The School → More Impact

In another article I wrote about 6 Ways To Make A Greater Impact with your art, but here I’ll tell you how the Online School Assignment

Soaking → Marketing Ideas

Soaking is a listening time.  Just as there will be times when God will show you how to produce better work, you’ll find He is equally eager to tell you how to get it out to the public.

Marketing isn’t just advertising or commercialism; it’s the whole process of getting your work into the marketplace.  You will find that God leads you to sell some of your work and to give some of it away for free.  He will show you how to be competitive, but He will also show you how to help others get their work noticed.

All the principles of basic Christian discipleship come into play:  humility, servanthood, losing your life to find it.  But all the principles of faith will work in your life as well:  divine appointments, answers to prayer, miracles.  Partner with the Holy Spirit in your soaking times, listening to Him and acting on what He says.

Encouraging → Networking

The art world, like any other business, demands a lot of networking.  “Networking” is the modern word for the koinonia of the Greek New Testament, the sense of community and fellowship God called the early church to walk in.

If the love of God is shed abroad in your heart, you can excel at networking.  Your ministry of encouragement will cause you to care more about the people you minister to than about what they can do for you.  Real caring is hard to find.  As you are led by the Holy Spirit, God will cause you to connect with people for kingdom purposes you can’t even imagine.  Years later, you’ll see the payoff.

Journaling → More Ideas

Your journal is a tool for reflection.  Keep it brief; don’t write so much that you have no time left for your art.  But as you look back over what God is doing in your life and your art, you’ll begin to identify patterns.

You’ll see new talents He’s awakening in you.  It happens slowly, like a child growing, but there will be moments when you suddenly realize God has taught you new things and you’re not what you used to be.

You’ll see how everything you’re doing can work together with synergy.  Many people add good marketing ideas willy-nilly, but you’ll see ways to add a small effort that will make everything else you’ve done so far become more effective.  This will leverage the impact of your marketing hours and dollars.

Do Your Homework

There are a lot of marketing articles on this blog; use the search feature to find them.  And there are a lot of market-ing materials available on line.  Run a search on “marketing” or “art marketing” or “book marketing” etc. and look at what people are doing.

God hasn’t called you to do everything they list in their articles, but it will stretch your thinking if you do a bit of homework.  Jot down the ideas that ring a bell and take them before God – see what He has to say about them.

In many cases, you’ll find that the people who know something about marketing have written articles that confirm convictions God has already put in your heart.  It’s easy to let them slip, but get serious about getting your work out to the people it is meant to touch.  God wants to use you – to make an impact.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2009, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

6 Ways To Reach For More Impact

The creative process doesn’t end when your water-color dries and it’s ready to frame or when you’ve finished the final draft of your manuscript.  At some point, you’ve got to get your work before the eyes of the public, and this will call for as much creativity as your work itself demanded.

God wants to give you prophetic creativity that will get your work into the marketplace.  Here six ways you can grow in making an impact with your art.

1.Identify your mission. What is your mission as a Christian artist?  What has God called you to?  Perhaps your work is meant to minister to people; perhaps your work is meant simply to be good art, and God will then spin off ministry opportunities from your work.

The important thing is to chase not what you want, but what He wants.

2. Identify your market. Who is your art meant to touch?  A very few of us are called to reach the mass market, but God has called most of us to a niche.  God may show you your lifelong calling or He may simply identify who your next project should reach, but knowing your market will help you focus your work.

3. Identify how to present your work. A great picture looks better in the right frame.  A great CD demands a great cover.  God will show you how to present your work.

Beyond that, He will help you with self-promotion.  Many Christians struggle with it, but it’s not about hype or hucksterism – it’s about making yourself available to serve.  As you identify who you are called to reach and what impact God wants to make in their lives, your marketing ceases to be self-centered selling and starts to be an effort to connect with the people God has called you to.

4. Identify the marketing discipline God is calling you to. That is, what does God expect you to do to get your work into the marketplace?  For some it’s advertising, for others it’s sidewalk art shows, for others it’s networking.

The important thing is to hear from God and let Him direct you.

5. Identify divine appointments. As God sees you working faithfully in a small sphere, He may send people to you who can boost you to a new plateau.  If you are looking to man – your own talents, your own connections, your own plans and strategies – you are likely to miss divine appointments when they come.  But if you are looking to Him day by day in your marketing, He will help you identify the opportunities He sends your way.

6. Identify divine surprises. God is too creative to work by neat little formulas.  Leave room for His surprises in your life!  One thing leads to another.  You go to a show to meet somebody and get an idea that revolutionizes your work.  You write a flyer about your music and somebody likes the flyer so much that they want to pay you to write a flyer for their business.

You get the idea; there’s no telling how God will surprise you.

God wants to make an impact with your art, but it can’t happen unless you get it to the people He has called you to touch. Your creativity therefore has to include the process of getting your work out there where God can use it.  Expect the Holy Spirit to help you.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2009, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

Check Out This Link

Check out this link for artists:

http://thegrovecenter.ning.com/

They have movies, devotionals, and articles and testimonies about the arts.  But I was especially impressed with a 31-day devotional for artists, created by Timothy White and available free at

http://www.coaching4artists.com/

and you’ll find the free eBook at the bottom of his home page.

I like his marketing. He has something for sale, and he gives something away free — a principle I found in the book of Proverbs and wrote about more than a year ago.  See the article at

http://cultureshapers.wordpress.com/2009/01/08/scatter-and-increase/

Won’t try to write any more for now, as I’m on the road on a ministry trip and won’t get home for a week.

Seeing In The Marketplace — Six Steps

I’ve just finished a ministry cruise and I learned several things about marketing – okay, it was a ministry context, but the principles certainly spill over into the arts.  So before I tell my own story, I want to challenge you to use your imagination and look around at your next art show or concert or craft fair.

I was one of three speakers and one of four worship leaders on the cruise.  We each had a book table with our various products for sale, and we each had an opportunity to take up an offering. It was a wonderful opportunity to see what works and what doesn’t.  I’m going to list six steps we took in our seeing – these steps apply to all sorts of marketing venues – and I’ll illustrate them with specific ideas we have gleaned.

1) Look around and see what others do differently. We saw two main things:  everyone else used offering envelopes, and everyone else was able to accept donations by credit card.  Then John Mark Pool graciously offered to let us route credit card donations through his ministry; these donations proved to be more than half of our income from the cruise.

2) Ask a lot of questions. I’d always avoided using envelopes, not wanting to be pushy or manipulative.  But Sandy Pool explained that people are very security conscious and don’t want to leave their checks where a stranger might be able to copy their information.  And the envelopes make a way for cash donors to get a tax receipt – duh, I should have thought of that one myself!

3) Stay tuned to the Holy Spirit. My wife JoAnn noticed that people weren’t buying much from our book table or from any of the others.  It had been so much work to drag all this stuff onto the ship that it was depressing to think I’d have to repack it and drag it back home.  So I asked God for wisdom and took time to soak.

“Give your CDs away to any donor.”  This is what I heard when I soaked, and I announced it in my first workshop.  I was surprised to find that many of the people had never heard anything like this.  Several came up to me and told me what they had given and what they had taken, and they wondered if they could have one more CD.  “Take it,” I said.  “It’s yours for any donation.”

4) Follow through with research. Everyone told me I need to start accepting credit cards, but as we asked questions we found that everyone gave us different answers.  So I got home and went online to search various merchant accounts and credit card terminals.

I quickly bogged down in information overload.  Was this really something I could do?  I have to know whether I’m working point-of-sale, as I would be at a book table, or setting up e-commerce on the web.  Eventually I need to do both, but it could take months…

5) Follow through with soaking. Like Hagar in the desert, I was so overwhelmed with my own impossibilities that it was hard to see the well God had provided for me.  It was only when I took time to soak that God made the way simple for me.  In His presence, the information overload from my research suddenly fell into neat categories with a clear step-by-step process I can follow.

6) Follow through with action. So far, we’ve made it to the first step: to print forms that would allow us to accept credit card payments on PayPal.  These forms will be on the book table the next time I minister.

Small steps add up.  If we let God open our eyes in the marketplace, He will show us one small step after another.  As weeks turn into months and months turn into years, we will become skilled at presenting our work efficiently and tastefully.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2009, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

Market Your Servanthood

To many Christian artists, the idea of marketing is repugnant.  On the artistic level it can seem crass and materialistic.  On the Christian level, it can seem self-promoting.

But Jesus taught a simple principle in the parable of the talents: whatever God has given us, He looks for us to invest it to produce increase.  Then in the parable of the sheep and the goats, He taught us to invest ourselves in people.

This implies marketing – not hucksterism or shameless self-promotion, but a discipline of finding ways to get our work out where the people are.  Take another look at Solomon’s words in Proverbs 29:18 –

Where there is no vision, the people cast off restraint;
But happy is he who keeps the law.

Our artistic vision and our faith should put restraints or boundaries on our marketing.

Hucksterism tells us bigger is always better, more money is always better, touching more people is always better.  But the overall tenor of the gospel tells us something else:  bigger can be better, but not if it causes us to focus on a mass market and miss a niche God is sending us to. And the same principle applies to more money or touching more people.

Christian marketing in the arts must begin not with the world’s definition of success, but with God’s.  What has God called you to do?  Whom has He called you to serve?  Knowing the answers to these questions is the first step in designing your marketing efforts.

Once you know whom your work is supposed to touch, how can you get it to them?  A tasteless marketing campaign may alienate the very people you are called to serve.  The quality of your marketing needs to match the quality of your work, and it should be credible to the people you want to reach.

There are a lot of free materials online about marketing, and some are better than others.  But as you run a search and read several people’s articles, you will begin to see your options.  They all say approximately the same things:  use press releases, create a brochure, have a business card, carry yourself like a professional.

But you’ll notice that you feel more comfortable with some than with others. Ask yourself why.  Compare and contrast the articles that speak to you with the ones that don’t.  You’ll begin to identify the traits that mark the marketers whose style fits your calling.

Here’s an analogy that may help.  My wife and I often go out to eat.  Sometimes we have a waitress who takes our order and disappears until she brings the food, then disappears again until she brings the bill.  Perhaps she pops by once both of our mouths are full and asks, “Is everything okay?”  All we can do is splutter, “Mmm hmm!”

Other waitresses won’t leave us alone. They re constantly asking something – “More butter?  More water?  More cream for the coffee?  How’s the fish?  Are you happy with your steamed vegetables?  They’re not over-cooked, I hope…”  And it becomes impossible to carry on a conversation at the table.

The best waitresses are available when needed, but not overbearing. And this is a picture of Christian marketing. For Jesus has said that the greatest in the kingdom must be a servant of all.  If we market our work correctly, we make it available to those it should touch – then we allow them to choose whether to receive it or not.

Let God give you a strategy for getting your work out to the people He has called you to serve.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2008, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com