Master Art Marketing by Observing Phillips Auction

Hi there,

Phillips auction house sells important modern and contemporary art, design, jewelry, watches, photos, and limited editions to collectors around the world. They focus on the most important art styles from the last century. This makes them stand out as one of the most exciting and innovative auction houses in the world.

In this article, we want to deep dive into their digital ads & email marketing, and hopefully we can learn something here, and implement it into our own venture.

Email Marketing

Image source

Here is my take on their email:

1. Good amount of white spaces, as it’s their dominant brand color (black & white).
2. Giving enough proportion for headline image, which in this case: an art ready to auction.
3. Followed by the rest three art & content to promote.

The 2nd email above uses the same format as the 1st: Headline image followed by 3 art & blog/content to promote in this email.

In the last example below, quite different from the first 2 blogs, where in this one, we saw carousel card in the middle of the email showcasing a couple of art in auction.

When we click the browse & bid button, we will be redirected into page below:

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Meta Ads

Now let’s talk about the meta ads. They dominantly using carousel to display their arts, and some of the single image to just focus on 1 art/message.

Image source: https://web.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=all&ad_type=all&country=ALL&view_all_page_id=172634221551&sort_data[direction]=desc&sort_data[mode]=relevancy_monthly_grouped&search_type=page&media_type=all

Above is the example of the single image ads that focus on their partnership with Kehinde Wiley as the core message of this ads.

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Google Search Ads

When using SEMRush to analyze their Google search ads, we see their target keyword range from: (1) brand keyword (e.g: phillips auction), (2) category/product keyword (e.g: buy watches, buy jewelry), and (3) artist keyword (e.g: elanatsui).

Here’s an example of their search ads targeting the “phillip watches” keyword.

Below is an example of their search ads targeting the “phillips contemporary art” keyword.

And for general brand keyword like “phillips”, here is their ad copies looks like:

That’s it for this article. Hope we can learn something from this top art auction house. Cheers!