I agree to everything Kimoisempai said! Interacting with places where readers would hang out is the best way to reel them in. But also hanging out in art spaces is good.
Me, I regularly attend local comics conventions and sell a self-published version of my comic there. It's prooobably the reason why majority of my social media audience is local. So my plan is to branch out and target a bigger, more international audience pool.
Clauxx, I think you're thinking of it a little off-base. You hit the nail on the head with promoting to readers instead of to fellow creators, but I have a suggestion.
Try not to fixate on "where are my readers staying and how can I find them?" Think of it as where is my COMMUNITY staying and how can I JOIN it? Think of your target audience, learn about them and what they're into, and work your way in from there.
For example, there was a time I was briefly working on a lesbian retelling of beauty and the beast/red riding hood. When I was working on my marketing for that comic, I spent a lot of time hanging out in LGBT spaces (which I guess is easier for me since I'm part of the community and more or less know where we chill). I commented on stuff and interacted with people and kind of slowly worked in promotion for my comic at the time.
Long story short, the comic was a flop, but I still think I was on the right track with marketing it. And I'm developing the same strategy for my new comic.
My new comic is this funky steampunk comic, kind of furry, involving rookie secret agents bumbling their way through the ranks. So the thing about it is that my best bet is making friends in furry spaces. (I'm still trying to figure out where I fall in that category since I'm more casual about it but that's a whole can of worms) I'm working on trying to be more active in facebook groups, on instagram, on reddit, and I'm also trying to get myself to interact more on discord.
Building an audience isn't easy. Building a community is the end goal, but it's very very hard. But if you dedicate time into interacting within the community and making friends, you'll work your way up. That's my plan anyway.
I learned this stuff from researching people like Cory Huff and Russell Nohelty. I highly recommend checking them out because they have a lot to say about marketing for artists and creators.
