A marketing mix provides you with instruments to place your work in the market in such a way that your potential public can find you. The most effective way is to create visibility on various platforms. A good marketing plan is based on a thorough analysis of your work, your target group, and the physical and economic environment in which you operate. What is special about your work? You should also think about the ideas of the experience economy. The better the analysis, the better the marketing plan and the easier it becomes to reach a larger public.

Presenting and selling
If you present your work or yourself, you make use of a variety of skills: job application, presentation, networking and bargaining. See also the page skills. You can put the sale of your work in the hands of a third party or do it yourself. Even if you contract everything out, it is still important to understand the basis of marketing.

Promotional resources
There are different ways of making publicity. The cultural sector uses printed matter for promotional material a lot, but internet is playing a large role here as well. You can advertise and send mailings on paper and on the web. If you have visual material or music, make sure that it shows properly on the  internet and can be found there.

If you release material by sending flyers, press releases or other visual material, try to follow it up as well as you can by phoning, for example. Personal contact can get your printed matter a better place, get your photo in a diary, or ensure a wider distribution of your message in the social media.

There are plenty of other promotional devices too: TV and radio advertising, trade fairs, outdoor advertising or actions. The expense of a less conventional promotional campaign is often low by comparison with the conventional devices and the impact is often bigger as well.

Free publicity
Free publicity means using the media to draw attention to your work. It can be very effective but also time-consuming. Good contacts with the press are important: build up a network and maintain it properly. The cultural sector receives a relatively large amount of attention in the media and that usually produces a powerful effect. Remember that press contacts are not obliged to you or your work. Compile lists and be critical, but make sure you inform all your press contacts.

So you can maintain contacts through press releases, mailings, premières, newsletters or invitations to contacts. Other ways of getting publicity are ludic actions, flash mobbing, guerrilla marketing, etc. You can use internet and the social media to directly reach your potential public and to link them to you. You can also use them to attract media attention.

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