No matter where you are in your business journey, market research is an essential part of appealing to your target audience and ensuring your revenue continues to grow. For visual artists, understanding whom to reach out to during prospecting, seeing the trends of the marketplace, and discovering your competitive advantage against your competitors are all benefits of market research.

With Agency Access’ Creative Database, you have a vital tool at your fingertips that gives you market insights and connections needed to adapt to the ever-changing business environment. Let’s dive into what type of market research you can do as a visual artist and how the Creative Database can assist along the way.

Market Research Explained

Conducting extensive market research allows you to make more informed decisions as a business owner. Once you have the insight market research will provide, you can leverage the data to build package solutions or adjust your marketing tactics to appeal to your target market. The more research you do in your creative niche, the more insight you’ll have to adjust how you provide those solutions.

Types of Market Research for Visual Artists

To minimize risk and maximize potential profit, visual artists should take the time to do thorough research across every aspect of their business, from their target audience to what their competitors are doing. Not sure where to start? Here are a few ways you’ll discover the benefits of conducting market research.

Consumer Research

As a visual artist, consumer research helps you better understand what clients you want to sell your services to. Are you going to focus on providing your services directly to corporations? Do you want to work with marketing agencies that set you up with your clients? Knowing your target audience will allow you to more efficiently and successfully market to the right consumers.

Customer Segmentation Research

Once you know your general target audience, you’ll want to segment that audience into specific customer groups. For example, this might mean segmenting into different job titles or roles within creative agencies, so you can better direct your marketing content toward each role’s specific needs.

Competitor Research

Evaluating your strengths and weaknesses in comparison to your competitors can lead to growth and discovery of what niche you can fill for your target audience. Better understanding your competitors can help you know what to improve with your business solutions.

Brand Research

In addition to evaluating your strengths and weaknesses against your competitors, take an in-depth look at your own brand to see how you can make yourself more appealing to your target market. Find ways to position yourself as the best solution available for your audience.

Campaign Evaluation

After every sales or marketing campaign, it’s important to analyze those past outreaches and see how they performed and what you can do to improve next time. Segmenting the audiences for each of those campaigns as we mentioned previously will help you have more precise data points to refer to within those analytics.

Agency Access’ Creative Directory can be advantageous throughout each step of your market research. You’ll be able to discover all types of consumers, examples of your target market, and even competitors that you may want to use to create benchmarks for your own growth.

The Benefits of Market Research to Help Your Prospecting

It’s no secret that knowing your target market as a visual artist is an essential step in the growth of your business. What you may not know is exactly how the benefits of conducting market research can make that success even easier for you as an artist.

For any business owner, your goal is to provide solutions that your customer will want, not just what you want to provide as the artist. Having the insights from market research will strengthen your position within your niche in providing the exact solution your customer is looking for. Additionally, with extensive research, you can determine what is missing from the marketplace for your audience and highlight how you best can fulfill those needs.

Lastly, all businesses take some type of risk in order to grow. However, the best business owners know what is an educated and calculated risk through market research. Stay ahead of your competition by evaluating those risks and jumping on emerging trends across your industry to set yourself apart.

How to Use the Agency Access Creative Database After Market Research (for Prospecting)

With the Creative Database at your disposal, here are six ways you can use this tool after conducting market research to efficiently prospect as a visual artist.

Search Function

Find and connect with thousands of people, companies, and brands that need your talents and solutions. Social media profiles are included for most contacts as well, so you can use this information to connect in a less formal and more personal way.

Build Targeted Mailing Lists

Create highly targeted promotional mailing lists that are always up-to-date and customizable. Use your segmented audiences here to send more custom marketing mailings.

Details

Feel confident when reaching out to creatives, knowing that the database is relevant and up-to-date with contact information, company specialties, brand accounts, and even individual promotional preferences.

Manage Your Contacts

With simple CRM (customer relationship management) features, it’s easy to keep track of who you’ve spoken to, know what you’ve talked about, and set reminders to ensure you follow up when it’s time. It’s a great way to keep engaged with creatives, so that, when they’re ready to hire, you’re their first call.

Track Industry Movement

The industry moves fast! That’s why the Agency Access in-house research team is so valuable to visual artists. They monitor the creative industry and update the directory daily so you can be sure you have the most up-to-date information available. And with the Directory Concierge, you can get one-on-one personalized support from our research experts to add or update contacts within the database. Simply log in and start a live chat conversation -- we usually get back to you within minutes!

Personal Contacts

Leverage the power of the Creative Directory to manage your own private contacts as well. Simply upload them, add tags, notes, or tasks, and include them in any marketing campaigns you send.

The benefits of market research are extensive, especially for a visual artist. Knowing your target market and creating the perfect solution for that audience will ensure your business continues to grow. With access to the Agency Access database, you’ll have everything you need to conduct market research and prospect to the right contacts after.

With over 100,000 contacts, get in contact with professionals and clients that can help drive your success as a visual artist. Stay up to date with Agency Access’s email newsletter (in the sticky header up top ☝) to learn more about trends in your industry and prospecting for your business.