“Marketing is a sound. Those who hear the sound you make and resonate with it will follow.” Bill Sanders, project management and process consultant at Roebling Strauss
Clients don’t grow on trees. We all know that.
We can’t expect them to find us if they don’t know we exist. In order for them to discover our needle in the online haystack, we have to make noise. Lots of noise. But what kind?
Some say the answer lies in Massive Marketing.
The truth is, most voice talents are pretty good at doing someone else’s marketing. That’s what they get paid for. But when it comes to tooting their own horn, a lot of them are as clueless as a hamster in outer space.
If marketing is not your forte, you’re not alone.
In April of 2012, VoiceOverXtra polled its readers and asked the following question:
“As a newcomer to voice over, what is your biggest challenge at this moment to starting or growing your VO income and career?”
A quarter of respondents answered: Marketing for jobs.
Because different people mean different things when using the same words, here’s my definition of marketing:
Any activity that helps you find clients and helps clients find you.
It’s about understanding your clients’ needs and connecting your product or service with customers who want it.
Effective marketing is a compelling, engaging conversation. It’s about building profitable relationships and creating an amazing experience around your brand, product or service.
That rather long interpretation might not be approved by the Harvard Business School, but it works for me.
Before we delve into that a bit deeper, let’s make one thing clear: it all starts with what you have to offer.
If your product or service sucks, no marketing campaign -no matter how brilliant- is going to help you make millions, or even a decent living.
Stinky flowers don’t attract a lot of bees.
Most manufacturers know that they should not bring a product to market that is not fully developed. Many budding voice-overs have yet to learn that lesson. They’ll pay a demo-factory good money to make them sound alright, until the client finds out that the Emperor has no clothes.
That’s not marketing. That’s misleading the customer by offering something you can’t deliver.
Marketing starts with creating the right product, letting the right people know you have it and making it easy for others who don’t yet know you to find you. But there’s more to it than that.
As a seller, you still have to convince the interested party that you can be trusted and that the value of what you offer exceeds the asking price.
How do you do that?
For one thing, trust needs to be earned. You need to give people the feeling that you understand their needs and that they’re in the right hands. Every single interaction you have with a potential client is an opportunity to prove yourself. Every interaction is a marketing opportunity.
That’s why I’m always marketing. In fact, I’m doing it right now!
Blogging is a form of content marketing. It’s about offering relevant and (hopefully) valuable information to attract and engage a specific audience. Blogging is a way to establish yourself as a knowledgeable, likable and trustworthy partner.
At this point I can already hear you say:
“But I’m not a client. Just a colleague. I don’t hire voices. You don’t need to market to me.”
Well, since a great part of my work is based on referrals from people like you, wouldn’t it be beneficial to let my fellow-professionals know I’ve been around the block a few times when it comes to voice-overs?
People don’t refer people they don’t know and don’t like. This blog is an opportunity for you to find out who I am and what makes me tick.
Secondly, this blog is read by lots of other people: graphic designers, copywriters, videographers, people in advertising, agents and so on. Some of these people do hire voices or know someone who does.
Here’s the thing: to most people, reading a blog doesn’t feel like they’re absorbing marketing information. Quite often, the blogger is just telling a story. I call it Covert Marketing.
Now, Overt Marketing is all about pushing info down someone’s throat, whether they’re hungry or not. Whether we’ve established relationship or not.
Covert Marketing is making people aware of what you’re offering so they become hungry for your service.
Overt Marketing revolves around what you want to sell.
Covert Marketing is about what people want to buy.
Overt marketing is about you.
Covert marketing is about the customer.
Overt Marketing is giving people direct messages:
HIRE ME
BUY MY SERVICE
SIGN UP TODAY
I AM THE BEST
Covert Marketing is suggestive and under the radar: You answer a question posted on an online forum. You write a (relevant and semi-intelligent) Facebook comment. You write a blog sharing some of your expertise. You help out a colleague. You’re a guest speaker at a seminar.
Here’s a critical distinction: at no point do you ask people to buy from you.
Overt Marketing is sending a mass mailing to all you contacts. It is a general message telling the world how great you are and what you have done for other clients.
Covert Marketing is targeted. It’s relevant. It’s almost always personal. There is a connection. There is a reason why you are contacting someone.
Overt Marketing is you doing the talking (and we all know that voice-overs are good at that).
Covert Marketing starts with you doing a lot of listening and asking a lot of questions. You identify a need or a problem. You find out how valuable meeting that need or solving that problem would be for your contact. Only then can you connect what you have to offer to meeting the needs of your client.
Overt Marketing is a sales pitch. It’s about getting. What’s in it for me?
Covert Marketing is about giving. About being of service. It’s reciprocal.
If you want information, you need to give information.
If you want people to contact you, you need to contact people.
If you want people to refer you, you need to refer people.
Treat people the way you want to be treated.
In the end, Covert Marketing goes even further than that. B.L. Ochman, president of What’s Next said it best:
Marketing is everything a company does, from how they answer the phone, how quickly and effectively they respond to email, to how they handle accounts payable, to how they treat their employees and customers. Done right, marketing integrates a great product or service with PR, sales, advertising, new media, personal contact. In other words, marketing is not a discipline or an activity – it is everything a company is – at least if the company wants to be successful.
Now, that’s what I’m talking about when I say you’re in the business of creating amazing experiences for your clients. Once you start doing that, something unexpected and delightful will happen.
You can stop marketing.
Your clients will do it for you.
You just keep on wowing them!
Paul Strikwerda ©nethervoice
You can’t force a client to hire you, but there are four things you can do to make that much more likely. Here’s how to get more clients in your corner.
About the author
Excellent view on marketing, Paul… and one I definitely share.
Covertly Yours,
Joe
Covert marketing! Now I have a name for it. I sometimes call it “Guerrilla Marketing”… Making it known that you have a skill or service someone may need in a place where those people who need it go!
I want to do audio books, so I go to and am active in some writers forums, I have experience dubbing, hmmm, maybe the Screenwriters forum…I’ve obtained many leads in this non traditional way.
There is one critical sentence in this blog though…”If your product or service sucks, no marketing campaign -no matter how brilliant- is going to help you make millions, or even a decent living.” In the end, it’s all about the product.
So nicely done Paul. A wealth of understanding, Thanks for taking the time!
That’s cool, Joe. I’m all for sharing!
You’re very welcome, Ted.
Jay Conrad Levinson coined the phrase “Guerilla Marketing” in 1983. He writes: “Marketing is everything you do to promote your business, from the moment you conceive of it to the point at which customers buy your product or service and begin to patronize your business on a regular basis.”
It’s smart to have a clear goal and find new ways to present yourself that others have not yet thought of. Or, in Star Trek terms, “Go where no one else has gone before.”
Another great post, Paul! I received a call a few months ago from an author’s asst. who asked if I could narrate and produce an audiobook. When I asked how they found me, she said she stumbled upon a reply I posted in some audiobook message board, and she liked what I’d said. You’ve–once again–hit the nail on the head.
Everything is marketing. Who knows where the comment you just made will take you, Brett? I once answered a question about a microphone on a forum for real estate videographers. I’ve voiced about 15 virtual home tours for the person asking the question!
YES… RIGHT ON… UH, HUH!
Thought I’d add a comment to extend my marketing efforts!
So, you’re not Rick Lance, the Baptist missionary, right? The this must be your website: http://www.ricklancestudio.com/
Oh, Paul… So I see you’ve been Googling me!
No, I’m NOT to be confused with the Baptist minister and missionary in Alabama. It’s not fair in the Google ratings! He’s got a team of people working with him. And probably more money than God!
Good information, Paul. As a copywriter, I’m always explaining to reps & clients that not only does a commercial need to focus on the business’ Unique Selling proposition (that singular reason why someone should patronize them instead of their competitor), but it also needs to speak to the listeners’ sensibilities. You need to speak TO the listener, not talk AT them. It’s the same with marketing ourselves – all the projects we’ve worked on, all the awards we’ve won, all the experienc we’ve gained doesn’t amount to a hill of beans if a potential client doesn’t perceive a benefit.And ultimately, no matter what the business is – restaurant, car dealer, voiceovers – it’s the BENEFIT that needs to be sold, not the product or service.
The life of a missionary must be quite demanding, Rick. No wonder Rev. Lance has helpers. I just didn’t know they’d take care of SEO as well.
Can you be my ghost writer, Matt? We sell clean floors. Not Hoovers.
Ha, I guess it depends on why our clean floors are better than Hoover’s!
Clean Hoovers are the best.
Another great one Paul. As a newcomer to this industry, I am always on the lookout for new ways to market myself. I come from an industry rich with overt marketing, but I have always preferred the covert method.
Cheers,
Lee
I know what you mean, Lee. At some point, people get allergic to overt marketing. It’s so self-centered and in-your-face.
Thanks again, Paul! I prefer Covert Marketing from others so why wouldn’t they prefer that from me?!
Spot on as usual, Paul. Subliminal is so much more attractive than bliminal, and works better in the long run too.
The thing is, one would expect that voice-overs are really good at harnessing the power of word-of-mouth marketing.
Paul, your name intrigues me. It sounds as though it may have Slavic or Latin roots, or both. What is it?
Mine is Hungarian – originally Halmai. Canadians changed the “i” to a “y” without thinking and dad accepted that, thus all legal documents ended up with the “y.”
I started in voice work when there was little else around and I got in on the last of the golden years of network radio drama. TV was still half a decade away. I did my first radio drama for the Canadian radio network with the late Leslie Nielsen who was fluffing all over the place. Did my first radio commercial with Monty Hall on a hair dressing product named “hit.” My last line in the spot was “I’m going downtown to get hit,” and Monty added an ad lib for laughs, “Outch.”
I worked four radio stations, free lanced in Toronto for a couple of years, filling in with theater work, did a few TV shows when TV arrived and then got into advertising and left performing behind for years.
After a meteoric career on Madison Avenue, I incorporated Tibor Productions in New York in the early 1960s and rented an office on Lexington Avenue from the recording studio, Empire Broadcasting, who had extra space. Mrs. Kelleher, one of the owners, who was big in the church, remembered I had grown up in radio and asked me to record a voice-over introduction for the Pope’s appearance on CBS-TV. But I stuck to writing, directing and producing.
Some 15 years later, back in Toronto, the late Joe Davidson of Clare Burt Recording studios asked me to help him out by doing a series of tracks for some Bell Canada instructional A/Vs. I wasn’t sure I could still do it but decided to try. The first hour or so was rough. For the first time in my life, I developed mike fright. But after an hour or so it suddenly felt as though I had passed through a time tunnel to my youth and it worked well. In a period of some 18 months I became very busy with on camera and voice-over work – small roles in a few features and lots of national commercials.
Then I moved to L.A. to concentrate on developing screenplays, teamed with Howard Minsky (producer of Love Story which helped save Paramount from bankruptcy) on a major project. On the side I did a bit of voice over work just to have an excuse to get out of my home office. I returned to Toronto when my mother broke a hip and needed me. A talent agent in Vancouver of all places persuaded me to come back to performing which has been fun. It gets me away from my desk and PC. I got into a web series and just starred in a short film. But she doesn’t get into voice work and here I’m on my own. Most of my old contacts are retired or dead. My voice hasn’t changed but the market has.
The industry seems filled with marginal voices working non-union out of home studios. Voice work seems to have gone down the drain as the record industry has. Listening to contemporary radio commercials and voice tracks in TV commercials, it shows. I question the advisability of investing much time or money in pursuing this when the return potential is so negligible.
I will be recording six audio books for Skoob-E-Books later this year. If these make some noise, I might pick up some new clients but otherwise, it seems I can invest my time more profitably in other pursuits. We live in a period of change.
Thanks Paul for willingly sharing your knowledge and confirming the importance of being willing to help others,
which will have benefits for myself later.
My pleasure, Earl! Thank you so much for taking the time to read and comment on my writings. I appreciate it very much.
Paul – I’m one of the newbies to the business and I have been on your blog for the past 3 hours! I’ve enjoyed it immensely! I found this post especially interesting since most of the marketing companies I’ve seen that specifically solicit voice-over clients use overt-marketing strategies. They mass email an artist’s info to casting agents/companies and using specialized software, strategically target only those who show interest to their initial communications. Based on this post, is your personal opinion that this could do more harm than good for the VO artist? I think that it could be effective if used along with a larger arsenal of other marketing strategies, many that you’ve mentioned here or in another post. I also love to blog and had thought to chronicle my trials as a new VO artist and my daily sessions of weeding through the mountain of information out here on the VO business. Now, reading your post and your thoughts on how your experience in the field has helped to bring you more work, I see that my blogging could potentially backfire, with companies possibly being scared away due to my “greenness” in the field! I’ll have to weigh whether traffic to my website (still in its design phase) is worth possibly missing opportunities due to me screaming to the world that I’m not as experienced. I truly appreciate your efforts in providing this blog. It helps increase traffic to your site and provides great gems of information to others like me – a definite win-win situation. Kind regards!
Wow, Ebony… three hours! That’s a new record and I am so flattered!
There are many ways to reach a goal and my approach is just something that suits me well. The marketing strategy you described at the beginning of your comment sounds like playing the numbers game. It reminds me of targeted cold calling. If I were an agent, I don’t know how open I’d be to such an approach. I’d prefer to hear from a talent and not from some automated system. Besides, I doubt it that most budding voice talent would be able to afford the services of a marketing firm.
Over the years I’ve learned one thing in this business: everything depends on personal connections. Because we embody our service, the professional is personal.
A voice is like an auditory fingerprint. Each voice is unique. It can’t be mass-marketed. It shouldn’t be. It can’t be turned into a commodity. It’s way too precious for that.
Blogging is indeed a wonderful way to attract victors to a website. Some colleagues mainly write for fellow voice talent. If that’s your audience of choice, a series about you discovering this field might work well. Even though I also write for people in the voice-over business, I want to reach solopreneurs, freelancers, independent contractors and future clients as well. The wider my reach, the greater the chance that someone will hire my pipes.
I wish you the success you truly deserve, Ebony!