Starting your journey to sell paintings online can feel overwhelming.
Module 3 of the Artist's Launch Academy is designed to change that by offering a structured, actionable approach to understanding your audience, crafting a compelling brand, and creating a sales funnel that works.
Module 1: Overview of Marketing Strategy- laid the groundwork with marketing basics, while Module 2: Search Engine Optimization - introduced strategies to make your website more visible online.
Module 3 focuses on applying these insights to build a sustainable art business through research to prepare the foundation for the rest of what we will be doing together for the rest of the academy and most importantly to build a website that you love and your fans love.
As we are in the pilot research phase, we’re not just refining these methods but also gathering invaluable insights to make this program even more impactful for artists like you through a lot of survey's and group meetings with the 8 artists just like you.
Let’s explore how this transformative module can help you connect with collectors, map their journey, and turn interest into sales.
Part A: Understanding Your Fans & Collectors
A strong connection with your audience is the cornerstone of any art business. In this section, you’ll learn how to:
Identify Collector Types
Use psychographic profiling to understand your audience's motivations. Psychographics go beyond basic demographics like age or income, diving into psychological traits such as values, interests, and buying motivations. You’ll learn to interpret these deeper insights using tools like social media analytics and past sales data.
If you’re just starting out, don’t worry! You can use this opportunity to imagine your ideal collectors. By considering what they might value or resonate with in your work, you’ll create messaging that feels authentic and compelling.
Reflect on Past Sales
Think about the emotional reasons buyers connected with your work. For instance, did someone buy a piece to commemorate a milestone or because it evoked a cherished memory? This exercise helps you understand what drives your audience’s purchasing decisions and allows you to craft messaging that connects on a personal level.
Workbook Task

Create two psychographic profiles that highlight emotional resonance and decision-making patterns.
Each profile should include attributes such as interests, emotional triggers, and preferred communication channels. You’ll then use these profiles to craft messaging tailored to each profile for your core pages, landing pages, and blog pages.
This ensures that your communication remains consistent and targeted throughout your website and marketing efforts.
Part B: Discovering Your Brand Archetype
Most artists don’t initially think of themselves as a brand, but embracing this perspective can strengthen the connection between your work and your collectors. Your brand is more than just a logo or tagline—it’s the consistent experience you offer to your audience. Before diving into the workbook, we’ll explore foundational questions to help you identify and articulate your unique brand as an artist:
Who are you? Define your artistic identity and the story you bring to your audience.
What does your art bring to people's lives? Explore the emotions, themes, and value your work offers.
What wording do you use? Develop a consistent tone and language that reflects your artistic essence.
How do you provide value? Consider how your art and presence enrich your collectors' lives.
Rank Archetypes

Identify which archetypes, such as the Creator or Explorer, resonate with your artistic vision.
Artistic Reflection
Consider recurring themes, colors, and symbols in your work. How does your process embody these archetypes?
Workbook Task
Write a short narrative connecting your top archetype to your artistic journey and marketing approach. This narrative will serve as a guide for how you present yourself and your art online and in person.
Part C: Identifying Sales Funnels
Let’s remind ourselves again of the sales funnel:
Imagine someone scrolling through Instagram or visiting your booth at an art fair. They admire your work, maybe even take a card or follow you online.
But what happens next? Without a clear path, that initial interest can fade. A sales funnel ensures that curious onlookers don’t just stop at admiration—they continue engaging, building a relationship, and eventually make a purchase.
A sales funnel is a series of steps that gently lead potential collectors through the buying process. It’s not about aggressive selling. It’s about providing opportunities for people to get to know you, your art, and the stories behind each piece. Think of it like guiding someone through an exhibition—each step brings them closer to connecting with a piece emotionally, and ultimately, bringing it home.
In this section, we’ll explore how to:
Create awareness and capture interest
Build deeper connections through engaging content
Encourage purchases naturally and authentically
Cultivate long-term collectors who continue to support your work

By the end of this module, you’ll have a complete blueprint to build an audience of not just art lovers, but loyal collectors.
They are going to go through first impressions, drawing them in, holding their attention, enabling action, and building a community. They will create a 5-step sales funnel for three different routes that a collector will go through from just knowing you all the way to reposting your stuff and being an advocate.
Workbook Task: Sketch out three 5-step sales funnels detailing the journey of a collector from awareness to advocacy for your art.
Part D: Messaging with the Sales Funnel and Profiles
A functional sales funnel turns casual interest into committed collectors, and messaging plays a crucial role at every stage.
In this section, you’ll use the psychographic profiles you created to craft specific messages that align with each stage of the sales funnel:
Awareness: Write 3-5 sentences that would grab someone’s attention. Focus on what makes your art unique and emotionally resonant.
Interest: Develop interest-building stories that engage collectors and give them a reason to learn more about your work.
Consideration: Create content that encourages potential collectors to move from interest to purchase, such as behind-the-scenes videos, testimonials, or blog posts that highlight your artistic journey.
Desire: Use storytelling to create a sense of desire for your art. Highlight how your pieces can transform spaces or evoke deep emotional connections.
Purchase Support: Craft messages that make the buying process seamless, such as transparent pricing, clear CTAs, and reassuring follow-ups.
Core Messaging: Develop foundational messages that tie all these stages together, ensuring consistency across your communications.
Workbook Task

For each stage of the funnel, write targeted messaging based on your psychographic profiles. By the end of this section, you’ll have a cohesive communication strategy that speaks directly to your collectors at every point in their journey.
Part E: Mastering Keyword Research
Let’s get into keyword research! This section of the workbook will help you choose keywords for specific pages broken down into our category pages: core, landing, and blog.
When someone searches for “abstract landscape paintings” or “handcrafted ceramic sculptures,” the right keywords ensure that your website or social media appears in those search results.
In this section, we’ll break down:
How to choose keywords that reflect your art style, medium, and audience
Where to place keywords across your website and content to improve visibility
The balance between being authentic to your voice and optimizing for search engines
How to track which keywords drive the most engagement and refine your strategy over time
By the end of this module, you’ll have a curated list of high-impact keywords tailored to your art business, giving your work the online spotlight it deserves and making it easier for collectors to discover and support your art.
I will teach the artists how to do keyword research first using Search Atlas, and then they will fill out the workbook. The workbook has tables for each page on their website to add keywords to.
This helps artists understand what top 11 keywords they would want to target per page. There is also a section for questions to answer throughout the website or on blog posts when we get to that point in Module 6.
Part F: Structuring Your Website for Success
Now that you've completed your keyword research, let's put that knowledge into action by planning out each page of your website.
We'll work through this systematically to ensure each page serves its purpose effectively.
Each page layout is going to be the same, but you will answer all the same questions.
For each page, you are going to have:

Primary goal: What action do you want the visitors to take?
Secondary goal: What’s the backup action if they’re not ready for the primary?
Target audience messaging: Craft messages tailored to your audience’s needs and motivations.
Identify call-to-action moments: Plan strategic CTAs that guide your visitors.
You will then identify the structure of your website using a bubble map and use that bubble graph along with your keywords to create your H1 to H6 structure.
Remember:
Keep your keyword research handy
Focus on user intent first
Consider the complete user journey
Plan for both desktop and mobile views
Include all necessary trust elements
Common Pitfalls to Avoid:
Overloading pages with too many CTAs
Neglecting mobile optimization
Focusing on design before content structure
Missing key trust elements
Forgetting about page load speed
Once you've completed these exercises, you'll have a solid blueprint for building each page of your website.
We will be using these pages during Module 4 when we launch your website. For each page on their website, there are 4 pages that they will fill out from all of the information from the previous parts.
For each page, they will identify the primary goal, secondary goal for the actual page (aka what do you want them to do), and target audience messaging, internal linking planning and sales funnel thinking area, then structuring the headers of the website (H1-H6).
The Pilot Experience
Our pilot artists will choose one of two weekly 2-hour sessions, where they will join me via Zoom for a hands-on experience. Each session will begin with a brief explanation using slides, followed by collaborative work to complete the 112 pages of Module 3.
Artists can choose to work with soft background music, their own playlists, or in silence. They’ll have the opportunity to ask questions in real-time, which will not only help them but also provide me with valuable feedback to refine the course for public enrollment.
These in-person Zoom meetings will form the foundation for creating a pre-recorded lesson available for public enrollment in mid-April.
Session Schedule:
A&B: Jan 17, 5-7 PM CST and Jan 18, 9-11 PM CST
C&D: Jan 22, 6-8 PM CST and Jan 23, 9-11 PM CST
E&F: Jan 27, 6-8 PM CST and Jan 29, 9-11 PM CST
Ready to take your art business to the next level?
Sign up for the Artist’s Launch Academy newsletter for exclusive updates, actionable tips, and early access to the Marketing Strategy Survey.
Enroll now and waive your enrollment fee during our open enrollment in mid-April 2025. Starting then, the Academy will open enrollment every single month indefinitely.
The mission of the Artist’s Launch Academy has always been to empower artists, and in alignment with this mission, we will grant free access to one artist per month.
This initiative ensures that the Academy remains accessible and supportive of artists at all stages of their journey.
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