marketing

Promoting Yourself the Nethervoice Way

by Paul Strikwerda in Articles, Career, Freelancing, Internet, Journalism & Media, Promotion, Social Media 6 Comments

Last week I wrote about the fallacy of ME, ME, ME marketing. One of my readers emailed me and said:

“You’re very good at telling me what NOT to do. Please write about the best ways for me to promote my business.”

For that, I want to go back to an email conversation I had with one of my British colleagues.

Here’s what we talked about.

Q: Many people rely on just having a website and an internet presence on Twitter, Facebook or on a P2P site to do their marketing for them… does this work? And if not, why not?

Let’s take a step back and talk about what I believe marketing to be:

Any activity that helps you find clients and helps clients find you.

Marketing is 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.

If you succeed in these three areas, your marketing works. It’s as simple and as complicated as that.

Having an internet presence in and of itself is as useless as hanging up an expensive billboard in the middle of nowhere. In order to be effective, you have to make sure people find your needle in the online haystack.

It’s not enough to have an online profile on a P2P site or on Facebook. That only benefits the P2P and the world created by Mark Zuckerberg. You need to drive traffic to a site that you own and control.

Q: What is the most effective tool to market yourself? Blogging, Facebook, Tweeting?

My blog has proven to be my most effective instrument in my marketing toolbox, and I’ll tell you why. You can offer the best product nobody has ever heard of and never make a penny. In order for people to buy from you or hire you, they have to find you, get to know you, and learn to trust you. That’s exactly what my blog has done for me.

Today’s search engines have become much smarter. Quantity is no longer king. It’s about quality and engagement. Relevance and social interaction are now built into the algorithm that determines how your pages are ranked and thus found.

Most experts agree that one of the best ways to boost your SEO is to offer fresh and quality content. Most websites are pretty static. Once it’s up, not much changes. That’s why blogs are so effective. Every day or every week you get a chance to connect with your followers and attract new readers by sharing something of value.

Q: To be effective, how much time do you estimate it is necessary to spend on marketing?

It’s a running joke among freelancers that we spend 80% of our time finding the work and 20% doing the work. Marketing never stops. Look at the big brands. We know their logos and slogans by heart. Yet, they continue to bombard us with messages. Award-winning colleagues whom we think of as “established” never stop marketing.

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.”

Q: Are there other ways to market yourself other than online?

Marketing is never an either/or. It’s doing this, that and a whole bunch of other things in order to influence perception. If marketing is not integrated into everything you do, you’re not doing it right and you’re not doing enough.

Q: If you have limited time/resources… how do you choose the best marketing tools for you?

The best form of marketing is delivering a stellar product or service. Clients are your best credentials. If you exceed their expectations, they will do part of the marketing for you. Remember: tooting your own horn is necessary but suspicious. What others have to say about you is perceived to be more credible than all the things you will ever say about yourself.

Q: How do you ensure that you are constantly reaching new people and not just preaching to the converted.

Ask yourself this question: What greater community am I a part of?

Most voice-over professionals are:

– Actors & artists

– Self-employed

– Underemployed

– Freelancers

– Solopreneurs

– Small business owners

As a narrator and voice actor, I’m also in touch with:

– Linguists & translators

– Sound engineers

– Bloggers

– Writers

– e-Learning specialists

– Advertisers & Social Media specialists

– People in the entertainment industry

Blogging is a form of content marketing. If I only were to write my blog for a relatively small group of voice-over colleagues, I would be preaching to the choir. That’s why I make sure to write content that appeals to all the groups mentioned above. That way, I widen my circle, instead of preaching to the choir.

Q: Is marketing yourself the same as bragging?

No, it’s not, although it often comes across like that. My advice may sound a bit like a contradiction in terms: If you want to highlight what you have to offer, don’t make it all about you. A blog or brochure is not a public diary about your personal trials, tribulations, and triumphs.

Here’s the challenge: you have to show people what you’re made of, but avoid the ME, ME, ME-stories. That book is usually very thin and gets very old.

Focus on your market. Find out what their frustrations are and offer practical tips, and remember this: Educate without lecturing. Come across as an expert, but not as a know-it-all.

Q: As soon as you have an online presence, you are vulnerable … how do you protect yourself from spam and junk?

Never put your email address on your website. It’s an open invitation to spam bots. Use a spam-protected contact form instead. Use an email program with a solid spam filter, or buy one. Make sure your anti-virus software is up to date. Install anti-tracking software. I also check every new subscriber to my blog against a list of known spammers.

Q: How would you compare the impact of automated tweets, updates, responses, and postings etc. against individually composed postings?

Small businesses have a strong competitive advantage over huge corporations. They can deal with (potential) clients in a very direct and personal way. Because voice actors embody their product, that’s their unique selling point.

Mass emails, tweets, and newsletters can be deleted in seconds. Personal messages, letters, and faxes are harder to ignore.

Ultimately, effective marketing is directed at key individuals. Cater your message to their needs and you’ll be more successful. Remember: marketing is not a sales pitch. It is highlighting a service.

Q: In an overcrowded marketplace, how do you ensure that you stand out from the crowd?

I am going to brag now, but only because it’s based on feedback from my readers. The number one reason readers come back to my blog is that they find content that is relevant and helpful, told from a unique perspective.

If you want to appeal to a wide audience, you have to have a unique point of view. I’m not telling my readers how great I am. I’m simply showing them how they can be more successful if they follow some of my suggestions. In other words: I am not asking them to buy something from me. I’m giving them something useful.

If you try to be everything to everyone, you end up being nothing to no one. I highly recommend finding a niche and emphasize your specialty in your marketing messages. In my case, I market myself as “The Ultimate European Voice.” I realize that sounds rather pretentious, but for someone living and working in the United States, my European-ness is one of my unique selling points.

More and more clients don’t necessarily want a British or North-American English speaker for a global campaign. Because of my more “neutral” English accent, international companies are interested in my services.

Q: For people who may not be technically minded … do you think it is worthwhile employing someone to do your internet marketing for you?

Technology is a tool that sometimes stands in the way of true communication. There has never been a generation in the history of this planet that has been more connected, yet millions and millions of people miss a real connection.

Technology enables us to send a mass email or newsletter to everyone in our database. It’s as sad and ineffective as cold calling. You’re playing a numbers game, thinking: The more people I send stuff to, the more likely it is that someone will respond.

I always get the best responses from personal contact. I have no marketing guru to run my “campaign”. The reason is simple.

No one is as motivated and dedicated to my business as I am. No one is willing to work as hard for my business as I am. That doesn’t mean I don’t ask for help.

We all have our strengths and I do feel that when I look at certain websites, some people should have used a web designer, a copywriter, or a professional photographer. First impressions are vital!

However, it does pay off to learn how to maintain your own site. Otherwise, you end up paying your webmaster (or mistress) for every small change or update.

Q: Talk a little about keeping the balance right … e.g. marketing versus actually doing the job. Is it possible to do too much marketing?

As I said earlier, doing your job to the very best of your ability is one of the best forms of marketing. If you approach it that way, there is no real separation between the two.

There is a risk of overdoing it, though. I’m not going to name any names, but one voice-over coach regularly plasters the internet with promos for seminars, classes, and the whole shebang. It’s overkill and it’s counterproductive.

If you yell too loudly and too frequently (especially if it is more of the same), it becomes annoying and people will start tuning you out.

Q: How do you think marketing will develop over the next five years?

I’ll have to take out my crystal ball for that one. On one hand I see that marketing is becoming more and more mobile technology driven. YouTube is quickly becoming the number one search engine. Social proof is rapidly replacing expert advice.

If you wish to make a dent in the marketing universe, you need to learn to play the technological game, create visual content and attract, grow, and serve a considerable online following.

On the other hand, it is critically important to always remember that you’re talking to real people with real problems that need to be solved. It’s impossible to meet their needs with a mass email. Marketing can be the beginning of a connection, but it’s only a first step.

Let me put it this way. Creating an appealing window display is one thing, but no level of technology can force people to come inside, let alone become a (return) customer.

Q: Joining the dots … and creating a seamless approach to marketing – creating your own look, logos, fonts etc. Are they important?

Now we’re entering the realm of branding: the marketing practice of creating a name, symbol or design that identifies and differentiates a product from other products.

With thousands of voice-over talent entering the market each year, differentiation is essential. Having a picture of a microphone on your website is anything but unique. What clients are looking and listening for is personality.

Things like a recognizable logo, a catchphrase, and a consistent color scheme have to reflect your personality and your niche.

I don’t have a logo per se, but I consistently use a picture of me, holding a bunch of orange tulips. On a subconscious level, people still associate tulips with Holland, and as a native Dutch speaker that’s a good thing. Orange also happens to be the Dutch national color. Then there’s the pun “tulips” and “two lips” which for a voice-over professional is a nice association.

Q: What is the most important thing you have learned about marketing?

Three things:

1. Marketing is like sowing seeds. You can’t force those seeds to come up overnight, grow into trees, and produce fruit. Marketing is an organic process that requires persistence, patience, and love for what you’re doing.

2. It is pointless to market a bad product because it won’t sell.

3. Even the sharpest tools in the shed get dull after prolonged use. Keep on learning to refine your skills.

Paul Strikwerda ©nethervoice

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The Fallacy of ME, ME, ME Marketing

by Paul Strikwerda in Articles, Career, Internet, Journalism & Media, Personal, Promotion, Social Media 2 Comments

Question on Quora:

“Is it okay to post pictures of yourself on Instagram? Would people think I’m too much into myself?”

Mind Your Own Business

by Paul Strikwerda in Articles, Career, Freelancing, Money Matters Leave a comment

Gerald Griffith

Gerald Griffith, the charismatic creator of VO Atlanta, is a clever cookie. He wants to give the attendees of this conference what they want. How does he know what they want? It’s simple. He’s not afraid to ask. It’s an approach many small business owners (such as VO’s) could learn something from:

1. understand your clients, and
2. ensure that what you’re offering meets or exceeds their needs

Result: Happy, returning customers!

So, over the past seven years, Gerald has been polling his audience trying to find out what kinds of topics they’d be interested in. Doing so, he noticed an inexplicable trend. Gerald:

“The pattern is the same. There’s a lot of demand for tech and business, but those are the most poorly attended sessions.”

This year it’s no different. Griffith:

“When I review the current block of workshop bookings (same holds true for breakout sessions in past years), guess which ones DO NOT show up in the top three? Technology and Marketing.”

For this blog post, I’ll leave the tech talk to the experts, but business and marketing are definitely my cup of tea. Full disclosure: I’m a presenter and panelist in these areas. So, why would people indicate they want more of these sessions, and yet not show up for them? It doesn’t make sense, does it? What’s going on?

STRANGE BEHAVIOR

First off: polls are opinions, not behavior. People vote with their feet. It’s the problem every pollster has to face: human beings say the socially acceptable thing, and do another. But there’s more.

Advertisers realized a long time ago that most people decide with their heart, not with their head. Business-oriented sessions tend to appeal to the analytical, left side of the brain. Some attendees falsely believe business segments are boring and filled with dry, factual information. In contrast, a hands-on workshop about getting into character animation led by a brilliant man known for voicing a pig, has way more emotional pull.

Now, if you had a choice between work and play, which one would you choose? The truth is: most VO’s -me included- are more interested in the fun aspects of their job than in running the numbers. Bookkeeping is considered work. Making phone calls is work. Social Media can be a chore. We’d rather talk about microphones and gadgets than about our bottom line.

In my experience as a coach, many VO’s don’t want to face financial reality. They call themselves voice-over artists, not entrepreneurs. They prefer to stick their head in the sand while complaining about rates going down.

STRANGE IDEAS

What’s also keeping people from signing up for business sessions is a particular mindset, summarized in these two maxims:

“If you build it, they will come”

“Do what you love and the money will follow”

These two ideas are part of the reason why about one-fifth of business startups fail in the first year, and about half go bust within five years. Only about one-third make it to ten.

Let me ask you this. If you build it without telling the world about it, why would people come? They don’t know you exist. And if they do know you exist, why should they come to you and not to someone else with a pleasant voice?

What makes you so special?

Go ahead and build it, but there’s no guarantee that they will come! Now, what about passion? Is that enough to make the magic money fountains flow?

I know plenty of people who hate what they do, and yet they make a boatload of money. I also know people who love what they do, who are struggling to make ends meet. Investing in yourself by signing up for sessions that will help you improve your voice-over skills is not a bad idea. However, you can offer the best product in the world, but if you don’t know how to sell it, the money will not follow. And in VO, you are your product.

FAILING BUSINESSES

Take a few minutes and Google “reasons why small businesses fail.” You’ll find that most authors are in agreement. Small businesses don’t fail because new entrepreneurs aren’t creative, passionate, or skilled enough. It is because their owners do not run them like a business. A business needs to be properly funded. Many freelancers don’t spend enough money to put themselves out there, and they don’t make enough money to stay there.

Secondly, failing businesses are offering something no one is looking for because it’s already available, usually of better quality and at a lower price. If you’re thinking of starting your own business, you have to find your place in the market by providing something only very few can offer. That’s your niche.

As a voice talent, it’s not enough to say: “I am special because no one sounds like me.” Believe it or not, there are people who sort of sound like you with more money, more experience, better equipment, a quiet recording space, a nicer website, a harder working agent, better branding, greater marketing, and an amazing social media presence. Anything they’re not good at or don’t like to do, they hire experts for. Those who want to do it all by themselves end up working eighty hours a week wondering why they ever wanted to be their own boss.

If you don’t want to belong to that fifty percent of small businesses that close within five years, you have to stop treating your profession as a hobby, as something you do because it sparks joy only. Owning a small business is challenging, frustrating, and exhausting, as well as exhilarating.

Here’s the good news: learning how to run a freelance business is a rewarding journey, and in our community you’ll find excellent tour guides to show you around. Many of the best are coming to VO Atlanta from March 28 – 31.

THE EXPERTS

Learn from Marc Scott and Tracy Lindley about marketing, about sales and money management from Bachelor no more Tom Dheere, about branding from Gabrielle Nistico and Celia Siegel, about using Twitter from Heather Costa, and create an action plan with Natasha Marchewka. These are just a few of the presenters coming to the Hilton Atlanta Airport Hotel. Click here for a full list.

Paul Strikwerda presenting at VO Atlanta

The Stinky Sock Session

On Friday 3/29, I’ll be leading an X-Session from 1:30 to 4:30 PM called “Six Steps To Turning Your Business Around.” It’s not a lecture, but an interactive workshop open to no more than twelve people. The next day I’d love to meet you at my Breakout Session, “Winning Mindsets to Take Charge of Your Career” from 4:45 to 5:45 PM. Find out why people started calling this the “Stinky Sock” session you’ll never forget.

THE FUTURE

In this volatile, crazy voice-over business, many are called but few are chosen. When doing my presentations, I often look at my audience and wonder: who will be here next year, five years from now, and in ten years? Who will have given up, and who has staying power?

I don’t have a crystal ball, but I do know this: having a remarkable voice and knowing how to use it is not enough. The ones enjoying sustained success are very likely to give you this piece of advice if you want to do well:

Mind your own business!

Paul Strikwerda ©nethervoice

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Celia Siegel’s Voiceover Achiever

by Paul Strikwerda in Articles, Book, Career, Freelancing, Internet, Journalism & Media, Promotion, Social Media 6 Comments

“Brand Your VO Career. Change Your Life.”

That’s the somewhat ostentatious subtitle of Celia Siegel’s book Voiceover Achiever. It’s an illustrated, conversationally written step-by-step guide to branding your voice-over business, by one of the most amiable experts in our industry.

Will your life change after reading this book? It depends on how you’d answer the following question:

Can you get slim from reading about weight loss?

Or, to put it differently:

Are you an active, or a passive reader?

We all know people (perhaps intimately) who have tons of self-help books in their Billy bookcases that just collect dust. I call them shelf-help books, because that’s what they are. They’re the useless property of passive readers who are all talk and no action. In my estimation, about eighty percent of non-fiction fans fall into this category.

Active readers, on the other hand, absorb and embrace the information like a sponge. They make notes, they do the exercises, and start applying what they’ve learned immediately, and consistently. If that’s you, Celia’s book has tremendous potential to help you transform your business, and even your life. Whether you’re a voice-over, or otherwise self-employed.

And here’s the remarkable thing: Celia does it all in under 130 colorful pages, many of which feature large illustrations.

WHO NEEDS BRANDING?

But why buy a book about branding? I assume you have talent, training, equipment, connections, and even some business skills. You run a small shop. You’re not a company like Coca-Cola or Apple. Do you really need to boil down your essence into some smart slogan and a logo? Celia Siegel:

“The big question in our industry used to be: Do you have a beautiful voice? Do you know how to act? Those are still important. But they’re no longer enough. These days the question is: Are you brandable?”

Here’s the gist of it: In a cacophony of voices, you want to be found and heard. You want to stand out. You want to distinguish yourself from the rest by highlighting what makes you different, and more desirable. That’s what intelligent branding does. And since you personify the service you’re offering, you’ve got to start thinking of yourself as a brand, by -in Celia’s words: “being loud and proud about who you really are.”

That sounds great, but here’s the not so easy part. A brand is not something you can bottle and sell at a supermarket. It lives in people’s minds. A brand is the result of many implicit and explicit associations and perceptions of a product, a service, a person, or a company. It’s what turned brown, carbonized sugar water into a billion dollar business, and Oprah Winfrey into one of the most influential and wealthy people on this planet.

Now, here’s what you need to ask yourself: How can you create and control these associations that set you apart, and help your business perform better? That’s precisely what Celia Siegel does for a living, and her book is loaded with examples of voice talent whose niche she’s helped define.

Chapter by chapter, Voiceover Achiever takes you through the process she uses with her clients, helping you identify what makes you unique, and showing you how to tell the story of your brand through language, visuals, and different media. If this sounds like a daunting task, think again. Celia writes the way she speaks. She keeps it light and playful. She clearly knows her stuff, but she’s never stuffy, and at no point does she come across as a know-it-all talking down to noobs.

TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING?

As you can tell, this is not a boring intro into branding. It is a book about Celia, Celia’s business, and Celia’s clients. That’s its strength, and its weakness. Examples from the same talent are reused throughout the book, and at times I got the impression that I was reading a long testimonial. All those testimonials are from voice-overs, and not from agents, or from people who are searching for voices for their projects.

I’m glad the people who hired Celia are happy with their new image, but what about the professionals they wish to reach? What’s their feedback? I want to know to what extent business has increased after Celia’s intervention, and how much can be attributed to branding.

Here’s another question: How much are rates part of branding? If we’re in the business of controlling associations and perceptions, the price of a product or service definitely influences how it is perceived. That’s why some people prefer a Rolex over a Seiko, even though the much cheaper Seikos are just as good at keeping time. There’s no mention of rates in Siegel’s book.

A MATTER OF IMAGE

Some of the images in Voiceover Achiever feel like fillers, just as the twelve empty pages of Brand Journal in the back of the book make it look more substantial than it is. I wish there had been more content, instead of pictures of lollipops, unicorns, and bicycles that seem to have come out of a kids magazine.

While I appreciate the examples of websites that have had the signature Siegel makeover, I would have loved to see a before and after, revealing some of the no-no’s of branding. Celia also doesn’t mention A/B testing and other methods as a way to find out what clients most respond to.

Teaming up with a “Brand Buddy” as suggested by Siegel (a fellow vo-talent embarking on his or her own branding journey), might not be ideal. As a sounding board, a colleague could be just as clueless as to what works and what doesn’t as you are. If, on the other hand, you need someone to hold you accountable and keep you on track, a Buddy could be very helpful.

CULTURAL DIVIDE

As a European living and working in the U.S., I’d like to know to what extent branding is context dependent, meaning that a different market may require a different message. In the Netherlands where I was born and raised, humility is considered a virtue, and superlatives frequently found on American websites, are often seen as bragging and off-putting.

I also don’t agree with some of the advice Celia’s giving. She recommends using a personal Facebook profile for business purposes, and I do not. It’s actually against the Facebook Terms of Service (for more about that, click here).

Siegel writes about website design:

“If you’re doing it yourself, I suggest a one-page, endless-scroll website, the simpler the better.”

From an SEO-perspective, websites that use pagination (spreading content over a number of pages) do much better because Google Analytics and other sites measuring statistics count page clicks. Visitors to infinite scroll sites don’t click. Clicking lowers the bounce rate, and increases engagement.

MAKING SOME NOISE

When it comes to spreading the message, I agree with Celia: You have to remind people that you exist. If you want to stand out, it’s no enough to be outstanding. That’s where her book moves from branding to marketing. Siegel explores social media such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. She lists the benefits of using stickers, branded E-cards, banners, newsletters, and networking. However, there’s no mention of blogs, podcasts, or videos. That’s a big omission in a time where YouTube has become the second largest search engine, and blogs such as this one are huge drivers of website traffic.

I also would have liked to see a few paragraphs devoted to brand protection. Your brand is your intellectual capital, and national and international trade mark registration should at least be discussed. At the same time it’s important that you don’t infringe on someone else’s intellectual property by using names, tag lines, or images that are already in use by existing brands. It could cost you dearly (more on that when you click here).

Last but not least, instead of empty Branding Journal pages, I would have loved a list of recommended resources such as graphic designers, website developers, copywriters, copy editors, SEO-specialists, illustrators, social media experts, and other people who can help you tell your story, and spread your message.

SUMMING UP

Voiceover Achiever covers a vital aspect of our business that, until now, has not been written about in much detail. As such it is a welcome and wonderful addition to the growing list of books about the voice-over industry (click here for a list of other books). Better still, anyone running a freelance business can benefit from Celia’s experience and expertise. However, please keep the following in mind:

No amount of clever branding can cover up a bad product or poor service. It may take years to build a reputation, and it can be destroyed in a matter of minutes.

Before you buy this book (and I really hope you do), ask yourself:

Am I an active or a passive reader?

Here’s the bottom line:

This is not a must-read book.

It’s a must-DO book.

Paul Strikwerda ©nethervoice

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The Key To Promoting Your Business

by Paul Strikwerda in Articles, Career, Freelancing, Journalism & Media, Promotion, Social Media 16 Comments

If you’re like most colleagues I know, you love doing what you’re doing for a living…

… but you hate selling yourself.

Am I right?

I know I felt that way for a long, long time.

My mom and dad brought me up to be modest, and to never put myself on a pedestal. And that’s what selling and self-promotion really is about, right? Tooting your own horn is an exercise in vanity, telling the world how great you are, and why people should buy from you.

Maybe it’s a generational thing, but millennials don’t seem to have so many reservations about it. The word “humble” has been removed from the humble brag. We live in the age of the shameless selfie, and the i-everything. The iPhone, iPad, the i can have anything I want whenever I want it. Now.

Beauty is in the I of the beholder, and the world shall bear witness.

These days, it’s super cool and common to document one’s life in “vids and pics,” and give everybody a front row seat. Just follow people around on social media. Without telling you they’re telling you:

Look at where I’m going!

Look at what I’m eating!

Look at my kids!

Look at my cats!

Look at my coffee!

Look at my new car!

Look at my new wife!

Look at ME!

Gimme some likes. Gimme some love. Gimme the feeling that I matter. I beg you!

Worst of all, some people are taking this self-absorbed attitude to their marketing strategy, because they believe that effective marketing revolves around self-promotion. If you don’t tell the world about your magnificent offerings, the world will go somewhere else. At least, that’s what they’re afraid of.

Let me ask you: Is that really how it works? Is this the new way to attract clients? Why are people doing this?

INSTAGRAM

I spend way too much time on social media, and this week I’m trying to crack this monster called Instagram. It’s exciting to see how many colleagues have embraced it wholeheartedly, and I want to learn from them. What are they posting? What hashtags are they using? Do they seem to have a specific strategy to promote their business?

Here’s what I’ve noticed.

I see lots of pictures of cute animals, sunsets, waterfalls, babies, fabulous food, family members, beaches, cups of coffee, art work, quotes about the meaning of life, and yes… selfies.

Don’t get me wrong: some of these pictures are gorgeous, and as an amateur photographer I get inspired. But what do snapshots from a family album tell me about someone’s business? Are they meant to promote something, or what?

PERSONAL OR PROFESSIONAL

Perhaps I’m wrong, but it looks like a majority of the colleagues I am now following is using Instagram strictly for personal reasons. That’s why they don’t have a business account, and that’s why I see photos of cousin David’s bris, and auntie Annie’s aging Pomeranian. Both are equally painful, I might add.

I see these things on Facebook too, by the way -particularly if people have connected Facebook to their Instagram account. That means you get to see the same boring stuff twice. I’ve also noticed that some colleagues are still using a Facebook Profile to promote their voice-over services, instead of having a separate business page (click here if you want to know more about that).

What’s behind this? Is it because the boundaries between our personal and professional lives are slowly fading? Are people doing this because they feel that good marketing is based on self(ie)-promotion, or are they basically clueless, or too self-absorbed?

IT’S NOT ABOUT ME

My philosophy as a solopreneur is simple: I am in business to serve my clients as best as I can. That means my marketing has to be centered on the people I serve, and hope to serve. It has to be about them. Always.

To come up with a marketing message, I have to think about my clients, and ask them questions like:

– What do you need?
– What do you want?
– How can I best help you?

Contrast and compare that to the “Look at ME” strategy.

I strongly believe that I have something to offer; something my (potential) clients are searching for. I am a resource, and it is my job to connect (future) clients to that resource. Now, people won’t find me if they don’t know I exist. The challenge is to make it easy to find me, and to show my prospects what I can do for them without making it the never-ending Strikwerda show.

My marketing goal is threefold. It is to…

1. Increase awareness of the Nethervoice brand
2. Position myself as an experienced, knowledgeable premium provider people can trust
3. Engage my audience, and lead people to my website

As one of the more outspoken members of the voice-over community, there’s a fourth goal worth mentioning: I want to be a strong voice in, and a resource to my community. That’s why I use social media to promote this blog. It’s obvious that this effort supports my three main goals.

The question is: Will I reach these goals by posting cute pictures of cats, sunsets, and sangria?

WHAT’S YOUR REASON

Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against people who are using the internet to share their lives with others. If you’re one of those people, you’ve got to ask yourself: For what purpose am I doing this? How can I use social media to grow my business?

It’s no secret that with more and more talent trying to make buck or two, clients have a huge pool of people they can choose from. What are the chances they will find you, and pick you? What can you do to increase the odds? Yes, YOU! Not that Pay-to-Play, or those agents. YOU!

I’ve come up with a marketing strategy that works for me, and I’m refining it week by week. That doesn’t mean it will work for you. Not everybody is a blogger. Not everybody is comfortable using 140 characters to craft a message. It takes time to learn the ins and outs of Instagram (and I’ve only started to scratch the surface).

But no matter what you do, it all starts by thinking of the people you wish to serve, and the clients you want to attract.

It is not one, big ego trip.

Use your marketing as a magnet.

If it’s strong enough, you’ll be able to monetize it.

Once the money starts coming in, you’ll have lots of time to post cute pictures of your feline friends.

Paul Strikwerda ©nethervoice

PS Be sweet. Please subscribe & retweet

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Can You Control Your Career?

by Paul Strikwerda in Articles, Journalism & Media, Promotion, Social Media 52 Comments

the author

“So, what do you want to be when you grow up?”

It’s the dreaded question that can make a child quiver.

“What do you mean, be?

Am I not good enough? Do I need to be something or someone else?

Who says I want to grow up? Grown-ups are boring…”

Some kids know exactly how to answer that question, though.

They have dreams of becoming an astronaut, a fireman, or a movie star.

At the age of eight, I knew what I wanted.

I wanted to be Uri Geller. Remember him?

In the seventies, this spoon-bending Israeli mentalist first appeared on television, performing mind over matter tricks. I was fascinated by his psychokinetic powers. Geller claimed he could fix household appliances through the strength of his mind. How useful!

Like thousands of other viewers, I took my broken watch and placed it in front of our television set, waiting for Geller to work his magic. This man was a miracle!

Inspired by Uri, I spent countless hours staring at a pencil, trying to make it move with my mind. I don’t think I ever grew up, because I still find myself waiting for a red traffic light, trying to make it turn green by using the power of my brain.

Sometimes it works, and I take all the credit. Sometimes it doesn’t, and I blame technology.

In all seriousness, these are not just mind games. This type of behavior raises a few fundamental questions:

• Can we manipulate our environment, and even the people around us by using our mental powers?

• Can we make objects and people succumb to our will?

Traditional advertising seems to believe so. Well, at least as far as the people part is concerned. The mad men of Madison Avenue spend millions and millions of dollars trying to manipulate our minds into buying stuff we don’t need and don’t want.

As a voice-over professional, I’m part of the plan. If you go to a Dutch toy store, there’s a great chance you’ll hear my voice blasting out of the speakers, selling U.S. made skateboards.

I’ll try to make you buy Turtle Wax® at the local Auto World, or futuristic fluid to super grease the chain of your mountain bike. “Now on sale in aisle 4. Must hurry. Supply is limited.”

Do these campaigns actually work? Are people really that susceptible (or dare I say: that stupid)?

As a freelancer, my mailbox is filled with offers for seminars like:

“Learn how to Dominate your Market in two hours”

“Making Money with your Voice, guaranteed”

“Success Secrets to Winning Auditions”

“7 Easy Ways to turn Prospects into Buyers”

My efforts to move pencils, the ad agency’s efforts to move product, and the seminar’s promise to turn me into a dominator have one thing in common: they feed our natural need for control.

Somehow, in some way, we believe that with the right ingredients, training, and campaign, we can part the waters of the Red Sea and walk across to the Promised Land.

A mistake of biblical proportions…

Can we really move the minds of the masses by slogans, websites, billboards, and -dare I say- blogs?

Haven’t we become immune to the endless avalanche of marketing messages, sales pitches, and empty promises?

I have a confession to make.

During the first half of my life, I honestly believed I could change people. It gets worse. I even believed I could change G-d. I used to pray:

“Dear G-d, if you help me get a good grade, I promise to go to church every Sunday and not embarrass my parents. Amen.”

Later in life I learned that if I don’t do my part and learn my lessons, G-d isn’t going to bail me out. That would defeat the purpose of being on this planet in the first place.

As an investigative reporter, I thought that if I would publicly expose some grave injustice, people would rise up and do something about it.

Then I learned that, if it’s not in their back yard or has any impact on their lives, people care more about their favorite sports team, game show, or pet rabbit, than about the hungry, the sick, and the homeless.

In intimate relationships, I tried to influence significant others by withholding love and affection if they didn’t change into the people I wanted them to be. Guess what? In the process I ended up ruining relationships instead of rescuing them.

As a voice talent, I think I’m still trying to make people hire me: “Just listen to my demo. Go to my website. Read my blog. I’m brilliant. Isn’t that obvious?”

No, it is not.

They just hire someone cheaper, younger, older, sexier, or John Hamm.

But don’t worry. When things don’t work out, you and I can always go to our social media friends, cry out loud that life’s unfair, and ask ourselves: “Why is it so hard to get hired? Why don’t people do what we want them to do?” Life would be so much easier!

Now listen up, and listen carefully.

This desire for control has nothing to do with others.

It’s all about You and it’s mostly based on fear.

The fear of losing something you never had in the first place.

The thing is: people rarely do things for your reasons.

They do things for their reasons.

Altruism has left the building a long time ago.

Most people have a hard time controlling themselves, let alone others.

If self-control were that easy, very few people would smoke, all of us would maintain the perfect weight, and prisons would be empty.

The idea that you can control all aspects of your career is based on the myth of magical thinking. It’s not some silver spoon you can bend at will. You don’t hold all the cards. Perhaps you only hold the Joker.

Yes, you can set the stage, learn your lines and lessons, and strive to be the best you can be. But you can’t force feed your target markets, especially if you don’t know what they’re hungry for.

You can be the most succulent steak ever, but if your client’s a vegetarian, s/he won’t bite. Of course you didn’t know that, because you never cared to be curious. All you did was give this client reasons why he should pick you.

YOUR reasons.

Oops!

If you really want to move your career forward, you need to give up your need for control and your urge to make it about you. Especially when your product happens to be…. you.

Stop pushing, and start listening.

Don’t offer a solution before you know what the problem is.

Don’t try to brainwash your prospects with an email blast, or by singing your own praises again and again and again. You worked on that nice looking newsletter for hours, and within a matter of seconds it ends up in the trash.

Unread.

Here’s my advice:

Turn your monologue into a dialogue.

Invest in building a relationship first. People ain’t buying if they don’t trust you. And they won’t trust you if they don’t know you.

The best way to show them what you’re all about, is by putting them first. Believe me, once they get that, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to tell your story.

So, is traditional marketing as dead as a Dodo?

“Brains on Fire” is a book and a blog about word of mouth marketing. It’s narrated by a Dutch voice-over and blogger. The authors quote a revealing study by Copernicus Marketing Consulting and Research. According to Copernicus, the average ROI of TV advertising campaigns is 1 to 4 percent.

The Brains on Fire team also cites a 2009 Yankelovich Study. 76 percent of people believe that companies lie in ads, and people’s trust that businesses will do the right thing has dropped from 58 percent in 2008 to a dismal 38 percent in 2009 (2009 Edelman Trust Barometer).

Be honest. Would you become a buyer from a liar?

Meanwhile, Uri Geller no longer seems to tell the world his mind triumphs over matter. In the November 2007 issue of the magazine Magische Welt (Magic World) Geller said:

“I’ll no longer say that I have supernatural powers. I am an entertainer. I want to do a good show. My entire character has changed.”

His critics have replicated some of his tricks by creating the illusion of spoon bending by using misdirection. That’s another term for distracting the audience.

And in case you’re wondering, my old watch never started ticking during Geller’s television appearance. It just needed a new battery. Not a psychic.

As I grew older, I realized a few things.

Living is learning.

I can’t change others. I can only change myself.

If I don’t like the way the wind is blowing, I can always adjust my sails.

It’s okay to be out of control. Control is an illusion. I can plan. I can practice. I can participate, and I can even ignite a spark.

Whatever happens next is one of life’s delightful and mind bending mysteries.

It’s not linear, it’s not logical, and it’s certainly not playing by our rules.

It just is.

People still ask me:

“So, what do you want to be when you grow up?”

These days I answer:

“I want to be a good person.

A helper. A tour guide.

Someone who is caring, kind, and a bit silly.”

How mental is that?

PS Be sweet. Please Retweet!

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Where Voice-Over Casting Sites Fail

by Paul Strikwerda in Articles, Internet, Pay-to-Play 9 Comments

A rude awakening.

There is no other way to describe it.

This morning I decided to take a closer look at one of the voice-over casting websites I subscribe to, and I particularly looked at all the auditions I had submitted in the past couple of months. What I discovered didn’t exactly make my day. Here’s why.

In four months, I had submitted a total of 185 auditions. For about 80% of these job offers, the indicated deadline had passed. In other words: one might assume that the client would have hired a voice by now.

However, much to my surprise, I noticed that in only 10% of the above cases a talent had actually been selected. Mind you, not every selection ends in a booking. When I looked even deeper into the postings that never lead to anything, it got worse. I saw that at least half of those had over one hundred submissions!

THE BOTTOM LINE: a majority of auditions didn’t result in an actual booking, not because the job was awarded to another talent, but because the voice-shopper never became a buyer. In most cases, the client had plenty of talent to choose from. And with 100+ submissions per project, bidding must have been fierce. What’s going on here?

At least four things came to mind:

Is this an overall trend or is it unique to my situation?
These missed opportunities mean a huge loss in revenue for the site in question, as well as for the subscribers who pay to play, and not to be thrown away.
There’s tremendous untapped potential! Why are some sites barely scratching the surface of a goldmine?
What can be done to turn browsers into buyers?

BATTING AVERAGE

To take up the last question first, this refers to what marketing guru’s call the “conversion rate.” Consumer behavior expert Paco Underhill is the author of “Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping.” He writes:

“Conversion rate measures what you make of what you have- it shows how well (or how poorly) the entire enterprise is functioning where it counts most: in the store. Conversion rate is to retail what batting average is to baseball -without knowing it, you can say that somebody had a hundred hits last season, but you don’t know whether he had three hundred at-bats, or a thousand. Without conversion rate, you don’t know if you’re Mickey Mantle or Mickey Mouse.

One could also describe conversion rate is as “the percentage of visitors who take the action you wish for.” In the case of this blog, I hope my readers will leave a comment, become a subscriber and visit the rest of my website. Of course I also hope you find my writings entertaining and that you take away something useful. But what I’m ultimately aiming for is “engagement.” Remember that. I’ll get back to it later.

JUST LOOKING

It’s obvious that the conversion rate of the voice-over website I mentioned in the intro left a lot to be desired for. Yet, it’s nothing new for an internet-based business. Here’s the deal. This “just looking” behavior is ubiquitous online. That’s inherent to the medium. It gets worse, though. Some studies suggest that over half of all online shoppers abandon their carts part way through the check out process. Why is that?

The beginning of an answer to that question lies in the “interception rate,” the percentage of customers who have some contact with an employee. Paco Underhill:

“The more shopper-employee contacts that take place, the greater the average sale. Talking with an employee has a way of drawing a customer in closer. With no sales assistance it could be the difference between a conversion rate of 22 percent and a conversion rate that’s 50 to 60%.”

So, let me ask you this: when’s the last time you went on an online shopping spree, and had any type of interaction with an employee?

Where’s the engagement? Where’s the relationship? Where’s the interception?

Now, let’s go one step further and bring this closer to home. If you are a voice-over actor with a personal website or a blog, do you know your conversion rate? If not, wouldn’t you want to know? Do you even know how to measure your visitor’s response? I could care less about the number of hits you get on an average day, or your ranking on Bing. Bing doesn’t pay your bills. Don’t get me wrong: getting people in the door is a promising start. Keeping them inside is even better. Getting them to take action is the ultimate goal.

Here’s the 64 thousand dollar question: How do you do that? If customer-interception plays such a big part in increasing your sales, is such a thing even realistic in an anonymous, impersonal virtual world? How could you possibly turn browsers into buyers? Be sure to check out my next installment!

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