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J.S. Gilbert, Voice Overs, Referrals, Promotion, Marketing, Tips, Voice Acting, Business

Transcript of Referral Marketing Tips for Voice Actors

[Opening Music]

Julie-Ann Dean: Welcome to Voiceover Experts brought to you by Voices.com, the number one voiceover marketplace. Voiceover Experts brings you tips, pearls of wisdom and techniques from top instructors, authors and performers in the field of voiceover. Join us each week to discover tricks of the trade that will help you to develop your craft and prosper as a career voiceover talent. It's never been easier to learn, perform, and succeed from the privacy of your own home and your own pace. This is truly an education you won't find anywhere else.

Now for our special guest.

J.S. Gilbert: Hi and welcome. I'm J.S. Gilbert. I live and work in Northern California in Northern California as a voice actor and also a writer, director and producer in several industries including gaming, commercial and internet and I also write for different publications regarding aspects of productions, advertising, marketing and related topics.

In my last podcast, I ask that voice actors tear apart the constraints of the words voice actors or voice talent for the sake of marketing themselves as problem solvers. Before we'd get started, I'd ask you to grab a pen and something to write on. There won't be copious notes but I will have reference websites and there maybe some other things you'd like to jot down.

The first thing I'd like to say is that we all have to start somewhere and just as in painting, the hardest thing to do is make that first brushstroke. So whether you're new to voiceover or you've been at it for a while, understand that the methods being used to look for, find and employ voice actors are evolving ad changing all the time. Understanding the dynamic nature of things will help you keep up and increase your chances of being a productive member of the voiceover community and an effective marketing program can be very simple or highly complex.

It's up to you, your resources, commitment, finances and so forth. Today, I'm going to talk about some marketing ideas that are relatively simple and very low cost but first, let's briefly backtrack over the last podcast.

Being a problem solver means understanding your marketplace and how you fit in. It means researching companies, ad agencies, individuals to determine the type of work they create, the styles, perhaps even the actual talent they have hired in the past but also who they are as individuals, their business ideology and so on. It means that when you approach someone, you have something to converse with them about that is of interest and importance to them and that is not all about you either being a voice actor or wanting to be a voice actor.

If for example, you're a former or current teacher, you have many things in common with individuals and companies that produce educational materials. You can relate to people about the challenges they have in maintaining the interest of students, how you dealt with these issues and how that relates to your approach to doing voiceover for this market. If you have a background in grammar and language and you've learned the craft of voice acting, almost any producer would want to have you around since for the price of an actor, they also get a language specialist. Of course you would delicately point out this benefit to them.

What I often find contradictory among the talent who work at marketing is how often they will go to enormous lengths to get the name of someone at some company. An individual they don't know have no relationship with and one who in all likelihood already has adequate systems in place for hiring talent. In other words, a cold prospect that you would cold call. Well, if you do work at pitching yourself as a problem solver, that will give you a little edge but for most of us, there isn't enough there for the prospective client to bite on. Of course you could string enough of these cold prospects together and like tossing spaghetti against the wall, something may stick somewhere. Whether all of your hard work rewards you on an hourly basis at or below minimum wage is something we all should think about however.

It's not the compensation we get for the 40-minute job but all of the hours that go into getting that job, all the auditions, contacts, expense, classes, learning and so forth. You need to find marketing that will be as effective as possible and at the same time, cost-effective. So forget about the cold calls and let's look at referral marketing. Now before you go ahead with this, one of the things I recommend you do is create a business snapshot for yourself. Sit down and make some sort of budget template for yourself, list all your bills and so forth then list your income sources. List things that may likely change or increase. List some of your strengths and weaknesses. What's your fallback plan if you don't secure a work for a period of time in voiceover? Can you pay the bills and keep from getting into debt or borrowing or it's all about going into things with both eyes open whether you've been at this for two weeks or 20 years.

Secondly, are you at a point where you feel you can compete on some level? Have you really studied your craft and learned enough about the industry terms, expectations, the business of the VO business as well as acting? Again, we all have to start somewhere but you can blow a really god potential introduction if you can't deliver the goods. With this regard, you might want to limit yourself to narrower parameters that might exclude contacting certain individuals until you've developed appropriate skill sets. Remember the rule of the people who hire. They often forgive but seldom forget. It's an unfortunate part of this profession that a bad audition or performance tends to be far more memorable than a good one.

Don't let that bad communication pop up and bite you in the posterior three or five years later down the road when despite your growth and development, a potential client may still judge you on that past relationship. So, drum roll please. Here is the magic formula. Sit down and make a list of everyone you know. You will be surprised at how long this list can get. You start with your friends including those you've lost touch with, friends of your parents, parents of your kid's friends, your neighbors, your clergy, dry cleaner, insurance sales man, cable installer, favorite bartenders, regular waitress at the diner, the guy you buy the paper from, pool boy, postal carrier, druggist, doctor, lawyer, (Indian) chief, co-workers, boss, ex-coworkers, ex-boss - well, you get the idea.

Those documents or list or database should be dynamic and something you would add to everyday or several times a day. Carry it with you. If you don't know the names of people, and only know them by sight, then introduce yourself and learn their name. Jot down whatever contact information you have for the person even if it's out of date, put the list in some sort of priority when you can with the people you know best and are easiest to talk to at the beginning and those who may need to research or have lost touch with coming down the line.

The next step is to jot down information about these people, whatever you know, birthdays, names of husbands, wives, kids, pets, type of work, how you met them, how you relate to them, their favorite color. If you have a little spare time, you can use online services like LinkedIn to help get back in touch with people you may have fallen out of touch with. Now sit down and make some sort of needs assessment. You might be looking for introductions to potential clients. Well, that's usually the number one priority for a voice actor but you might also be hoping to find someone who knows about microphones or home audio to help you out or maybe someone who can put together an inexpensive website for you or help with graphic design for your demo cover or someone who can watch your kids when you have to go on a gig then the next step is to put together your elevator pitch and make sure it's not structured as less than.

If you're marketing today because you're still training and want to have a marketing plan in place when you feel ready, then that's a positive and that' something to apologize for or downplay then the next step is to make the phone calls, send the e-mails, the snail mail or however it is you're going to get in touch with these people. You want to have that elevator pitch together and that's what it's all about. Try a couple of mock phone calls with a spouse or friend before you go ahead and if you can post an e-mail or letter, run it by a few people you trust first. Forget about sending demos or resumes or any of the hard (inaudible) right now. Make it a relatively straight shot. Oh, and you'll need to ask for whatever it is you want such as, "I was hoping you might be able to introduce me or give me the contact information to the person at your company that's responsible for finding voice talent," or asking if someone has any experience with how voice talent might get hired in a particular industry and for what things.

Now, this is isn't easy but these are people you have an association with and they will be more patient and understanding and helpful than a stranger. After a while, things will become much clearer as you'll no doubt spend a lot of time Googling words and phrases you might no be familiar with. You will get leads like the time I was referred to a bigwig with Taco Bell. Had I cold called the Taco Bell guy, I never would have gotten the past the voicemail but mentioning the name of one of my associates got him to talk to me and that in turn got him to call the ad agency they used and request that I be given a chance to audition and the ad agency not knowing my exact relationship with Mr. Taco Bell bigwig complies of course. They want to make the client happy and instead of having some chucklehead in front of them who didn't know what he was doing, they had me, a trained chucklehead in front of them who surprised them with how good this audition was and then because they assumed that hiring the guy the client referred would make the client happy, the agency pushed me to the top of the list.

Now, I wish I could say I got that I got the Taco Bell spokesperson job and stacks of money but I actually lost out to Charlie Sheen who at the last minute decided to come in and be their spokesperson. But the agency did have me do a couple of other things. Well, perhaps to make up for the fact that I lost the Taco Bell spokes job or maybe they really like me. In any case, I got an opportunity which eventually led to work. I've also got through, local corner market, and relatives of friends and I've gotten referrals from referrals from referrals, some of whom hired me and others who just passed me along. These people are much more congenial than the ones I've cold called. They're more likely to return a phone call or an e-mail and of course, I do everything I can to find out as much about them so that I can relate to them about what's important to them. There are also lead clubs in almost every town and city and even organized groups of individuals and networking groups who network referrals.

If you play your cards right, you might never need to make a cold call. Go to Entrepreneur.com and click on the marketing link and you will find tons of helpful articles about creating a buzz, referral marketing through networks and lots more creative concepts for marketing your talents

In our next installment, we'll deal with some more concrete ways of marketing as a problem solver, how to find business all around you and some common mistakes you should avoid. If you'd like to get a hold of me, visit my Voices.com page or just Google J.S. Gilbert and you'll see a bunch of pages with all my various contact information. Thanks for listening and good luck.

Julie-Ann Dean: Thank you for joining us. To learn more about the special guest featured in this Voices.com podcast, visit the Voiceover Experts show notes at Podcasts.Voices.com/VoiceoverExperts. Remember to stay subscribed.

If you're a first time listener, you can subscribe for free to this podcast in the Apple iTunes Podcast Directory or by visiting Podcasts.Voices.com. To start your voiceover career online, go to Voices.com and register for a voice talent membership today.

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Links from today's show:

J.S. Gilbert

Your Instructor this week:

Voice Over Expert J.S. Gilbert

J.S. Gilbert has been active in the Bay Area for over 25 years. He is a trained actor, voice talent, engineer, audio director, writer and copywriter. His work has bridged over from the advertising community to technology to video games and the hospitality industry. Currently, J.S. produces audio and performs v.o. for the educational industry, commercials, branding, the internet, audio books, interactive and the gaming industry. He has also personally been voice talent on almost 400 video games and numerous commercials, industrials, voice mail projects, etc. J.S. produces the Gilbert e-newsletter, which is an extensive resource to monthly Bay Area events, mixers and other items of interest to the Creative Community and has a current readership of just under 5,000 people. J.S. is also on the Board of Directors for BAARC (Bay Area Advertising Relief Committee), and is a member of the Professional Advisory Committee at the Art Institute of California. J.S. is also a contributor and on the Advisory Board to Create Magazine. J.S. also writes for other publications on advertising, gaming, technology and convergence. J.S. was formerly on the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Ad Club and was Bay Area ADDY Awards Chair for 2005 and 2006. He is the recipient of many awards, including SF Ad Club's President's Award, AV Video Magazines Top 100 Producers List, ADDYS, Tellys, and others. J.S. was a featured voice talent on "10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America", which was an Emmy award winner. J.S. can be reached at jsgilbert@pacbell.net His cell number is 415-336-6238.

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