Practicum Report – An interesting experience

Winter/Spring 2023

Practicum Report
Margaret Allison Roberts
Winter/Spring 2023
Bruce Bennett Sculpture
www.brucebennettmarble.com

INTRODUCTION

This opportunity provided learning and relearning the inner workings of an online art business.

The tasks involved were photographing and cataloging the art, setting up a website, social media, and online store. The bigger vision was to take it to the next level by redesigning the website; however, cataloging, photographing, managing social media, and other ad services enveloped the time. This involved learning and relearning all facets of getting a small business off the ground and several pitfalls.

BACKGROUND

Bruce Bennett is a long-standing Knoxville, TN, creative community member and a pioneer at Candoro Marble in Vestal. He’s sponsored collaborative works such as the One Ton show in UT Gardens and local installations. Originally from rural Arkansas, Bruce grew up working with wood, but Tennessee marble won his favor. His works include furniture, architectural elements, prestigious awards, decorative accents, and elegant sculpture.

Mr. Bennett has over 150 sculptures. He brought the first load of sculptures to my house in early October. He stated that he wanted to try Saatchi Art with the caterpillars and torsos. I began inventory on October 21, setting up a Google Drive for the clients to supervise the progress, photographs, and copy of the content. From the onset, I was nervous and insecure about the photo process. It took me time to determine what was best for my space and make a great-looking product. I also had to re-associate myself with the workflow for processing the photos for posting, keeping the inventory congruent, and physical and digital storage. I could not post the fish until I had the type of stone for each. This took some time, but by January I could put the fish online. This information became an index for the type of stone Mr. Bennett used in his projects.

Mr. Bennett gave me an archive folder and said, “Write anything you want.” This gave me the idea of scanning the materials and putting them on the website. I made this part of the posting schedule and later included historical articles of local interest.

MY EXPERIENCE

Social Media

Refiguring Social Media

I’ve worked with social media in the past. One could say from the dawn of social media, but it’s been a very long time. Honestly, I left, and this practicum was my voyage back. There are so many new tools and rules, and I spent much time watching what other people in the same market were doing. The social media plan was to “reveal” each product to create a flow.

I made a preliminary Post Calendar but soon after began using the Meta Post Planner. I mirrored the planner on Twitter without posting the same content.

Advantage Audience

Advantage Audience, where Meta choses your audience. These audiences needed to be realigned with the scope of the content. Investigating Meta pixels, I discovered that the Woocomerce integration led to a disconnect in this function. Meta pixels provides embedded code on your website to help track data. I am working this problem out with Meta support.

All the tools

The new functionality in Meta to publish posts, control ads, and monitor Instagram and Facebook is great. A separate account was created in the WooCommerce integration and it was time consuming to fix. Once I filtered out the original account, things went smoothly.

Reels, stories, and posts

After a few months of watching the statistics, seeing other reels and stories, and the reactions, I focused on peppering content with these media bytes. They appeared to make an impact without paying for a promotion. This turned out to be true, however, booting these makes a bigger impact and more followers.

Twitter

I have not mentioned Twitter because I had issues from the beginning. There are restrictions on which links you can post and promote, and the billing needs to be more stable. It took a lot of work to stay within budget. At the same time, users were required to subscribe to Twitter Blue to control who their ads were displayed to. Once I obtained the demographics of those who clicked on the ads, I stopped using Twitter for promotions.

Google Ads, Merchant Analytics

After setting up the website, I integrated it into my Google console for analytics, search functions, and advertising. WooComerce came with a plug-in to integrate the website store, and I wanted to test visits and purchases on the website against the vendor store.

Once I updated the website store with fish and torsos, created a 30% off sale for Valentine’s Day, and set up Google Ads with WooCommerce.

I did a lot of work tagging and making categories in WooCommerce and ensuring Google ads were happy. For some reason, Google picked the fish sculptures as live animals. I added tags, requested new indexing, and adjusted titles, and it wasn’t working—more demerits for WooCommerce.

Saatchi

I added Torsos to Saatchi first. I confirmed with Mr. Bennett that he agreed with the 35% commission fee. We concurred to raise the price to increase the commission and see how it goes. Staachi turned out to be slow growing, with very few user interactions. This, combined with a small advertising budget, and a large commission fee, prompted moving the store to Etsy.

Etsy

There’s more interaction on Etsy than on Staatchi, but the website gets more clicks on social media. I’m evaluating Etsy’s effectiveness. The statistics interface is not congruent with the social media statistics, even within its 5-hour window, making comparison hard. Leaning toward the research, I feel that contracting a dealer or estate auction is the best model, but we would still need an online storefront.

Website

I initially set up the web presence on WordPress.com, thinking that some functions were included. This caused domain issues when moving the site to Hostgator. Although we own www.brucebennettsculpture.com, I launched the Hostgator site as www.brucebennettmarble.com due to an embargo. I installed WooCommerce to try out the store. WooCommerce has a hook for GoogleAds, and I set that up, not knowing it would create a separate Google account. Further problems occurred with syncing to Google Ads. The fish sculpture was labeled live animals and illegal to advertise in many countries.

I ultimately scrapped WooCommerce. Even though I deleted the plugin and cleared the cache, Google continues to list the WooCommerce package pages.

If we have a store on the website in the future, it will be Shopify or Square. Further investigation is needed.

Three click rule?

The website serves as an information hub and launch to the online store. This brings the rule of how many clicks to purchase. The fewer clicks, the better. However, we are still in flux over where the final store will be. More website and web store development are planned while I feel out the market and the best outlets.

Making Connections

Mr. Bennett and I discussed the sale of other sculptures on his property. We also discussed contacting the Knoxville Museum of Art and other regional galleries and museums to probe interest. I got with the KMA, who gave me a lead for an estate auction company. I’m following that avenue and exploring other auction companies. The idea of mailouts fell short, with all of us leaning towards the idea of wasted paper and money that galleries would toss aside. We also discussed possible installations and gallery showings. I have not pursued all of these, but I await hearing back from the Dogwood Arts Maker’s Market. Other ideas I’m pursuing include a featured article. There were several inquiries to purchase via messaging in social media. Both Facebook and Instagram offer app stores. Further investigation into the aspects of these interfaces is planned.

What the user likes to see

Initially, the images of art were taken outdoors. I imagined the sculpture as garden art. Mr. Bennett indicated he thought studio shots were better. I set up a photo booth using muslin and the lights on hand in my garage. Of course, nothing came out the way I wanted. Especially compared to natural light. I felt pressure to get things moving. So these studio shots were carried into the first stage of the project. After adjusting prices and still not making sales, I decided to reshoot. I adjusted the studio photos’ mood, and they reacted well. The evidence also pointed towards the setting of photographs; in home and garden shots were getting the most views. I’m continuing to build an image library and inventory using this model.

ART SALES FORECAST

The Art Market Report by Art Basal and UBS find that in 2022 higher-end markets, dealers, and actions made most of the cut while squeezing out the lower end. (The Art Market 2023 — A Report by Art Basel & UBS, 2023, p. 63). Also, the study finds retail spending trends rising above art and antique purchases (Figure 1.8.). Although the trend for larger businesses to get more attention waned during the pandemic, in 2021, small companies felt tighter competition, primarily online. Further, the study shows a -3% decline in sales in 2022 for businesses making under 25 thousand (Figure 2.5). Artsy.com’s insights reveal Instagram is the best place to get noticed by galleries and dealers, but they are primarily finding new artists through other artists. (Thaddeus-Johns, 2023). Also, most businesses use e-commerce to promote their art, and online sales bring most of the revenue. The highest spending age group for art according to Artsy.com is 35-54 favoring the new gallery market.

TACTICS

The blocks of building a business; website, store, and social media. Once the website was launched, I set up Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook and started promoting. I looked into Tik Tok, and the demographics didn’t match the target audience of 25-60-year-old art enthusiasts and collectors. The post calendar reflects notification of new items intertwined with archives and historical and local interest posts. I created ad graphics, stories and reels based on the activity of other trendy profiles and adjusted campaigns based on impact factors, likes, and follows. Meta requires ads to run for seven days to gauge your audience, and the page has to have 100 followers for the algorithm to work. Our initial budget was $200 for all ad spending, and I made targeted ads to increase followers and adjusted the budget for more impact. I will take it out of sales. The statistics showed that I should focus on galleries and dealers, and efforts should focus on Instagram as a channel. Reels and stories are a priority, creating as much new content as possible.

Post Calendar

Meta constructed a content platform mirroring Hootsuite with statistics and advertising integrations, the Meta Business Suite. The post calendar interfaces Instagram and Facebook. Meta has worked well in learning what performs. On Twitter, I scheduled posts in advance without directly mirroring the Meta schedule.

Siphoning and blasting social media

The calendar reflects the cadence of sale promotions starting with Valentine’s Day. Once the Meta suite indexed the preliminary data, everything was scheduled up to two weeks in advance. I review interactions in real-time and adjusted the content for the new items, favoring the latest content before repeating older content.

CONCLUSION

Since the last week of March, I’ve adjusted and fine-tuned spending, landing pages, and information structure for an effortless flow to the product. We have gained followers on Instagram and Facebook, The statistics show an increase in Etsy and website visitors, respectively. However, more traffic results from website links. The structure of the information architecture is set to welcome them to the website and launch to Etsy for more information and purchase options. I’ve also lowered prices on all the items. We congruently have an increase in retention, and return visitors. Assessing advertising spending, the most for our money is Google Ads. An increase in the budget brought more verified interested buyers. I’m running Google Ads ($20 daily average; $608 monthly max and a $500 coupon) and one post/reel/story on Instagram with a cap of $70. I’ve continued to create content on schedule on the Meta planner and Twitter. The new green outside allowed me to take more content shots staged for gardens and the opportunity to catalog more works in the client’s home. I expect the addition of this content will further increase retention and returns. The addition of auction and estate sales will also increase visibility and sales. A subscription to Twitter Blue may be necessary and is under review. The scope of this project is greater than the allotted time for this practicum, but I will continue to work with Mr. Bennett for the foreseeable future and continue my research.

Appendices

Web Presence

https://www.brucebennettmarble.com/

https://www.facebook.com/BruceBennettSculpture

https://www.instagram.com/brucebennettart/

https://twitter.com/BruceBennettArt

Statistics

Engagement