Boost Your Post! Here’s $150 in free Google AdWords! We’ll get you to the top of the search engines! Ever feel like everyone is trying to sell you some form of web advertising for your business? The Bosses have been there too. In today’s episode we talk about what works, how to spend advertising money wisely and where not to invest.
Takeaways
Quick Concepts from Today’s Episode:
Everyone is talking about social media and web advertising.
So many companies are trying to get you to spend money.
The Fizzle Podcast recently did an episode on social media ads so we are exploring these methods for VO.
Advertising for voice actors should be very targeted to a super specific buying audience.
Sometimes buying AdWords is simply about ensuring that you show up at the top of the list when someone searches the web.
Targeted emails are very effective and self controlled forms of advertising.
Repetition and nudging a client in your direction can be an effective long term strategy.
Social Media ads let your clients get to know you better. And it’s a long game.
The opportunity to have access to a buyer and remind them of what you do is critical.
Email & physical mailing lists, phone numbers, etc. allow direct contact with a client.
Advertising methods that come with vetted lists have greater returns.
Social media ads can help you hook a buyer IF your buyer is “hanging out” on social media.
Facebook’s reputation has taken a hit and people don’t trust it the way they used to.
You could go broke boosting posts, so it makes more sense to drive your social media audience to your own website.
Convert followers and friends into subscribers.
These methods are lengthy and take time. None of it is quick.
Start with organic SEO and advertising methods to better understand the process.
Referenced in this Episode
Direct links to things we brought up ++
Recorded on ipDTL
Learn how to brand yourself with Anne and Gabby in our VO BOSS University Class: Brand Aid
Full Episode Transcript
>> Today’s voiceover talent is more than just a pretty voice.
>> Pretty voice.
>> Pretty voice.
>> Pretty voice.
>> Today’s voiceover talent has to be a BOSS.
>> BOSS.
>> A BOSS.
>> A BOSS.
>> Join us each week for business owner strategies and success with your hosts Anne Ganguzza and Gabrielle Nistico, along with some of the strongest voices in our industry.
>> Rock your business.
>> Rock your business.
>> Rock your business.
>> Like a BOSS.
>> Like a BOSS.
>> Rock your business like a BOSS.
>> Rock your business like a BOSS.
>> A VO BOSS.
>> A VO BOSS.
>> A VO BOSS.
Anne: Welcome, everybody, to the VO BOSS podcast. I’m your host, Anne Ganguzza, along with my amazing bosstie-bestie, Gabby Nistico.
Gabby: Hi.
Anne: Hey, Gabby.
Gabby: Hello.
Anne: Gabby, I was listening to another podcast the other morning.
Gabby: How dare you!
Anne: And they got onto a discussion –
Gabby: Traitor.
Anne: “Traitor.” I listen to ours all the time, by the way. You just got me off topic, but that’s ok. I like to have an excuse to go drive in my car so I can listen to our own podcast. Do you do that?
Gabby: I don’t do it as often as you do simply because I do all the editing.
Anne: Yes. [laughs]
Gabby: So I mean, it’s a little different for me, but yes. I’ll do that too.
Anne: For me, it’s like a little gift, because I don’t do the editing, and I’m always waiting for like Gabby’s edits [laughs] because it all just, you just wrap it up so nicely in this little pretty package.
Gabby: I know, I make us sound incredibly eloquent. [laughs]
Anne: You do, you do. I know the little mistakes that [laughs] I know all the flub-ups that I do.
Gabby: Ehh.
Anne: It magically just disappears. Anyway, so –
Gabby: Power of postproduction.
Anne: So yes, I’ll admit that I was listening to another podcast, but hey, I’m always doing competitive analysis.
Gabby: [laughs]
Anne: But I actually like this podcast a lot. It’s the Fizzle podcast. There’s three people on there, on the Fizzle podcast, and they were talking about social media advertising. And it made me think about advertising for our own voiceover businesses.
Gabby: Yeah.
Anne: And how effective is it, really, this day and age, you know, what’s happening? I mean, it used to be all the rage when they first came on the scene. I was like, “I want to get ahead of the game,” and what does it look like to actually create ads on social media and pay for them? What do you think, Gabby?
Gabby: I think that advertising in any form is highly effective if it’s very targeted, very strategized, and geared to a very specific buyer. The more niche your business, the more that holds true. Now if you’re selling a general product that you know is consumable and people use, you’re selling paper towels, I mean, knock yourself out. Get it out there to everyone. But what we do is so specialized, I don’t see a big benefit in buying in to, you know, just random Google ad word campaigns. Because we see a lot of that. I mean like, I don’t know about you, but I mean, good God. Google is in my inbox every day going, [funny voice] “spend money, optimize this, do this, do this. Hey! You can boost this post!”
Anne: But wait, Anne Gangoogle says [laughs]
Gabby: I feel like you put your eyeglasses on the minute you say “Anne Gangoogle says.”
Anne: Anne Gangoogle says –
Gabby: Like a little PBS special.
Anne: You may think you get Google email every day, but guess what? You use Google every day. So I think there’s two pieces to this puzzle. One is people that are trying to advertise with their Google ad words or whatever they’re doing because it will show up, right, in a Google search. So therefore they become the top of the list for anybody that’s looking for a service. Now I think you’ve also got the other – the other thing that you mentioned was the targeting. And I completely agree with you on that targeting. If you think about it, I think we ourselves, like I subscribe to a bunch of different lists or I do, I online shop.
Gabby: We all do, sure.
Anne: For the stores I happen to frequent, I sign up for their mailing lists. The very targeted emails that get sent to me, “oh, you left something in your cart,” or you know, “you were looking at this previously, you might like this,” any of that type of advertising speaks to me instantly.
Gabby: Ahh, see this is interesting. I think this is just how my brain defines advertising. I see email marketing differently. To me that’s a separate thing. When I think of an ad, I think of, I’m paying another source or another media for time or space, whereas if I’m sending ad email to my own list –
Anne: Ah, but how are you acquiring that list? I think this is where people tend to think that the social media advertising and ads on Facebook are going to get you more clients. However, I think you’ve got a couple of trains of thought here, that some people just can’t stand it, and they don’t want to see the ads, and they just, they’ll turn it off or they’ll unsubscribe, or they won’t follow you.
Gabby: Suck it up, buttercups.
Anne: Right? Exactly. I say suck it up because we’re all businesses, right? Instead of that type of advertising where it’s a push sell in-your-face, kind of thing, I think a more gentle technique is, you know, the old Gary Vaynerchuk, jab, jab, jab, hook. Your social media “advertising,” and that was my air quote right there, is really having your potential audience get to know you better and have you be a top of mind kind of thing.
Gabby: It’s a long game, right.
Anne: Oh, it is a long game.
Gabby: I don’t think anybody in retail right now thinks in this way. It’s not about, how do I make the immediate sale and get people to buy now? It’s, how do I get the opportunity to sell to you again and again and again, and how do I, how do I’ve access to you in order to be able to keep reminding you of what I do?
Anne: Oh yeah. That’s it. How do I have access to you? I’m a firm believer, and I think we agree on this, that email marketing is a very valid method.
Gabby: Chaa!
Anne: Very valid method to increasing sales and getting business.
Gabby: Vetted lists, having access to specific individuals, whether they’re ones who do you had direct communication with prior, or that you’ve had a working relationship with, or those that you buy that you’re able to use, but again that have opted in. Everything that we do with the BOSS blasts and products that we offer for our clients, of course, it’s also, you know, purchasing industry specific list sells. Like every few years I buy the one at Radio Mall for radio imaging purposes. I mean, it’s same thing, it’s very, very targeted stuff. And all you’re really doing is, you’re buying the opportunity to try to sell to someone.
Anne: Yeah, absolutely.
Gabby: You’re not guaranteed a sale.
Anne: I think that’s effective. I think if you need to expand your audience, right, if you need to look for new buyers, you need to hook them somehow, and I think that social media ads can help to a certain extent.
Gabby: But do you think that someone who’s out in the universe right now, who’s shopping for a voice actor, is using something like Facebook to do that? Do you believe that a Joe Shmo voice actor, putting out an ad to sell his voice on Facebook, is going to be effective?
Anne: If whoever it is, if they’re hanging out on social media, and it’s part of their job – it used to be a lot more strict, but I think that more companies now are a little more forgiving in terms of having their employees hang out on social media because it becomes a part of their business. It becomes part of their marketing. So I think that, you know, during the 8-5 day or whatever, somebody’s out there shopping for a voice, if they’re hanging out on LinkedIn, where I think a lot of people hang out, at least for my target areas of the industry, if they’re doing Instagram, Facebook, then I think you have a chance. I don’t know if it’s as good of a chance today as it was when it first started coming out. And the only reason I say that is because the biggest platform there is, which is Facebook, has been doing so much finagling with their algorithm, right?
Gabby: Yeah.
Anne: And they’ve also had some brand tarnishing recently that I think people are not necessarily as trusting in the brand. And by the way, that’s a whole other podcast, your brand trust. Look at what’s happened. How many people are trusting Facebook these days to have social media ads? And I can also go further and say Instagram. What is the effectiveness? And one more thing, have you read that now they are thinking about taking away the likes? So you won’t even know how many people liked you. And so if that used to be a big factor for Instagram celebrities, right, then you know, Kim Kardashian would have, you know, a billion likes, and that was able to help market for companies. That may not be a viable solution anymore.
Gabby: Well, that’s what I mean. Is it cost prohibitive? Anybody can boost any post at this point. It doesn’t even have to be an ad. Anything you post can be boosted on any of the social platforms.
Anne: Sure.
Gabby: You know, for $50, $100. But I mean, like, will it achieve anything? Will it do anything? Because I feel like a voice actor who isn’t savvy about this, a small business owner who’s not savvy, like you could go broke just –
Anne: Oh you could.
Gabby: – just boosting ads.
Anne: And you have to really understand how to use the tools to find out what your ROI is, right, what your return on investment is, because you, who clicked? Right? Where’d they click, how did they get there? How did they – and a lot of times I think people are very skeptical. Well, did it really get sent to 10,000 people? And where – I think it all started, the decline on Facebook happened when Facebook business pages became where only 1% of your audience was able to see your posts.
Gabby: Yeah.
Anne: And I think that that’s where it started to maybe go downhill. And I think what a lot of people have resorted to is, you know, the free aspects of social media, probably a better tactic would be allowing people to get to know you. Not necessarily marketing, but allow people to get to know you through your social media channels and drive them to your website, which then in turn, you could have a vetted list, right, or a list builder –
Gabby: Right, gives you the availability to subscribe them, get them engaged somehow.
Anne: Exactly, exactly.
Gabby: Remember when pay per clicks were cheap? You could buy, you could buy a keyword for like $.70 or some like –
Anne: The good old days.
Gabby: Oh my God. Now –
Anne: The domain names – I forget what it was I was looking for the other day, it was like $80,000. Really?
Gabby: What kills me is, you know, you go and you look at the stats right now on a word like voiceover, and its value per click, it’s up in the $11 range, I believe.
Anne: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
Gabby: That’s nuts.
Anne: That’s why our sponsor, Voiceovers.com is making a hefty, hefty –
Gabby: Return on the investment of the domain.
Anne: Oh, investment in, yeah, that domain name, as well as advertising.
Gabby: Yeah.
Anne: So I think in order to gain any traction here, you have to invest a boat ton of money. I believe. Otherwise you’re better served to be on social media, hang out where your potential client is, and try to listen, and help, and post –
Gabby: Lurk.
Anne: Yeah, lurk.
Gabby: Lurk, comment.
Anne: Exactly, and comment, and essentially do that method of what I call advertising, is to find out, do research on the industry that you want to –
Gabby: Long game.
Anne: Yeah, exactly. I think it’s a much longer game than some people realize.
Gabby: It’s ridiculous.
Anne: People give up so quickly.
Gabby: Oh my God. I love when people are like –
Anne: It took years, guys, years.
Gabby: “I’ve been doing this for three months, and nothing’s” – I’m like “oh, come on. Are you serious?”
Anne: Years of – Anybody in the voiceover industry that has longevity, right, they know this. They know this to be true. And people that are just starting – “I can’t, I don’t understand. I’m not getting any work. Yeah, I just, I’ve been doing my cold calling and my emailing to my list for two months, and you know, nothing.” And I’m like, “oh my God, guys.”
Gabby: I’ve stalked clients like a cheetah in the wilderness.
Anne: [laughs]
Gabby: Miles –
Anne: Me too.
Gabby: 200 miles of terrain, I still have you in my sights. [laughs]
Anne: And years, right, Gabby? Years. We’re not talking just months. We’re talking years that I’ve been on the radar for some of my clients. I mean, years. It’s frustrating when I hear people giving up so quickly.
Gabby: Anne, what are your thoughts on all of the – ‘cause God, there’s so many of them, the SEO companies, the pay-per-click companies, they’re usually overseas, they bombard our emails? You know, everybody’s trying to get you to spend money with them to place these ads, and to do this sort of thing. I think sometimes out of desperation, it becomes appealing to people.
Anne: Oh yeah, I agree. I’m gonna say, look, first of all, step back. [laughs] Step back and educate yourself. That’s the most important thing I think you can do. I don’t necessarily agree with SEO companies per se that say they can get you up at the top of the list. I think you need to have a really good, foundational knowledge of SEO and how it works, and of course just remember the understanding that if you don’t work for Google, [laughs] you don’t know the algorithm. And even if you do work for Google, you may not know the algorithm. And if you do it, you do know the algorithm, guess what? You’ve signed your life away and your firstborn child. [laughs]
Gabby: And probably your best friend’s firstborn child.
Anne: Says Anne Gangoogle. But –
Gabby: But here’s the thing with that too, I think what people miss is that it’s, it’s not a scam, but there’s a shadiness to those practices, in the sense that, they’ll go, “oh, we’ll get you to number one. But what they don’t tell you is that you hit number one on a Sunday at 3:00 in the morning. And like, but if they can prove, if they can show you a screenshot of one search, at one time, where you were number one, that’s it. They fulfilled their obligation to you.
Anne: Or you’ll be number one for a very obscure set of words.
Gabby: Yes. That’s what I mean. You don’t, you don’t stay there.
Anne: Yeah.
Gabby: The SEO game is constantly evolving, and there’s always competing people.
Anne: Yes.
Gabby: So you’ll not stay at the top for very long, if you’re not investing crazy, crazy, obnoxious amounts of money.
Anne: Well, here’s the thing. And if you want to be at the top of your SEO game, get your organic SEO first. Which, what does that mean? That means –
Gabby: Amen.
Anne: Write good content. And don’t just write good content once. You need to keep updating that good content. Because I think that’s the best type of SEO you can get. The only other thing I would think that you could pay for would be maybe somebody to help you write that content or update that content on a regular basis.
Gabby: Good call.
Anne: Yeah.
Gabby: Good call for sure. I mean, guys, I’m sorry. If you’re sitting back listening to this with a two-page website, trying to figure out how to get it to the top of the search engines, good luck. You need 30 pages to be able to achieve that. Anne, are you aware of how Gmail is now in effect segregating promotional emails?
Anne: Oh yeah. Yeah. They’ve kind of started that a while ago.
Gabby: Yeah.
Anne: Where it goes into a separate tab. I still use the classic Gmail.
Gabby: Yeah, but do you know, a lot of people don’t know it exists.
Anne: They don’t.
Gabby: So there’s now a separate folder. This is not your spam folder. This is not your trash folder. This is a separate folder in your emails labeled promotions. If you open it up, you’re gonna be like, holy crap, because you’re gonna have, I kid you not, like I had 50 emails from The Gap. I was like, I don’t even shop there. What the hell? Yeah. So keep an eye on that, because companies that you may actually want to hear from, and things that you may be interested in, they may be ending up in the promotions folder, and you don’t even know it.
Anne: And Gmail makes that determination. Do we pay for Gmail? I don’t. So again –
Gabby: Point well taken.
Anne: They have my – right? They have my heart.
Gabby: Touché.
Anne: [laughs] They have my heart and I go with them. When I lost – When I was done with my corporate job, Gabby, this is all I had. Right? I was a big Outlook fan, and –
Gabby: Me too.
Anne: To be an Outlook fan, you need to have a server. You need to have like a company that’s supporting you.
Gabby: Yeah. The idea of walking away from Outlook at first was terrifying to me. That transition, I was like noooo!
Anne: Yeah. I don’t give much to Microsoft these days, but you got to give Microsoft credit for Outlook, because that is a brilliant, amazing product, and Word. There’s nobody that has really come close to them yet. [laughs]
Gabby: Yeah, it’s true.
Anne: Google’s trying. And you know, Google Docs, and it’s all good stuff, but again, remember, you don’t pay for Google. You pay for Microsoft.
Gabby: One thing that I would say for, you know, a pro for the whole advertising topic is, if you have an opportunity to advertise yourself in a “traditional fashion,” air quotes, where you’re taking out an ad in a space, again, it’s very specific, or it’s very niche, do it. Of course.
Anne: Even on social media. If you have a very targeted list.
Gabby: It’s not bank breaking. Do it.
Anne: Exactly, exactly.
Gabby: And then test. Don’t just do it once. Test it.
Anne: Yeah, don’t do it once and give up.
Gabby: Tweak it. Do it again.
Anne: Tweak it, test it, try the organic method first, right, try hanging out in the social media channels where you think your potential clients are, get to know them without having to pay for ads, and then work that list. And then if you want to expand beyond that, then yeah, absolutely do work on figuring out who your potential clients are and get the targeted qualities and characteristics on a list that you understand, and make sure that you can target them with an ad, and I think you’ll be successful.
Gabby: Get your binoculars, a bushwhacker, and all of your gear, because you’re going into the jungle.
Anne: [laughs] There you go.
Gabby: You’re going in.
Anne: You’re going in, guys. Do it, get brave.
Gabby: [laughs]
Anne: All right, guys. I’d like to give a big shout-out to our amazing sponsor, ipDTL. You too can record, connect like a boss at ipdtl.com.
Gabby: And Voiceovers.com, things are happening, guys. It’s getting started. It’s taking a little time, but you know what? That long game, right, we’ve been talking about, it’s worth it.
Anne: It is.
Gabby: Fair, efficient, transparent, everything we’ve been asking for. Go check them out. Voiceovers.com.
Anne: Have a great week, guys. We’ll see you next week.
Gabby: Bye!
Anne: Bye!
Announcer: Join us next week for another edition of VO BOSS with your hosts 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.
[outtakes]
1
Gabby: [in Russian accent] All right, I have, I have some other possibilities.
2
Anne: Hold on.
Gabby: Hurry the [beep] up.
Anne: It’s hot, man!
Gabby: I know. Holy [beep] my room is hot. Whooo! Sweaty!
3
Anne: Oi. [laughs] You think I just stepped up like 10 feet into my studio, but it was like, literally –
Gabby: Silly –
Anne: Six inches maybe if that.
Gabby: [sighs]
Anne: Oahhh! [laughs] Gerry has like taken to saying, I’m making, I’m making old man noises. When you become a certain age, and you bend over, and all of a sudden like a big groan.
Gabby: Uahhh!
Anne: No, ok. So mine is always when I go to a public bathroom. [laughs]
Gabby: Oh no.
Anne: [laughs]
Gabby: Oh no.
Anne: [laughs]
4
Gabby: Whoo. Oh la la la la la.
5
Anne: So what are we talking about now?
Gabby: We’ve got our 4:00 call with what’s his nuts.
Anne: OK.
Gabby: And then I may have to go to a dealership after that, so, that’s what I’m trying to figure out here.
Anne: A dealership.
Gabby: I may be buying a car.
Anne: Oh really?
Gabby: Yeah, I’m trading mine in.
Anne: Oh, your Honda?
Gabby: I hate my car. Yeah.
Anne: Why?
Gabby: I never liked my car. I’ve always driven two-doors, I’ve always had Coupes.
Anne: Yeah?
Gabby: And my [beep] financial advisor, this was back, you know – however many years ago was like –
Anne: Get a sedan.
Gabby: Yeah. Get a sedan, like cut your car payment in half kind of thing. So I did, and I saved a bunch of money that way, and it was great. And now I’m just, I’m over it, and I found a really good deal on a BMW!
Anne: Ohhh, look at you.
Gabby: That is a two-door. That, when all is said and done, it, the car payment will be exactly the same as what I have now. The BMW. James isn’t thrilled about it, but I don’t care.
Anne: Because the Honda, because the Honda is the better car.
Gabby: They’re both really good cars.
Anne: Yeah, BMW is a good car.
Gabby: The deal with the BMW is the maintenance is higher.
Anne: Mm-hmm.
Gabby: And parts cost more.
Anne: Yeah.
Gabby: As a mechanic, the reason he doesn’t like it is they’re just a difficult car to work on. I’m having a – I need to do something for me –
Anne: I’m telling ya, I love my little Civic, sporty little ass car.
Gabby: I do like your Civic a lot. I like the new Civics. I just, used, I can’t find one right now that’s where I want to be payment wise.
Anne: That makes sense.
Gabby: And I don’t want to buy a brand-new one.
Anne: Yeah. You’re having a midlife crisis, Gabby.