Marketing Your Voiceover Services

As a voice talent, you sometimes have to think of yourself as a businessman. No matter how much that may or may not appeal to you, always think about marketing your voiceover services; so what’s your target audience as a voice actor? producers, casting directors and even voice agencies. You have to reach out to them and persuade them that you have what they want: not just a good voice and the ability to read in a compelling manner, that’s obvious.

They should be able to picture you as an available voice actor with a industry-standard home studio and flexible enough to adapt to the budget available for the projects. So how can they put you in their radar and call you when there is a chance for a voice-over? Well, to sell your voice use the incredible tools of marketing, including e-marketing

FFT: In many businesses, there are three primary focuses: operations, production and marketing.  Of all the three, marketing is the one that generates more money. The other two require you to shell out cash. With this being brought up, it is safe to say that you really need to pay attention to the process of marketing, starting with your voice-over website and social media.

Meet Lara Easton! For years Lara struggled to buid up a career in the voice talent industry. She starting doing some voice-overs here and there and got familiar with the business, so she made a website hoping it would open her up to a broader market. At first nothing, really nothing happened.

Her site was buried somewhere in Google pages, but Lara was determined. She asked for help and she was told that her site had to be a live entity with updated content on her activity as voice talent. She did that stuff and got some precious advice from some geek friends on SEO to use relevant keywords and publish regular articles with added value.

That e-marketing strategy was completed with a constant presence in key groups on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook . Her name Lara Easton became a brand.  Traffic began to come to her site, e-mails dropping in her box. Revenue started to trickle down with occasional VO jobs that turned into a regular stream.

Another secret?  she was very quick in answering her customers’ e-mails and was flexible with budgets, now she earns a living as a fully fledged voice talent.

Truly, there are a lot of benefits of marketing, especially online. About.com  lists down five major benefits of online marketing your voiceover services.

1. Changes can be done whenever you want. One of the benefits that the Internet has brought is the ability to edit and change say, the graphic design of an ad poster in an affiliate site or change the paragraphs of an article. We cannot do it easily in traditional marketing.
2. Real–time results can be monitored. Online marketing lets you access the analytics where you can view who sees your advertisement. Through this, you can also adjust your strategies real-time depending on the results you get.
3. You can target a specific market online. Because of the said analytics, you can see which of the different groups of people subscribe to you. In your case as a voice actor, you can see which locations need your services. You can use these graphs to make finding a job easier.
4. Showcase more variations in your materials. Of course, as a voice actor, it is given that your main advertising materials are your audio samples. But, you can also use other materials such as videos, newsletters. You can even venture into e-mail marketing or social media marketing.
5. There is instant conversion of your customers. With just a few clicks, you can turn these casting directors as your next employer. Communication has been made easier by the Internet.

Here are some tips to help in marketing your voiceover services. In her article called “How To Sell Your Products and Services Online”, Erin Ferree, a well-known strategic brand designer discusses some tips in advertising.

• Determine the services you will offer. You might be offering more than one kind of voice service, so be sure to determine what you would offer first. You might want to start with something that is not that expensive. This catches the attention of your probable customers.
• Create descriptions. Descriptions of your services help casting directors and voiceover agents understand you and the services you are offering.
• Find a designer. Most of the advertising efforts have a lot of reference to the visual design. So, if you are not that confident in this area, do not hesitate to seek the help of a good graphic designer.

With the stiff competition in the voice acting industry, you cannot afford to just sit there and wait. Get up and tell the world that you exist!

How about you? How do you go about marketing your voiceover services? What are your marketing strategies? Tell us by commenting below.