E114: Copywriting for the arts with Ali Strachan
We are surrounded by art every day. And artists struggle with many of the challenges that us copywriters do…
How to create a sense of perceived value around their work.
How to market their work to audiences who will not only appreciate it but pay for it too.
How to create a successful business without disrupting their creative process.
That’s where today’s guest comes in.
We’re talking to Ali Strachan, digging into how artists can create a successful business and how copywriters can be successful in this niche.
Tune in to learn:
What an Arts Advocate does
The big struggles artists face, and how Ali helps to overcome them
How important strong personal branding and storytelling is for artists
The kind of copy an arts copywriter writes
The conflict between art and marketing: the artist and the customers
Whether artists care about SEO, blogs, and mailing lists
What gets Ali cross about arts marketing
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Who is Ali?
Ali Strachan helps visual artists promote their work, make an impact, and earn more from sales and commissions.
She’s a passionate, knowledgeable, and honest advocate of the arts, who supports her clients to achieve success on their creative journey.
She regularly works with arts organisations and local council to promote and educate local artists and engage them in events to give them every opportunity to build their profile within the community.
As a fellow creative, she understands the challenges artists face when building their business – and has the tools, experience, and know-how to help artists be more profitable, so they can keep doing what they love.
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Transcript
Kate:
We are surrounded by art every day and artists struggle with many of the challenges as copywriters do, how to create a sense of perceived value around their work, how to market their work to audiences who will actually pay a decent amount for it, how to a successful business without disrupting their creative process, and that’s where today’s guest comes in.
Kate:
Hello, and welcome to the Hot Copy podcast, a podcast for copywriters all about copywriting. My name is Kate Toon. I’m a copywriter and I’m the founder of the Clever Copywriting School, which has a shop, a directory, and membership courses, resources, and so much more. And with me as always, is the delicious Belinda Weaver… who is muted.
Belinda:
Hello everyone. I am muted. My name is Belinda and I am a copywriter as well. I have courses and groups and you can go to my website where I have tons of advice whether you want it or not.
Kate:
I love that. “Is it muted?” I think has become the phrase of 2020 I think. “Pivot. Can you unmute? Can you mute?” Anyway, let’s move on. With us today is the wonderful Ali Strachan. Hello, Ali Strachan.
Ali:
Hi, how are you?
Kate:
Have I said it right? I haven’t, have I?
Ali:
No, it’s okay. I’m all right with Ali Strachan. It makes me sound exotic.
Kate:
What is it? I always get it wrong.
Ali:
It’s Ali Strachan.
Kate:
Ali Strachan. But, my name’s Kate Toon, and you always get that wrong. Everyone gets it wrong. It’s Kate Toon, not Kate Toon, but I live with it. I’m lying. Ali Strachan, welcome. Let me read out your bio. Ali helps visual artists promote their work, make an impact, and earn more from sales and commissions. She’s a passionate, knowledgeable, and honest advocate of the arts who supports her clients to achieve success on their creative journey. She regularly works with arts organizations and local councils to promote and educate local artists and educate them in events to give them the every opportunity to build their profile within the community. As a fellow creative, she understands the challenges artists face when building their business and has the tools, experience, and knowhow to help artists be more profitable so they can keep doing what they love. Hi, Ali.
Ali:
Hi.
Kate:
Hi. It’s good to have you here, so-
Belinda:
Very happy.
Kate:
Oh yes, [inaudible] you unmuted, I was shocked then. Ali is a member of the global copywriting community and is also very lucky to be one of the chosen few on the Hot Copy Mastermind. So, we’ve got to know you very well over the last couple of months, but for other people, you’ve branded yourself as the arts advocate. What does that mean to you and to your audience?
Ali:
So, I think it comes from wanting to be a champion for the arts, but helping artists really find their voice and their confidence to keep promoting their work and putting it out there.
Belinda:
So, Ali, what kind of artists do you work with?
Ali:
So, my sweet spot is visual arts. I really love pulling apart people’s work and writing about it in a way that makes it really relatable. But, I also work with lots of musicians, but [inaudible] guess it’s like painters and photographers and sculptors, even jewelers, sometimes designers. And I also work a lot with my local council. So, my local council often runs professional development sessions and marketing sessions, and local arts organization, just one in particular, the Brisbane Multicultural Arts Center or BMAC who [inaudible] the moment to do a mentoring with it the moment and it’s fantastic work.
Kate:
It’s a bit of a mixed bag, which sounds really interesting, and I guess across all those different clients, they all face different struggles. I mean, as an artist, you go into art to be an artist, not to market yourself. What are the struggles that your clients are facing?
Ali:
Yeah, so I think underpinning it all is really a mindset, and that mindset [inaudible] comes from… Sorry, that mindset comes from seeing their work as a business and employing strategies for marketing that probably they consider to be something that other businesses do and not necessarily creative. So, that’s the first thing, and I guess joining onto that is a lack of confidence and understanding who their ideal clients are and really knowing how to find them and talk to them because I think particularly for artists themselves, they have different core audiences. So, whether you’re a musician or a fine artist or whatever, you have your buyers and your fans and your music consumers I guess, and then you’ve also got funding bodies and galleries and events organizations and things like that that you need to apply different kind of strategies to in order to speak to them and connect with them properly.
Belinda:
I bet that’s quite a concept to come to grips with for someone who maybe began their career just wanting to create, to have to suddenly think I’m not only trying to sell my work but I’m trying to appeal to these other bodies. I would never have really thought of that. What about pricing? Because copywriters, we struggle with pricing. What common issues do you see artists struggle with when it comes to the money side of things?
Ali:
[inaudible] being a creative process, I think it’s being able to create that work and then take that step back because I think you put so much of yourself into your work when you create it, and that’s just an automatic thing, it drives you, it makes you want to connect with others. But, being able to… When it comes to pricing, then you feel like you’re pressing yourself. So, be able to take that step back and price it professionally so that you can make a profit and basically keep creating. Lots of artists think that I’m not in this to make a profit, which is fine, but then art stuff is expensive, and being able to keep creating and do things on a bigger scale, whether that’s public art or whatever, there is that element to it. So, there’s one particular example that I can think of.
Ali:
It’s a lady called Tracie Eaton. She’s quite [inaudible]. She’s had work in all of the massive Ruby [inaudible] and things here. Some of her work has gone out to some of the Oscars recipients and Golden Globes and stuff like that. But, she has a marketing background. I was talking to her one day and she was saying to me that when she first started out, if someone showed an interest in her work, she was like, “Oh, you can have it,” just like what the hell am I doing? It’s that instant… I don’t know. There’s something that overrides the whole thing [inaudible] struggle with, so definitely pricing is a big issue.
Kate:
I think that it’s the delight that someone likes what you’ve done, and that you’re appreciated, and the thing is I think as writers we can be the same way. We want to be able to write and therefore if someone’s willing to pay us to do that, that’s great, we’ll take anything just as long as we can do it. That can often cause issues later down the track because as you said, you’ve got to cover your costs, maybe a studio space, and then if you do want to digitally market yourself all the costs inv
