A Quick-Start Guide to Advertising Your Art on Facebook

By Nial Adams in Art Business Advice > Selling Art Online

If you’ve read through my previous posts on using Facebook to sell your art, you know that I’ve tried to cram as much as possible into each one. Hopefully you’ve gotten something out of all of them—if you’ve missed them and have the time, I recommend going back and reading part 1, part 2, and part 3.

But since advertising on Facebook is such a big subject, today my goal is to simply help you find a quick way to get started and be confident about it.

Because as we all know, if you want to sell your artwork online it’s not enough to be a great artist—you need to learn how marketing works, too.

So here are the steps I suggest you take if you want to start using Facebook to market your art:

1. Decide what your next Facebook Post will be

This means planning out the text of the post, choosing 2-3 images to include, and adding a link (to your website, or other online store where you sell your art) inside the text. Creating it in this order—text first, images next, link last—allows you the most control over the look and feel of your post.

2. Keep your images free of text

Make sure your Post images don’t have much, if any, text on them. Facebook will not allow your advert to run if you do. Also, don’t use the word “Facebook” in your actual post; this also is disallowed.

3. After posting, click the “Boost Post” button below it

Now you’ll be using Facebook’s powerful demographic targeting tool (explained here) to find people who have relevant interests. These are the people Facebook will show your post to.

Think about what sort of people your Post (and your artwork) is relevant to. . . the types of interests that you could choose to target are nearly infinite: dogs and pets, abstract art, home magazines, art galleries, even other artists, brands or businesses that are popular on Facebook and somehow related to your art.

4. Consider running more than one advert per Post

You can set up different demographics and targeting for each advert, then see which one works best for you. This is called split-testing and is a fundamental of good marketing.

5. Remember to target buyers, not other artists

Consider advertising to people whose circumstances would make them good candidates to purchase your art. For example; people who have recently moved, or people looking for interior design ideas, etc.

6. Decide on when you want to run your adverts

Go for the weekends first and then try other days if you want to test this. You can set specific start and finish times for your adverts, or manage this manually—just remember that you need to keep an eye on this and remember to switch off your adverts at the end of your campaign!

7. Decide on your budget and stick to it

I’ll warn you now, when you start getting good results from Facebook advertising you’ll be tempted to keep spending money. Keep your spending under control and make sure you’re not wasting your hard-earned dollars!

8. Always reply to comments

When you start to get your targeting right, you’ll suddenly see a surge of people finding your Post, hopefully liking it and commenting (as well as messaging you). Keep on top of this. Be ready to respond and reply, thank people for their comments, and engage with them often.

9. Invite people who liked a post to like your page

When a person Likes one of your Posts you want to always invite them to Like your Page as well. This is the most important thing you can do on Facebook, whether you advertise or not.

The way that you do this is to go to your Post and click on the number that shows how many Likes you’ve got. This will bring up a list of people who Liked your post. On the right of each one is an Invite button. Click that button and invite these people to like your Page, too.

This is essential—trust me, I’ve grown my Facebook Page very quickly doing this!

10. Review how well your advert worked

When you finish a campaign and have switched it off, go back a few days later and try to understand what happened and where you were successful.

One of the best ways to do this is by clicking the Insights button on your Page to learn what type of people responded most to your advert. Consider changing your ad, trying a new ad, or testing new demographics in order to make the most of that knowledge.

11. Learn which types of adverts work best overall

After running several adverts, try to find a pattern of what people tend to like and respond most to. This could be the theme of your artwork (even the colours you choose), how you write about your art in your Post, or something else.

At the same time, remember to check if people are clicking any links and visiting your website, Etsy store, or other online shop. Those click-throughs are some of the most important, because it means that the visitor may be interested in purchasing your art. If certain ads or artwork tends to increase those kinds of clicks, test some additional ads with the same elements in them and see if they pay off.

If those 11 steps above seem daunting, don’t let that stop you from starting to advertise. Steps 1-7 could be completed today, without much effort—and each additional step builds on those first few, if you just take them one at a time.

I hope you’ve found my posts interesting and perhaps even inspirational. Above all I hope you now have the confidence to give Facebook advertising a try.

As before, if you’ve got any questions or want to know more, please do contact me personally through my own Facebook Page. I’ll do my very best to respond to you.

Big thanks to Nial Adams for sharing his insight into Facebook. Make sure to visit his website or Facebook page, and let him know how his suggestions worked for you!

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