THE MOST ASKED QUESTION OF MOST VOICE ACTORS……. “How Do I Find Clients???”
Well, Anne and Gabby to the rescue! Whether you have a been at this a while and are looking for some new clients to add or if you need to start building that client list from scratch – this podcast is guaranteed to help you out! Anne and Gabby go over the common questions, give you some strategies and different approaches and even arm you with a VERY powerful tool to improve your marketing plan!
Takeaways
Quick Concepts from Today’s Episode:
Google searches are the first place to start!
Do your research and get specific.
Don’t cold call, but call for research purposes.
Target brands you already use and love!
Referenced in this Episode
Direct links to things we brought up ++
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Transcript
VO: Today’s voiceover talent is more than just a pretty voice. Today’s voiceover talent has to be a boss. A VO B.O.S.S. Set yourself up with business owner strategies and success. With your host, Anne Ganguzza along with some of the strongest voices in our industry. Rock your business like a boss. A VO B.O.S.S.
Anne: Welcome to the VO B.O.S.S. podcast, I’m your host, Anne Ganguzza along with my lovely, beautiful, intelligent, co-host, Gabby Nistico. Hey Gabby.
Gabby: Why, thank you Anne! My goodness!
Anne: So, Gabby. A lot of times I will have my students asking me, “What do I do to get clients? How can I get clients outside of just signing up for the pay-to-plays” And so, to that I answer, for the most part, we need to figure out how to get yourself clients organically. So, today’s topic is going to be talking about, How to mine the web for potential clients.
Gabby: Ooh! I like it. You know, one of my hobbies, one of my favorite things to do is actually to go dig and mine for gems and minerals, right?
Anne: I love that.
Gabby: Ya gotta dig people! Ya gotta dig deep! You gotta get in there!
Anne: And you’ve got to work hard, and you know what – it will all pay off with a beautiful gemstone or a beautiful client.
Gabby: It does. Sometimes you’ve got to get a little dirty though. It’s a little work.
Anne: Ya gotta get ya hands dirty.
Gabby: You do! But it’s okay, it’s worth it!
Anne: I love the analogy.
Gabby: Where do you suggest people start, oh masteress of the web?
Anne: Well, where else is there but Google? Honestly. Google is the most wonderful thing. I’ve always been a Google girl. So, if you are on the internet and you’re not on Google, I don’t understand. That doesn’t compute in my head. How do you not exist without using Google to search and find things?
Gabby: Can we legally change your name to Anne Gangoogle? Is that possible? Anne Gangoogle.
Anne: It doesn’t have the nice Italian ring to it. Anne GanGOOGLE!
Gabby: Google!
Anne: Anne Gangoogle your next client. I like that. So, yeah always start off with Google. First of all, Google is helpful in so many ways. Number one, it’s going to help you be able to research potential clients. It’s going to be able to help you research your industry, your niche market. Just about everything you want to do on the internet, you can start off with a search in Google. So, mining the web for clients, I think, all starts with a search on Google, #1 to help you to understand your niche market better. Understand who your client is, what they do and what their needs are. That’s number one.
Gabby: But what’s the way to narrow this down? I mean, people get so overwhelmed with web searches that it feels like the just don’t get anywhere. So, I think people get lost with like, what do I do? Do I start with geography, do I start with a particular area? Like, what? What do they do to kind of keep it from being just this overwhelming s**t show of searching?
Anne: Well, I think you can organize your searching for sure. Number one, I think it’s gotta be abundantly clear what market you’re looking for. So, for example, if you’re looking for clients if you happen to be good at corporate narration or explainer videos or telephony. Whatever market you’re going to, start off with a search for that. Just do a Google search for explainer videos to find out what ones are out there. Or YouTube? Right? Go to YouTube, search for explainer videos, or search for companies that you think fit your brand. And then see if something exists already and go ahead and research it, check out the company, look at their webpage, see if their brand is matching something that you think fits your brand as well and that you might be able to serve well to find out if they use voiceover to help sell or advertise their brand.
Gabby: So this method that you’re talking about is very specific to directly accessing a client. To going straight to them, right? Which I love.
Anne: Yes. There are things that you need to keep in mind for directly contacting a client. Number one is that you have to kind of have that back research done on them or that prior research done on them, because if you were to send them let’s say, an email, touting your services, you certainly don’t want that to be put into the spam folder. So you have to be really careful. There’s kind of a technique to that, and the more you know about your client that you are hitting up for potential work, the better off your approach is going to sound or your email, or whatever it is, however you want to contact them, is going to sound. “Oh, I really love your product”, maybe you’ve used it or you happen to see a video on it and you’re intrigued by it, that’s a great opener for somebody that you want to really get to know better and possibly be the voice for.
Gabby: Everyone loves being complimented. And everyone loves being approached by a fan. Companies are far more receptive to you when you approach them first and foremost as a fan or as a consumer, and then hit them up with a potential partnership. So, yeah. We all respond well to that. I think, too, the other really great thing about what you’re saying Anne, is people need to understand it’s a marathon. It is about frequency, it’s about repetition, you’re not just going to contact a company once and achieve the results you’re looking for. It’s about having a strategy for maintaining regular communication with them until a need for your services arise.
Anne: And a lot of times people will say to me, well who do I contact? I know the company but who do I contact and how do I get that information? Well, again we have to be a sleuth here. We have to not only understand and research the company but look for that contact page or contact us page. And a lot of times, what works for me is, I’ll actually make a phone call. And it’s not going to be a cold call. It’s going to just be a phone call to find out who I might be able to talk to. It might just be, “I love this product and I’m looking to find someone I might be able to talk to more about your marketing or advertising if you might have a need for voice talent, if possible. And a lot of times you’ll call the main number and you won’t get that person right away, probably the marketing or the creative director is not going to be answering the phone, you’ll get somebody else, who will then be able to give you that information, and then you can take that information and create a well crafted email or you could also plan a phone call as well, although, I’m not a person that does cold calls a lot of the time. I usually like to start off with a warm email. What about you, Gabby.
Gabby: I like the indirect first as well. I prefer the anonymity of the email. That being said, I’m not opposed to picking up a phone. If I really think that I have the right contact and the right person and I’m enthusiastic about calling them, and I don’t feel like I’m making a sales call, I will absolutely pick up the phone.
Anne: Make sure that you’re prepared though, before you pick up that phone. And you know who you’re talking to. Especially if you’re excited about it, and you’re enthusiastic about it. Number one, that’s going to be because probably you’ve researched the product and you’ve got something good to say. Again, as you so elegantly said at the beginning of this podcast, how people love to be complimented. Especially people that work for companies that have great products. They like to hear from people that their products are great and that they’ve done a great job. Especially if you can make it personal to them. “Oh, you’ve done a great job advertising this product. By the way, I used it and I really loved it and I love how you showcased your product in this particular web video that I saw when I was on your web page.” Something like that. That really would speak to a person on the other end of the phone in a great…I would love to get one of those phone calls that basically said how wonderful I was. And what a great job I was doing. And, the fact that you can offer something to help them, maybe advertise it, maybe not better but you want to think, of course, your voice is going to make it better, but you don’t want to say to them, that they could be better with your voice. You want to phrase that a little differently, but something that can enhance and compliment what they’re already doing.
Gabby: Sometimes what you’re able to say, though, is that yeah, us working together could definitely help you to reach the right folks reach the right audience, achieve what you’re looking for. So, I know a number of voice actors who are heavily involved with political advertisements every year. For quite a few of them the way that they got involved in political ads is by directly contacting the campaign managers of candidates. ANd in ding so, they were able to come to the fore front first and foremost as a constituent and saying “I’m a supporter. I love the candidate, I love what they stand for. Hey, maybe I’ve done some volunteer work for them.” Now I’m inquiring about a way to take that even further. And offer my voiceover services to their campaign. If nothing else, open up some very interesting conversations about who the next step might be. I’ve had people say to me, well the campaign manager told me we use an ad agency. Here are the people to contact. You can tell them that I told you to call. And it opens up a whole nother door. And that’s what’s amazing when you take that approach. And it really does take the “ick” out of the sales call out of the equation. So start with companies you like! Start with businesses you support with services that you like. And don’t think local guys, don’t think small. Think huge! Think big!
Anne: Or think small. And I know that there’s a lot of local businesses that like to support other local businesses. So, sometimes that’s an approach you can take if you are searching local for businesses or maybe a local chamber of commerce. Which is always a great place to start to get to know people especially because small businesses like to deal with other small and local businesses. I think that’s a great approach.
Gabby: It is. And one of the methods that I like is to approach your web mining and your Google search, not as a voice actor but rather as someone who is trying to hire a creative team or a creative group. So, for instance, if you were a corporation and you needed to create a training module for your employees, who would you hire? Who would the team be, the company be, that you would approach to say, “Hey. How do I turn this into what I’m looking for?” And sometimes taking that approach helps you to open up a whole, again, different stream of business. Because you’re not thinking like a voice actor anymore. You’re thinking like the end consumer.
Anne: What’s great about that Gabby, I love that, is that it’s going to connect with you a lot of production companies, which are the middlemen between the client and the end product, which are going to do the videos. They’re going to create the videos, they’re gong to create the content, and incorporate that audio into it, which is fabulous!
Gabby: Whether it be production companies, it could be advertising agencies, could be creative buyers, creative companies at large, it could be videographers, audio producers, it’s going to help you access those individuals, but doing it in a way that they will be more receptive to. Too many voice actors get on the web and just go, “voiceover roster for…” and then fill in the blank, whether it be commercials or e-learning or whatever it is. Ehh. That’s not always going to get you where you want to be.
Anne: Or if they’re searching for companies right and they’re mining the web for companies, then they’re going to send a generic email to the creative director without necessarily knowing as much as they could about who they should contact. So I think that most people go at it at one level. They don’t go deep enough into it in order to be effective. And so, therefore when they go and they say “Oh, I did that. I went and I looked for clients and I didn’t get any response.” Well, a lot of that is that you probably didn’t go far enough or in depth enough to find out more about the company and how you might be able to serve them. And Gabby, that actually brings me to the point, if you’re contacting a company and they’re not expecting to hear from you, or they’re not expecting to hear a sales pitch, you definitely don’t want to be put in the spam folder. Especially if you’re trying to contact one of those middlemen, agencies, production companies, media houses, or advertising agencies where if you do send an email, you don’t want it to be too generic that it’s going to be thrown into the spam can. You want to make sure that you are being heard. So, that reminds me Gabby, VO B.O.S.S. has a really cool product called B.O.S.S. Blast.
Gabby: Yes!
Anne: That actually has permission based client list that we can draw from in order to send your marketing to! Which is a huge, huge, huge thing! Because the number one reason why you may not be able to get in touch with other people directly is that you have been put into the spam filter. And you want to make sure that you’re contacting people who are ready and kind of understanding that they might be contacted by people like you in order to help them serve their business.
Gabby: Well, they’ve opted in. They’ve literally said “Yes, I want to hear from this type of service provider.” And in our case, it’s voiceover actors! Yay!
Anne: So, just to let you guys know that we do offer that service in addition to your own mining the web for clients, we do have a service at VO B.O.S.S. that has a list of over 90,000 opted in creative buyers who are actually expecting to hear from a creative voiceover talent such as yourself.
Gabby: I also think though, that part of what makes something like what we’re doing with VO B.O.S.S. Blast so impressive is how we can really target and hone in to very specific types of industries very specific types of people. It really makes that whole process a lot more streamlined. So, we are able to take those 90,000 people on that list and we have specific industries and specific markets that they are looking for whether it be commercial or automotive or whatever it might be, we’re able to tailor the marketing blast to that specific portion of the list, which I think is half the battle.
Gabby: We literally tested it on ourselves. Because, how could we not? We kinda owe that to you guys. We gotta make sure it works!
Anne: And that’s kind of a cool thing! So, just so you know, we’ve already go that access something that you don’t have to worry about. We designed the template, we send out on your behalf. We actually work with you two times, both Gabby and I will have an initial consult with you to figure out what brand, what market to send your blast to, we actually create the blast as well for you. We send it from our very own email servers so you don’t have to worry about being blacklisted if you’re sending out to a lot of people. And we send it out from our servers, we’re able to find out how many people after that blast has gone out, how many people have opened your email, and how many people might have clicked the link to maybe go listen to your demo. So, we’ve got a lot of great stuff in place. It’s taken us a good 4 months or so to put this product in place and we’re really excited to talk to you guys about it and to have you start using it and have you start being successful with it.
Gabby: And understand that when it comes to the whole topic of web mining, and finding your own clients, it’s a combination of efforts. Right? It’s your own and it’s using services like us and it’s putting those efforts together to make a sales plan. Not simply just one exclusive method. It’s kind of the problem we see industry wide. Right? It’s where we started. Everybody says, “How do I get clients outside of pay-to-play?”
Anne: Exactly. That’s the biggest question. How do I get clients?
Gabby: Yeah. That’s the first starting ground. Stop putting your eggs in one basket and start spreading it around a little.
Anne: So if you guys want to know more, you can simply go to VOBoss.com and take a look in the Shop area for the Boss Blast and it will explain to you, we have lots of great options. You can specify markets that the blast is going to go to, you can specify your own industry, whatever market you want to go to, and Gabby and I can help you to also determine that as well. What would be the best market to send this to. You can add on other local markets, regional markets, major markets, just a ton of options to create the best list for you.
Gabby: And while you’re on VO B.O.S.S., make sure to get in touch with us. Tell us about some of your sales tactics. The things you like to do to mine for clients. We’ve got this great voicemail feature where you can actually leave us a message and be featured on a future episode.
Anne: Please do! We love to hear from you guys. And we like to answer your questions too! So if you have a particular question that you want us to answer in our next podcast, it could be yours!
Gabby: Get in touch with us via Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and through the website and of course, please make sure to subscribe to us on iTunes and Stitcher.
Anne: And a big thanks to our sponsor, ipDTL for our quality connection and recording! You too can record like a boss as ipDTL.com
Gabby: Thanks for spending another week with us guys! We’ll see you later!
Anne: See you soon!
VO: Join us next week for another edition of VO B.O.S.S. with your host Anne Ganguzza and Gabby Nistico. All rights reserved. Anne Ganguzza Voice Talent in association with Three Moon Media. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via ipDTL.