Developing Online Sales Skills In Art And Design Students (QAA 1,2,5)

Objective:

• To provide art and design students with an understanding of the importance of online marketing and e-commerce.
• To provide art and design students with opportunities to reflect on their own sales and marketing strategies.
• To provide art and design students with opportunities to identify opportunities to support their own endeavours.  
• To develop art and design students’ knowledge and understanding of how to market and sell work online.

Introduction:

A large proportion of art and design students and graduates will take responsibility for marketing and selling their own work. As such, sales and marketing skills coupled with the ability to identify and create new sales and marketing opportunities, are essential for these students. Furthermore, those who lack knowledge and understanding of online sales opportunities, will miss out on a huge potential market for their work, and limit their chances of success.  

As a part of the Creative Futures Conference 2015, a creative industries conference for art, media, design students and professionals held at Glyndwr University, the workshop ‘Selling Art Online’ was delivered to address this challenge.

The workshop was delivered in a one hour session, by the University’s enterprise support service - ZONE, to a cohort of approximately 60 students in a lecture theatre environment. The students were from various levels of study, with mixed experience of business and marketing, and came from a wide range of art, design and creative courses.

Activity:

The activity follows the structure outlined in the ‘Selling Art Online’ PowerPoint presentation, inclusive of all links and examples.

Pre-Activity

• The activity took place on the final day of a four-day creative industries conference. No preparation was required of students in advance of the session, but it was known that the audience would have attended a number of business and enterprise themed sessions during the conference, and so would enter with some basic prior knowledge of the topics to be discussed. 

Figure 1: Students taking their seats for the Selling Art Online workshop

Introduction

• Students were welcomed to the workshop and the running order which was to follow.

Why Bother?

• Students discussed the importance of marketing, and were shown various facts and figures of supporting evidence. They discussed benefits of selling art online, and additional suggestions were put to the group for consideration. The group were asked to share where they promoted and sold their work online presently.

What does selling online mean?

• Students explored various ways in which art could be promoted / sold online, inclusive of e-commerce via their own sites, e-commerce via third part sites, or promoting off-line sales using online resources. 

Making a plan

• Students were asked to reflect upon, and write down answers to a series of questions, which would form the basis of a basic marketing plan (What are the products and services you offer? Who are the customers for these? How many of them are there? Where are they? What are your customers’ wider interests? How are these customers likely to look for your work? Where can you go so that these customers will be likely to find you?)
• A volunteer from the audience shared her answers to each of these with the group, with the group offering their own opinions, advice and feedback on the answers.

Finding the right place to sell

• Students looked at a variety of online sales / marketing platforms, inclusive of social media, artists’ personal websites, and a variety of online sales platforms.
• Students debated the merits and demerits of each platform, and shared their own personal experiences of the platforms with the group where applicable.

How others have done it

• A case study was presented to the group of an alumnus who had graduated and established her own applied arts business a year previously. The students reflected on the information covered in the workshop, and analysed how the study showed different elements of online sales and marketing put into practice in an effective way.
• They reflected on the specific actions they would need to take, for a similar positive impact to be made to their own businesses.

Conclusion

• The key themes of the session were recapped, students were thanked, and further advice and support, internal and external to the University, were promoted to the students.

Impact:

Students were attentive and engaged throughout the session, and reported finding it enjoyable and useful. A number of those in attendance went on to utilise further enterprise support available at the University as a direct result of their attendance.

Learner outcome: 

When asked to reflect on the session, learner comments included;

• “A great end to a great week” 
• “Very useful and informative” 
• “A very knowledgeable and enthusiastic speaker”

When asked what actions learners would take as a result of the session, comments included;

• “Plan, prepare and work hard”
• “Set up website”
• “Think about what I really want to do as a career”
• “[Work on my ] Marketing”
• “Go to ZONE [Enterprise] Hub”
• “Incorporate social networks in to my business”
• “Go and find opportunities”

Resources:

• Lesson plans and PowerPoint presentations to accompany this activity can be viewed via > https://moodle.glyndwr.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=37&section=11, and slides can be downloaded here > Selling Art Online [PDF]
• For a How To Guide on running this workshop see – ‘Workshop: Selling Art Online’
• For a Case Example of the Creative Futures Conference, of which this session was a part, see ‘Art and Design: Creative Futures Conference.’ 

References:

• Creative Futures 2015. 2015. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.glyndwr.ac.uk/creativefutures/. [Accessed 20 August 2015].
• Zone Enterprise Hub. 2015. Course: Zone Enterprise Hub. [ONLINE] Available at: https://moodle.glyndwr.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=37%2522%2520target%253D%2522_blank%2522. [Accessed 20 August 2015].

Author:

With thanks to the Careers team at Glyndwr University.