One aspect of art marketing these days is affordability. The everyday consumer is reportedly under a lot of financial pressure, with the result that maybe buying fine art is just not high enough in priority these days to actually do it.

So what to do? Follow the money!

The money is either with the wealthy 1%, the extremely wealthy 0.1%, or with businesses. Unless you know the wealthy or have some great connection strategies, you may find business more easy to approach.

Pick the successful businesses you see in the news. Canadian banks for example just announced record profits, across the board.

B2B marketing

As an artist, you are a small business. Small businesses often focus on Business to Business (B2B) marketing. For a detailed definition and how to do it check out Wikipedia .

A lot of business decisions are based on building a business case to justify the purchase. Art work can be seen to provide a welcoming environment to customers, enhance and help to communicate your brand values, bring life to dead spaces, invigorate colleagues, and define specific areas. Your task is to show how these benefits can translate into dollars, for the business. And show that the dollars they would spend would be far less than the dollars they can expect to get back return.

The trick is having something by way of proof to substantiate your claims. This is where perhaps a little market research could go a long way. One research project I would like to see, would be to compare art per square foot, to profitability.

Has anyone ever tried B2B art marketing? How did it go?