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MARKETING How To Hone Your Marketing Plan To Your Own Strengths And Needs  By Dan Hurst
Voice Actor Let's face it: if you try to do what others are doing successfully to market their talents, you're going to have to sound and perform like them and have the same strengths they have. Your marketing should be as unique as you are. So let's look at what you can do immediately to
focus and energize your particular marketing potential. Of course there are
more, but for the sake of launching this discussion, here are five things you
can do. 1. Create A Niche Early in my voice over career I began focusing on my Spanish
capabilities. Growing up in Honduras opened
some amazing doors for me. However,
over the past couple of years there has been a huge influx of Spanish voice
talent. It seems that most of them
sound very much alike. And most of the
male talents tend to sound like DJs or sports announcers. So, my niche has been to focus on the conversational and
comfortable in Spanish. Not that I
can't do the car announcer thing if that's what the client is looking for, but
I'm finding a piece of the pie by positioning myself where few others have. That niche has opened other doors for me in English, as
well. A few years ago a long-term
client who used me for Spanish said, "Hey, your English is natural, would you
consider doing our English work also?" Now, relate that to your specialty - your niche. How many clients are out there that need
"the guy/girl next door?" What clients
need someone who sounds like an academic or a doctor? Or an office manager? How
many are looking for your style or experience? Make a list of what industries might need your specialty and
start targeting them directly. I'll mention some ways to do that shortly.
2. Fish The Blue Waters One of the biggest mistakes we make in marketing ourselves
is that we do what everyone else is doing. I don't know how many jillion people
are now trying to cut a piece of the voice over pie, but the vast majority of
them are trying to land work in the same ponds where everyone else is fishing.
There are vast quantities of work available if you are
willing to fish the waters that few are fishing. Take a look at your
current marketing strategy:
You should take some time every once in awhile to step back
from your marketing efforts and compare what you are doing to what everyone
else is doing, and search out those opportunities that are outside of your
current frame of reference. 3. Quit Wasting Money I'm stunned at the amount of money I hear some voice talents
throw at marketing projects. My number one personal rule is if it's not going to at least
make back my investment, I'm not doing it. That means that I have to be sure that whatever marketing project I'm
getting into is not going to waste my money or my time. Period. Do I fail at that? Occasionally, but rarely - mainly because
I'm a skeptic and a cynic, and I have to be convinced by verifiable results,
not to mention that I hate losing money. Do the research. Don't just accept the promotional material,
or the bragging of others trying to convince you to try something. You need proof! You're in business to make money. Doing ANYTHING that
detracts from that is counter-productive to your business. You wouldn't buy equipment that doesn't work
would you? And you'd want to know that
it's going to work before you buy it, wouldn't you? Well, if you would be that careful purchasing the tools to
accomplish your trade, why wouldn't you do that with the tools to build your
trade? If you are not making your money back on your current
marketing plan, it's time to reassess. Quit gambling on things that haven't worked for you. Quit wasting your
money! 4. Choose Marketing Strategy Wisely The fact is that no single marketing element is a panacea
for landing a healthy client base. My experience is that I have to combine two or three elements for effectiveness. You need to find the right marketing combination strategy
for you. It's all based on who your
intended main and secondary clients are.
Different industry clients are reachable by different marketing
approaches. And there are so many
methods to consider:
And there are bound to be others I've missed. Then take each of those and modify them for the various
clients you want to reach, and you can see that the combinations are almost
limitless. You'll notice that I didn't mention Twitter and Facebook
(except for ads). I put those in a
completely different category of marketing. SOCIAL MEDIA APPROACH ... Twitter and Facebook, and a number of similar entities, are essentially a
type of networking approach. But they
must be treated very carefully. Use this approach to build relationships that
eventually will hopefully open doors, but don't use them to advertise yourself
over and over. I'm amused at the VO talents and the lead generation sites
that use these sites to promote themselves. Think about it. If you have 500
friends, and you announce "if anyone needs a great voice over, call me," what
have you done? You've just told your
500 friends that already know what you do that you think they're too dumb to
remember. Not to mention that probably
most of your friends are people who are in the same business!
Use these sites for what they are meant for, and understand
their limitations. 5. Use The Internet There are three things I'd like to share about this
marketing foundation. First, I don't care what you've heard: you need a good
website. Not that it has to be
expensive, but it does have to represent you. So make sure you have good graphics and good content, and that it's
easy to navigate and has good SEO management. And don't clutter it up with ads or secondary and non-essential information on the landing page. Basically, someone searching for you just wants to hear your
demo, know a bit about you, and how to contact you. That's really all that should be on your
front page, with the exception of some elements that enhance your SEO, such as
a good blog if you write one regularly. THE RIGHT WAY TO EMAIL Second, use email effectively. By that I mean use it sensibly, appropriately, and
intelligently. If you are going to use email as a marketing strategy, do
your homework and find the leads. Dig
and do your homework. If you're buying a list, you're buying and emailing a
list that has already been worked, you're probably wasting your time. Develop a well-written email template to use, and
personalize it. Don't waste your time
sending out mass emails to some list that you've compiled. Potential clients can sniff that in a
heartbeat and will think less of you for it. They're going to be skeptical and
defensive to start with, so be careful. SPECIFIC DEMOS PLEASE And third, create great specific demos. You'll notice I said specific demos, as in plural. Generic, "general practitioner" demos are
simply not that effective. A client
that is looking for a particular voice is not going to wade through a bunch of
demos that show how incredibly gifted the voice talents are. They don't have
time for that. If one of your niches or specialties is the "guy/girl next
door," you should have a demo for that, and it should be well-marked on your
website and other outlets for promoting yourself. If you can do a real good Southern voice, create a demo for
that. Announcer demo? Sure. Character
demo? Of course. Telephony? Definitely. Your demos can identify you as a
specialist in that voice field. Why wouldn't you want to do that? NO OLD VOICES Just make sure that the demo is well-produced and relatively
current, not something you did 10 years ago and you don't really sound like
that anymore. So, there you go. Five voice over marketing tips that can
step up your marketing effectiveness. What do you think? ABOUT DAN … Dan Hurst makes his living as a voice talent. He lives in the Kansas City, Missouri area but has clients all over the world for both English and Spanish work. Email: danhurst@danhurst.com Web: www.DanHurst.com
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Thank you for this article. The idea of specifically marketing one's specialties to specific industries that might need that type of VO help is a great idea, and one that makes so much sense. Instead of casting a net out for a ton of fish, it is like selecting the perfect fly or lure to present to the specific fish you are intending to try and catch.
Of course one must find their niche in voiceover, but then marketing that niche specifically to an industry is something I had never thought about. Thank you.
Thank you also for starting and hosting the Marketing for Profit and Fun on Voiceover Universe.
Thank you,
Judy Fossum