and let your ads run for at least a week before making any changes to the ad copy.