Targeting With a Laser and Not a Water Balloon

With this knowledge, you will have identified your perfect customers into groups, which will enable you to target them based upon their needs and not your products. This means you offer solutions not stuff. Everything you do in terms of developing new products or services, delivering your message over various marketing channels and hiring the right staff in the right place will evolve around this identification. Let's be certain we are on the same page by coming to an understanding.

Being successful in business begins by identifying your target. I know this sounds incredibly elementary, but it is what we need to know, in order to build the business beyond where we are. Every organization has a typical customer and a consequential lifecycle. But few have a perfect customer, or groups thereof, they have absolutely identified outside of their own mind.

Building a profitable customer relationship requires an understanding of a two sided proposition. The two sides to this relationship are quite simply, your understanding of your customer's needs and the perception they have of you or your organization. Furthermore, it is critical to realize that quantity rarely trumps quality. You need to know what your customers' needs are, how they evolve, why they have chosen you and what those customers are contributing to the success of your company. Not knowing this in detail will be very expensive. It is great to know about our customer's family, outside influences and extracurricular interests but that isn't what I mean here.

Your perfect customer can first be broadly defined by answering these two questions:

· How does what you offer solve their problems and add to achieving their objectives?

· Why would they need, what you offer, from you and not your competitor?

Then you need to narrow that list by identifying exactly who fits this mold today:

· Where your customers are geographically located.

· What products or services does each of them, derived from the previous set of questions, buy from you now? How often do they repeat that purchase?

· What does it cost you to acquire a new and nearly duplicate copy?

· What are they worth to you on an annual basis?

Your newly identified or refined perfect customer needs to be listed as specific people or businesses. You must be able to identify them by such narrow target data as income level, occupation, gender, location, questions they typically ask and the benefits they seek for the problems you can solve.

Pricing Your Artwork - Taking a Two Step Approach

How much is your art worth? If you are interested in selling your art but don't know what to ask for it, I believe the key to pricing artwork is by doing a little bit of market research. And the first place to start your research is by finding other like artists in your media. This task can be accomplished by two methods. One is using the Internet and the other is by physically visiting places where artwork like yours is being displayed for sale.

Online Research

Go to Google or any other search engine and type in the type of artwork that you do, such as, "oil paintings", "stain glass windows", or "ceramic figurines", for example. Visit the sites of these other artists and see what they are charging for similar quality and size work as yours.

Another place to do some market research online is eBay and other auction sites. These sites will help provide a realistic viewpoint of what is available and what people are actually willing to pay for art like yours. You want to find out the winning bids. This will give you insight as to what people are paying for the type of work you do.

Research on Foot

Visit art galleries in person to find work similar to yours. Keep in mind these works of art will be priced much higher to include commissions for the gallery owner. The artists will also be more well-known and will naturally command higher prices just on the basis of who they are. The gallery visit will give you a good feel of how much the higher end pieces are going for in the marketplace and will give you a price point to shoot for once you become better known as an artist.

You will also want to go to local art shows and craft fairs to find out what other artists in your media are selling their work for. Ask the vendors lots of questions and take notes. Don't neglect visiting the art studios of local artists. You can learn a lot when you talk directly to the artist, see the quality of the work they do and listen to what they can tell about where and how they market their work.

In Conclusion

By using this two-step method you'll be well on your way to figuring out the ideal price to charge for your artwork. All it takes is a little bit of research, some market testing and tweaking. There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to pricing your artwork. Try to be subjective when pricing. Test your pricing structure and ask your potential customers what they would be willing to pay for pieces of art like yours. This will result in some valuable information and ultimately lead to sales. Keep in mind your art is only worth what others are willing to pay for it. Create value in your reputation as an artist and over time the public will be willing to pay more for your work.