I think we can all agree that January is one of the 2 most important months for promotions. This is the time of the year when you need to get your work in front of buyers and start lining jobs up for 2009. I know a lot of artists are worried about the current state of the global economy, but now is not the time to cut back on your marketing. Now is the time to be smart about your marketing and smart means it doesn't have to be expensive. The smartest way to approach your marketing is to create a plan.

Many of you have might have already watched our step-by-step webcast on creating a marketing plan, if you missed it you can view it here: Your Marketing Plan. If you are new to marketing planning, I highly recommend watching, you'll get a lot out of it!

But what if a marketing plan is more than you need right now or you have already completed your marketing plan for 2009? Then you may want to use another great tool - a promotional plan. This plan doesn't need to be complicated; in fact, we've created a template for you to use. It includes only the information that you, as a freelance artist, need to consider in promoting for 2009.

What is a promotional plan, you ask? Quite simply, it works with your marketing plan to describe the promotional tools and tactics you will use to accomplish your goals. We've created a simple template that will help you align your marketing pieces with your goals for the year, and that is the real crux of marketing success. When you take a little bit of time to make sure that the pieces you're sending out match the goals you've set, you'll get much better results. Let's get started then, shall we?

Purpose and Objective

The most important decision, and also the most difficult, is to choose a single purpose or objective for your piece. You must decide what you want your campaign to achieve. For most of you, and keeping the time of year in mind, this goal will be to line up work in the next quarter. Be sure to consider what kind of work you want, you'll get more response to your efforts if you send relevant work to the buyers you're approaching.

Here are some other outcomes you may consider, depending on what your goals are this year:

  • Gaining press coverage
  • Keeping in touch with existing clients
  • Expand from the editorial market by introducing my work ad agency buyers

Intended Results

After deciding on the main purpose of your campaign (more than likely to land some jobs), you can also have some secondary goals. Don't discount the importance of relationship-building; not every campaign will land you jobs, but every campaign should turn over a couple of leads you can work on developing.

Here are a few other secondary goals you may consider:

  • Improve click-throughs from last campaign
  • Build name/brand recognition
  • Specifically, land 2 jobs from existing leads

Tactics

Tactics are just a fancy marketing term for what sort of promotion you are going to do. For photographers and illustrators, usually tactics include emails and postcards. Most art buyers prefer one or the other of these methods, so you don't have to try and reinvent the wheel. To complete this section of the template, your specific tactics are your "methods" (i.e. Email, postcard), and you should also clarify the "how" of execution. If you're selecting postcards, who is printing them for you? Who is doing the mail fulfillment? Who are you sending them to and where are you getting your names (hint: ADBASE!)

Materials and Components

In this section, you list out the actual materials you need for your campaign and what those cost. If you are doing a print mailing, you are going to need your layout (with image selections), the printing of your piece, and the mail fulfillment (postage). If you are launching a press release, you will need to hire a PR writer to write and distribute the release for you. This part of your plan is really important, because you may discover budget inconsistencies that will impact your ability to execute your chosen tactics.

Key Messaging/Buyer Response

What exactly is key messaging? Quite simply, it is the message you want your prospect to get about your business. And by message, I don't necessarily mean the actual text written on your promo - I mean the purpose of your marketing piece. You don't have to spend hours wordsmithing your promotional copy. Because you are artists, most of the work of your promo will be done by your images and not by words. But make sure that the words you do select match the message or style of your images as this will give your piece further impact. At this time of the year, I would think that most of you would want your messaging to reflect the qualities of your brand so you can get hired. The best way to write this sort of messaging is to think about what you want the buyer's response to your piece to be. This response could be "Wow, look at how innovative this work is. I've just got to see their book" or "This is just the work I'm looking for, let's get an estimate".

Follow-up

What are you going to with the responses you get? Having a plan ahead of time lets you react more quickly when you get interest, and the faster you react, the better it is for you. Your follow-up actions will depend on the type of campaign you're doing. If you are sending an email campaign, how will you deal with those buyers who clicked through? Will you send them a printed piece? Will you call them and to send them your book? And even though it's not as easy to track responses, don't forget about postcards. Have a follow-up plan for those who are coming to your website. How will you follow-up? Call? Email? A quality print piece? Make sure to think this through carefully, so you get the most out of each lead.

Make a Schedule

All you need to do to finish off your plan is to figure out the timing, using the helpful calendar. This calendar will help you break out each of the steps required to make your campaign happen. Write down each task, and then work backwards from your launch date and set the due dates for your tasks. You will find building and sending your campaigns so much easier when you have everything worked out in advance.

Now Try It Yourself

Go ahead; try creating a promotional plan for your next campaign. You can use our promotion plan template to help. Trust me, marketing can be simple. Planning out everything in advance will ensure you really consider the purpose of your campaign, and marketing always works better when there's forethought. Your pieces will be more effective and resonate more with buyers.

Promotional Plan Template Download