Female Commercial Voice Actress Debbie Grattan reviews the highlights from her ongoing “Think Like a Producer” series of articles. In Part 2, she looks at some of the best marketing tips that have been shared in recent articles. Check out Part 1, “Voice Over Actress Tips From Producers Who Hire Voice Talent” to see more great tips!
1. A website is a must and a blog is highly recommended. It’s a great way for people to get to know you better as a voice talent and it will help immensely with your search engine results.
2. Email newsletters are good, but they can often be burdensome to read. So, sending an email once a month mentioning some of your latest work is a very good thing to do and will keep you “top of mind” with current and prospective voiceover services clients.
3. Think about sending out postcards once in awhile. It’s nice for producers to connect the name and voice with your face, and it’s a channel of communication that often goes under-utilized in today’s digital age. That means the chances of your postcard getting noticed are better now than they were when more people were sending direct mail.
4. Most producers we’ve talked with are very open to receiving an occasional email contact message from voice talents.
5. Consider sending an MP3 voiceover demos when contacting new producers by email. That often will catch their attention better than a website link.
6. No matter how much marketing you do and how much you put yourself out there, there’s still more people who DON’T know you than who do know you.
7. Several producers commented that they didn’t actually receive very many direct contacts from voiceover talents wanting to make an introduction. They all seemed open to that, but were surprised that they didn’t get more direct solicitations from voice talent.
8. Get your demos listed on as many voice talent sites on the internet as possible. And not just Pay-to-Play sites like Voices123 and Voices.com
9. We live in an instant age. You have to be able to respond very quickly to emails and phone calls. If you’re not around when a prospective client has a need for your services, he is likely to move on to the next voice talent on his list.
10. In cases where clients need very fast turnaround, you just have to be able to deliver that consistently to be hired by the people who are looking for that level of service. This can be very important if you want to be a “Go To” voice talent for a production company that produces a lot of content.
11. The internet has changed the face of the voiceover industry. It’s important to align with the reality as it now exists and to be flexible in meeting the needs of the people who hire voice talent.
12. The need for voice talent services will keep going up, since video production continues to skyrocket as the preferred medium of communication. So there will be no shortage of work for voice talents. The trick is being able to be one of the talents who can capture the really big piece of the pie. This is where skills in marketing, customer service and business management can make or break a voice talent career.
Read Part 1 of this article at: “Voice Over Actress Tips From Producers Who Hire Voice Talent“
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