The topic of marketing is very large and very broad. Its basic principle includes what is your product, how do you want to sell it and what are your expected returns.

This subject should be useful for all business purposes and over the coming months, we'll break it down into a number of different categories and discuss each one on a month by month basis. This process of month by month is designed to try and keep it simple. The marketing concept is directed to artists for their use, but anyone reading it should be able to interpret any discussed concept into any product or business. We do not guarantee that all of the following concepts and suggestions will pertain to your use. However, they are the basic starting points and are designed to be enlarged upon to directly fit your use.

THE THREE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF MARKETING ARTISTS WORKS:

Where am I now?
Where do I want to go?
How am I going to get there?

To begin with point one, Where am I now? sit down and fully describe yourself and your product on paper. List all of your basic business relationships in point form. Some of these should be more or less those to include such as your banker, accountant and your attorney.

List all of your suppliers and describe the relationship that you have with each and how they are paid. Do your suppliers assist you with production materials and ideas, and if so, what and how?

What is your method of a business operation? What is your method of production? Provide a full description of where you work, all of your working assets, all of your production assets, a full description of your product(s), your abilities; (even those outside of your production abilities). Where you work, where you produce your product, and the rental costs. This description should come right down to even having a telephone and the cost of the actual telephone. What is the telephone number and the monthly cost, etc.?

Naturally, the larger your business has become, the more comprehensive and detailed you are going to have to be in listing all of your resources. Every resource pertaining to you, (including your education) and your business of being an artist should be listed now.

After you have listed and described everything in point form about yourself and your business, then write your conclusions. Your conclusions should be drawn from all of the information your have outlined in point form and should be only your opinions as to where you feel you are now.

At this point there are no decisions or descriptions to be made as to whether you are or have been right or wrong. What you want is the complete written outline of exactly where you are now.

This information should be designed for your own use. It should not be designed to show to anyone or used as part of an application for a loan. All you want right now is a complete personal description of yourself, yourself as a businessperson, yourself as a creator and producer of works of art or yourself as that of being a corporation.

Within your conclusions, thoroughly outline what you think are your strong, positive areas and your weak, negative areas.

Lastly, write your Summary Conclusions. These are taken only from your conclusions, and in short, should briefly outline where you believe your place is right now in the real world of business. Now you should have a good mental and written understanding of exactly where you are now.

You cannot skip this, and just say "I know where I am now". Once you write everything down, you will find some very surprising facts about yourself and/or your business that you did not even think of before now. In fact, you should plan on doing this at least once a year. Then you can compare last year to this year. It can and will bring you down to earth very quickly. It will provide a positive direction as to where to go with an ever-changing working environment. This is the first essential step to success.

Next month we will discuss point two. Where do I want to go? As an emerging artist or an established artist, this month you might want to take the time to participate in point one. Then you will be in a better position to relate to the next article