Building a Successful Illustration Career
Your portfolio is ready for prime time, just as you want it to be. The studio is open for business, you have your professional support team ready to roll into action and you are ready to man the phones or watch the job requests flow into your email. But the only callers are friends and the e-mails are spam. What you may be lacking is “brand recognition” i.e. a recognizable look for your business and a plan to make it known within your field.

Part Four Nuts and Bolts: Building Your Brand
As an illustration business, your name and your work need to be known in the visual marketplace. A nudge four to six times per year will help prospects recognize your business and establish your brand.

This can’t be stressed enough: No matter how talented you are, if potential clients don’t know you are there, you can’t get the work. Results of a recent 3x3 survey of 200 international illustrators showed that a majority promoted themselves once a year, spending a maximum of $500. But those who considered themselves “successful” spent considerably more on consistent promotion throughout the year. Now is the time to invest your allocated promotion dollars. Take another look at your mission statement, remind yourself how you want to present yourself to the industry remembering to clarify what distinguishes you from other illustrators. Whose illustration problems do you think you can solve? Who are your dream clients? This will help you in targeting your potential clients.

The buzz-word for selling in this faster than the speed of light world is branding. In the same way you can picture the shape of the original Coke bottle, wouldn’t it be wonderful for someone to close their eyes and visualize your illustration as the solution to their communication problem?

Make your list, check it twice
The key to developing your own potential client list is to decide on one of two basic marketing approaches: The broad view or the targeted one. In the broad view, you can buy a list of industry names and send them all your promotion in the hope that a few people out of the huge group will hire you. The targeted approach takes more research and effort on your part but you are creating a list of only clients you think might be worthy of your attention, time and financial investment. Repeated awareness of your brand is how clients keep you in mind. It may be 50 people or it may be 500, but this “hit list” is one that must be continually updated and informed about your work. You can more easily do this with your refined potential client list than a general, purchased one.

Doing your own investigative work is the best way to create the most qualified hit list. Start by perusing illustration annuals, noting those companies and individuals who have used your kind of illustration. Next, note names of illustration users as you look through the racks in magazine and book stores. Another way to add to your personal client list is asking a satisfied art director for a referral, resulting in a prequalified introduction to a new contact.

Lastly, and only as a supplement to your own research, you might want to subscribe to a list service. Among others, two services providing regularly updated contacts are Agency Access and Adbase. No matter if it’s broad based or targeted marketing, the lists are most effective when you assess each company and their noted decision makers, adding only the most appropriate ones to your list.

Marketing Yourself
Your most important marketing tool is how you conduct yourself on every assignment. Not only must your illustration hit the mark each time but you want to be known for fair pricing, pleasant attitude and delivering a consistently high-quality product that makes your client look good.

To complement all this traditional marketing it is important to socialize and network, giving a face and personality to your brand. Establish a presence in various new media forums to engage in dialogues with other industry professionals, keeping in touch with your community through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn all help create an awareness of your name and your work—your brand.

Find out about industry events, openings and parties and then circulate among the crowd, boldly displaying your name tag, introducing yourself and exchanging business cards. People generally feel most comfortable working with those they have actually met, putting a face to a name. Likely you’ll will find that socializing creates work for you through word of mouth and who you know.

You deserve for your career to flourish. So please remember that being a successful illustrator is synonymous with being a successful small business. And to be successful, your potential clients have to know that you are there.