Diagnosis, or answer all your business question with research

Hey!

I propose you to discover marketing basics over one letter every 2 weeks as I publish the first 4 episodes from my newsletter Not Art Fundamentals here.

Fear not young padawans, nothing crazy, it will be an introduction for artists. I'll make it as easy to understand as I can ;). If it’s not, feel free to reply telling me what wasn’t clear.

Here's the plan:

  • Ep01: Positioning, be at the right place, at the right time
  • Ep02: Diagnosis and the power of knowing your audience =D
  • Ep03: Application to Artists: Are we selling our Art?
  • Ep04: It’s simple but not easy.

Hope it helps!

The day has come. You feel like, now’s the time to get your work online. Go out there and yell “I EXIST” to potential customers and recruiters. It’s annoying. We shouldn’t be forced to have an online presence to live off our art.

But everyone said we should have one. Be consistent. Do what we love and once we’re good enough, we’ll make it, right?

We get our ass moving, put it on our chair and get to it. But… Where to begin? Should we get on Artstation? But X said on Youtube we should have a website to not get buried among other artists. Get a website then? It’s expensive, what about the design? The host? Does it really work? Should we care about SEO? What does that even mean???? GODDAMMIT.

What is the best platform to post my art on?
Is Twitter better than Instagram?
Should I get a Website or an Artstation?
Should I specialize? Should I become a generalist?

Ok. Stop. Breath. With me =D

Breath iiiiiiiiiiin.

Breath ooooooouuuuut.

It’s overwhelming. It’s stupid how overwhelming it gets, even after years of trying. It’s ok. No one taught us marketing before. It’s the realm of marketers. Not ours. So no need to feel guilty about not managing it, no one told us how to do it.

Before scrapping all those questions to the bin, answer this simple one:

Why do you need to be seen?

Make a diagram out of it if it helps, and ask yourself why at each level of it.

Now, here’s the answer to all those questions:

Know your audience.

That’s it.

Yes yes, only that!
See, only people buying from you (or buying similar things) can answer those questions. We can’t. Because we are not in their situation, we’re not them. I can put in front of them all the blue cheese that I want, if they’re disgusted by cheese… We’ll only be wasting time.

The simple part comes now. We don’t know whether our audience like or dislike cheese. How do we define this unknown variable?*

We ask. We listen.

As simple as that. If I want to feed you something, I’ll probably ask you what you like first, if there are allergies to be aware of. I don’t want you to die!

It’s exactly the same thing here.

We want to know why they bought from you or from someone selling similar things.

  • How was their lives at the time?
  • What solutions did they try before getting yours?
  • How getting yours made a substantial change?
  • What are their current pains? Goals?
  • Where do they talk about such topics?
  • Where do they inform themselves?

These are the questions to ask them. And to each one, don’t stop at their first answer. Dig, dig, dig. Uncover the truth behind their actions. “Why” is a powerful tool.

Having those answers will give you clarity over your segment (your chosen audience).

It will make it clear to you where to promote yourself, on which platform, how much to price, what to produce etc.

And the biggest of all: Are you good enough for that specific segment?

Putting a diagnosis over the segment is the first thing to do before even positioning. We’re not talking about brands, product, strategies or anything. The diagnosis rules all and is the plan that gives direction to all these tools.

Only if you know who likes cheese can you discover which cheese they like, how they use it or why they use it. And finally design the perfect product for their use cases.

If you don’t know, you can only walk in the dark, not knowing who likes cheese, who doesn’t like it, and not improve on your product.

Where do you get that information?

  • Social medias
  • Subreddits
  • Interviews. Talking to people that bought from you or something similar to what you do
  • Surveys to those people
  • Youtube videos and their comments
  • Discord servers.

*I picked the cheese example because I’m french and I don’t like cheese, in no way is it an analogy to your drawings ^^”

Sources:
Eugenia Cheng
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8emPcpfqPRU&t=1s

The proper Marketing club and the land of Marketing illustration

How to talk to customers, Rob Fitzpatrick
https://www.everyonehatesmarketers.com/podcast/how-to-talk-to-customers

You! (or more precisely, 15 independant artists, board games creators and publishers, Art directors. Thank you so so much for accepting my 45min interview!)

And you? Who's your audience?

Answer to this post with a DM or send me an email!

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