A Marketing Team

Most of us will go through a season of having to do all our own marketing, but eventually it is helpful to graduate to the point of having a marketing team.

My wife and I began with the build-a-better-mousetrap school of thought and expected the world to beat a path to our door: I with my book, workbook and CDs about prophetic song; she with her four-color graphic intensive books for children. We’ve both had to learn a lot the hard way.

Slowly but surely, we’ve begun getting our marketing materials together. Sometimes I or we are invited to participate in a conference; for that, we keep photos and bios on file. Because JoAnn and I both are multi-talented, we have prepared bios that reflect the variety of things we do. We have built websites. I maintain four blogs. I have familiarized myself with the basics of search engine optimization and have shaped my website accordingly. If you run a search on prophetic song, my materials are usually among the first listed; search for prophetic worship and I’m a lot further down the list. Only rarely have our websites led to sales of our products or services, but they do seem to add to our overall credibility.

I could go on to tell about the colorful business cards JoAnn has designed for both of us, the flyers and email letters we have had to produce for special events, the copies of our work we have given away for promotional purposes, and so on. We haven’t gotten serious with FaceBook or MySpace and have never done anything with press releases, direct mailing, or promotional giveaways.

It’s a lot of work to market our work, and we haven’t had time to do all we could. So a few months ago when we met a man who has a lot of experience in marketing and the arts, we kept our ears open and wanted to learn all we could. I’m creative, but Terry’s IPM Quotient – Ideas-Per-Minute – far exceeds mine.

As our friendship grew, we all began to sense that God wanted us to work together on a few projects. So I’m not sure what to call Terry’s position – for starters we’re calling him our Manager – but he is putting together a team for a special project for JoAnn. He has just posted his new website at cre8ives.net.

For decades, JoAnn has worked on the Alphabuddies, a series of 350 graphics, most of which are a whimsical alphabet made of people, animals, flowers, trees, and more. Terry saw the potential to use these graphics in a literacy campaign aimed at helping disadvantaged children learn to read.

Terry has cultivated a lot of connections over the years, and he has linked us with educators so JoAnn can revise a story she wrote years ago and produce an alphabet book. We needed a writer to make the story sparkle; I ended up doing the writing, which meant putting the whole book into rhythm and rhyme.

JoAnn has spent several weeks putting in long days on her graphics, Terry has linked us to designers who will critique her work. This has led to revisions, but the teamwork is bringing out the best in JoAnn and the pages look better and better.

Now we are in the phase of preparing some of the marketing materials: bios, photos, and more.

I’m going to write other articles about this process in coming weeks, but for this article want to make one simple point: until we built a better mousetrap and waited in vain for the world to beat a path to our door, we didn’t realize we needed to market our work. And until we tried to do all the marketing we could on our own, we didn’t realize that we need a team.

So God’s timing has been right. We’re grateful to have met Terry, and are doing all we can to rise to the occasion as God has given us this opportunity.

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

Be Generous

Professional artists often get paid to fulfill someone else’s vision, while amateurs get to produce whatever they like.  Only a very few get paid to produce what they most enjoy.

So with this in mind, there is a simple rule of thumb for selling and giving:  selling meets the needs of others, and giving meets your own needs.

This rule is paradoxical because, at first glance, our main personal need is for a paycheck.  The professional gets paid, but the artist who works for free has to have personal needs met elsewhere.  But the artist’s greater need is for creative expression, and professionalism doesn’t always leave room for it.

The key to professional art is to produce what others are willing to pay for.  This is the art that meets someone else’s needs.  Many professional artists feel stifled as they produce ads – setting up a window display, laying out a print ad, writing the music for radio, or writing the copy for print or voice.  This kind of work can pay well, but it can leave larger personal needs unmet.

The hobbyist finds some other way to make a living and uses art for fun or relaxation.  These are the people who have something to give away, and art for them is more fun than work.

God may have called you to be a professional or a hobbyist – or to transition from one to another, or to do a bit of both.  But generosity is one of the tools He will use to stretch you and to led you into new opportunities. Take another look at Proverbs 11:25 –

The generous soul will be made rich,
And he who waters will also be watered himself.

This principle set you free as an artist.  Here are several ways how.

Generosity can keep a professional’s creativity alive. If you are paid to do one kind of art, keep another medium for yourself – and give it away.  Use it to appreciate people, or to serve a church, or to further a cause you believe in. This generous use of your talents will keep your creativity alive because you will be free to explore the projects you want to do, not what you have to do for your clients.

Generosity can transform your hobby into a career. One key to marketing is to give samples away. Carefully consider what you are willing to give, and where you should give it.  Generosity can cause your work to be noticed, which in turn can lead to professional opportunities.

Generosity can add to your portfolio. A professional may be confined to a narrow area of expertise.  To develop a broader portfolio, do some volunteer work that will show what you can produce.  A broader portfolio can open doors to more fulfilling assignments later.

Generosity can serve the church. Consider serving on an arts ministry in your church, using your talents to help them fulfill their mission.  Churches need musicians, graphic designers, writers, decorators, dramatists, and more both in worship services and in outreaches.

Generosity can serve social justice. Use your talents to speak into injustice or to strengthen the disenfranchised.  As you soak in God’s presence and seek His direction, He will show you unique ways to make an impact.

Finally, generosity must have boundaries. There is a time to give things away, and there is a time to charge for your work.  The laborer is worthy of his or her hire.  Do not let others enslave you with their demands for free work.  At that point, generosity becomes grudging, and true creativity dies.

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

Use Your Lulls

Solomon noticed that some of us are tempted not to bother preparing for harvest:

The lazy man will not plow because of winter;
He will beg during harvest and have nothing.  [Proverbs 20:4]

We’ll give Solomon the benefit of the doubt:  perhaps he hadn’t seen many farms that spent their winters under several feet of snow and where farmers couldn’t possibly plow before the spring thaw.

But even in lands with severe winters, the best farmers aren’t idle. They use their lulls, sowing time and energy into the non-agricultural side of farming:  remodeling the inside of the house or the barn, putting the equipment in top condition, and keeping up with new information and technology – farmers today use sophisticated computer programs to keep up with grain and livestock prices.

In the arts, you will have times when there is no immediate demand for your work.  This is an opportunity to work on things that will position you for opportunity when it comes.  Here are a few things to sow into:

Learn a new technique. Look into schooling, whether it be in a classroom, with a personal mentor, or with books and articles and a self-directed regimen.  If your schedule is erratic and money is tight, you can find a lot of ideas online.

But don’t just study.  Produce some experimental works that you don’t have to show anyone.  Use small variations to do the same work in many ways:  paint the same tree with a variety of color palettes, write the same paragraph from several points of view, or play the same piece of music with several different rhythms and textures.

Prepare promotional materials. If you don’t have a business card, a bio, and a flyer, start by getting these items together.  Coordinate your typefaces and colors so the materials will look like they go together.  Make your writing short but descriptive.

Look at what other people have put together; compare the things that work with those that don’t.  Then copy the best, replacing their information with yours.

Once these basics are done, have you set up a website or a blog?  The internet can be the ideal way to show your art.  By posting pictures, audio files, text, or movies, you can display your portfolio worldwide.

Upgrade your portfolio. What you provide on the web will do for a start, but nothing substitutes for work you can physically present to a gallery, an editor, or a theatre.

Your portfolio should show a variety of your best work.  Pay attention to detail, and let your portfolio convey professionalism.  Meanwhile, think about the people you will show it to.  Some have seen so many portfolios that they have become jaded; look for ways to make yours stand out.

Commune with God. Keep your eyes and ears open for new ideas as you pray.  Remember the story of Peter’s coin in the fish’s mouth – God won’t always drop what you need in your lap, but sometimes He will tell you where to go and what to do to find what you need.

As God gives you a vision for your work, pray for it to happen.  Don’t assume it will occur effortlessly just because He said it to you.  Keep asking for it until you see His will come to pass. “You have not because you ask not.”

He will show you ministry opportunities with the people you meet along the way.  Directors, producers, critics, and customers all need God.  Your art can be the excuse God uses to gtet you to the right place at the right time to minister to them.

If you haven’t been doing so already, look at the Miracle Lifestyle materials and let God equip you to minister to others.

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

Meet A Need

Is your art needed, or merely ornamental?  Will it make a difference in people’s lives, or is it merely an extra?

For many of us, art begins as a hobby.  It’s inside us, and we need to get it out.  It’s fun to create.  Friends or family see our talent and encourage us.

But it’s a long way from a hobby to a career, from our first works to something marketable, from something we do in our free time to something that changes lives.  We pass a major milestone on that journey when we see how to use our talent to meet a need.

Meet a need, and it will create a demand for your work.  Proverbs 11:26 says –

The people will curse him who withholds grain,
But blessing will be on the head of him who sells it.

Grain meets a need – everyone has to eat.  If a farmer stores his grain and refuses to sell during a shortage, people will curse him.  But who would curse us if we didn’t make our art available?  People might not even notice, because they don’t know they need what we have to offer.

Whatever medium you use, somebody needs what you can produce.  Take time to make a list of needs your art can meet.  Most of us can think of several possibilities – they may not seem very inspiring, but at least they would make our work useful.  That’s what we can come up with.

Then ask God for His ideas.  He is the one who gave you your talents; He is the one who put you in this period of time; He is the one who set you in your specific subculture.  He has plans for you that you will never imagine, and He will speak to you if you ask.  So ask God:  “What needs can I meet with the talents You have given me?”

I won’t list examples because your best opportunities probably will be unique.  To get your imagination started, read and ponder the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 24:31-46.  How can your watercolors feed the hungry?  How can your photography give drink to the thirsty, or your poetry visit the sick?

Often the unartistic side of our lives will reveal our mission.    Maybe you have grown up in a household that includes someone physically challenged, and your art has brought relief to him or her.  You not only know your art can meet a need; you also have wellsprings of compassion towards the special needs of others with similar challenges.

Or your sense of mission may come about through a seemingly chance encounter with someone whose needs you can meet in an unexpected way.  God sets these defining moments in all of our lives; some of us pay attention while others tune them out.

A sense of mission will add passion and urgency to your work.  It’s one thing to present the mindless scribblings of a talented person who has time to kill, but it’s quite another to serve a mission greater than ourselves.

Your mission will require something of you.  You may have to go back to school and get more training so you work will be credible to those who need it.  You may have to discipline yourself to fulfill an output quota.   And you may find that God doesn’t give you a unique sense of mission until you have first used up your own ideas about how to let your art meet a need.

Unless you have found a need to meet, most people will not think to curse you if you withhold your art.  But God knows what He put in you and who He designed you to serve.  In the end, He is the one who is hungry for what your art can do in the lives of people.   And He has reserved great blessing for those who serve Him.

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

Scatter And Increase

In Proverbs 11:24-26, Solomon tells us to market our work:

There is one who scatters, yet increases more,
And there is one who withholds more than is right.
The generous soul will be made rich,
And he who waters will also be watered himself.
The people will curse him who withholds grain,
But blessing will be on the head of him who sells it.

If we give ourselves to the task of “scattering”, we can expect increase.  But how do we get our stuff out there?  Solomon lists four ways:  (1) by scattering, (2) by generosity, (3) by meeting a need, and (4) by putting it up for sale.  Let’s look at these more closely.

1)  Scattering. This is like the work of the sower in Jesus’ parable.  He cast seed everywhere, whether the ground was good or not.

Solomon presents two choices:  either we scatter what we have, or we
withhold it.  Choosing to do nothing is, by default, a choice to
withhold your work from the public.

At first, anything is better than nothing.  Most people begin to market their work with ads, posters, or bulk mailings.  When they have opportunities for networking, they hand out business cards or brochures.

Recognize that these efforts are just the beginning.  The best marketers test their efforts, to learn what is effective and what isn’t.  And look for ways to minimize the cost of your marketing.  Spending a lot of money is no guarantee that your work will be noticed.

Learn all you can.  You’ll end up working smarter, not harder.

2)  Generosity. Sometimes you need to give something away.  Pray about this and let God lead you; He will show you how to gain favor through your giving.

God may lead you to water someone else’s labors – they do the actual sowing and reaping, but you do something to boost their efforts.  Your helping another artist can open the storehouse of God’s blessing in your own work.

None of us can afford to give everything away, but include generosity in your marketing plans.  It’s certainly at the heart of how God does business.

3)  Meet a need. People curse him who withholds grain because they need grain.  If you have something others need, it is wrong to withhold it.

Look for opportunities to meet needs with your art.  It’s not just a matter of pouring out your soul on canvas or on the stage.  Your art can meet significant needs – needs greater than your own desire for personal fulfillment – and the discipline of making your talents available to meet needs will shape your art and make it effective.

4)  Put it up for sale. If people curse those who withhold grain, they don’t curse those who sell it.  Don’t be afraid to charge for your work.  You won’t be able to stay productive unless you have the income to meet the needs of your family.

As you look to God for wisdom, expect Him to show you how to embrace all four aspects of Solomon’s marketing plan.  He will show you how to get the word out about your work so you will have an audience.  He will show you what to give away.  He will show you how to tailor your work to meet needs.  And He will show you how to get paid for what you do.

Give yourself to the task of scattering, and expect increase.

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