If there’s one thing I’ve learned since starting Designing an MBA, it’s that everyone always wants to learn about marketing.
I get it. Marketing feels like the engine that drives your business.
And I’ve indulged this by offering plenty of classes (not to mention blog posts) about marketing your business. I’m not ashamed of this. Marketing matters. (Plus, I think it’s pretty darn fun.)
But last week, I came to a conclusion:
I don’t want you to market your business. I want you to sell your art. (Or your products. However you choose to define what you do.)
Now, don’t get me wrong. I think marketing is important.
But I think, for too many businesses, marketing is a distraction that keeps us from focusing on the real metric that matters: sales. (And when I say sales, I don’t mean the number of items sold. I mean revenue, the amount of money you’re actually bringing in.)
Let me give you an example:
When I talk to artists and makers about their email marketing, they’ll often tell me about open rates or replies to their emails. But when I press them, they tell me that their emails aren’t generating sales.
More often than not, when I take a look at their recent emails, the reason their emails aren’t generating sales is simple. They aren’t asking for the sale.
And they aren’t asking for the sale (I think) because they’re too focused on other metrics. (Like whether or not people open their emails or unsubscribe.)
This is the problem with focusing on marketing. Marketing has so many metrics we can look at, from follower count to engagement to likes to open rates, that it can feel like we’re doing work to move our business forward.
But none of that matters if you aren’t making sales.
Of course, we also want to be selling at a profit. But that’s a conversation for another post. My point here is that I want to shift your focus from worrying about marketing to thinking about selling. Because you can’t make a profit if you aren’t making sales.
When I email my list, there’s only one metric I really care about: how much money did that email make?
Ok, technically, I also peek at clickthrough rates. But’s that’s only because people can’t buy if they don’t click over to my online store. But at the end of the day, the only metric I’m really worried about is revenue. (And thanks to MailChimp’s integration with Shopify, I know exactly how much money a particular email makes.)
Yes, marketing is important. But sales is the engine that drives your business.
So why do so many artists and makers prioritize marketing over selling?
I think it’s because, for many people, selling seams pushy. Marketing seems safer.
Plus, there’s less fear of failure with marketing. If we’re just sharing our work (and focusing on other metrics) it’s less scary than literally asking for the sale and having no one buy.
But if you wan’t to have a viable business that supports your art, you need to make money. And the only way to do that is to shift your focus from simply marketing to actually selling.
So that’s my challenge for you this week. Instead of thinking about marketing, think about one concrete action you could take to sell your work.
That could be emailing your list and telling them (directly) to go buy your work. It could be applying for that craft show you’ve had your eye on, so that you can sell in person. It could be sending an email to a store to ask if they want to carry your work. (And if you already have stores, selling can be as simple as calling or emailing an existing store and asking if they need to reorder.)
Too often, we think our job is to market our business while we sit back and passively wait for sales. But the most successful creative business owners know that a sale is something you can ask for. So instead of sitting back and waiting for sales, ask yourself what you can do to make money this week.
Then go do it.
Because shifting your focus from marketing to selling can have a huge impact on your business. (And your bottom line.)
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This question of “what did you do to make money this week?” is one I ask members in my new community, Artists and Profit Makers. (I also pair it with “what did you do to make art this week?” in order to keep that creative/biz balance.) It’s a simple way to keep your business on track and easily establish priorities when you’re feeling overwhelmed. If you need help and support selling more of your art or products, be sure to check out Artists and Profit Makers. Enrollment is now open at the special Founding Member price! Click here to check it out!