Personal marketing

Thomas C. Gass · Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2007, 00:20 (GMT) Post subject: Personal marketing

I wonder how you all do your "personal marketing" job. Although most of us get jobs over internet services like voice123.com or censored.com Laughing

, how do you try to get in touch with new customers beside these services? Do you have a personal website? Do you send out printed information? Do you call studios you find the telephone book? Do you send out demo CDs? Do you contact companies with "taylor made" demos? What are your experiences with...

Looking forward to share "marketing ideas" with you

Thomas

J.S. Gilbert

Thomas,
I don't know what stage of your v.o. career you are in. I would say that most of the people I know get the bulk of their opportunities coming through talent agents. I clearly beleive that the methods of casting and conducting our business are clearly changing and evolving. There seem to be hundreds of online communities. Some are nothing more than a few friends who have pooled together resources to make a web site and endeavor to come up in the search engines. I would imagine that any personal marketing plan needs to take into account numerous factors including:

Amount of time you can spend marketing
Amount of money you can spend marketing
Personal contacts and connections
Are you looking to make a full time income?
Do you have credits and/or an existing client base that you can "data mine"?
Industries yoou most likely work for. For example, there are unique aspects to radio imaging, broadcast commercials, voice mail, video games, web based dynamic presentations, trade shows, etc.
Your physical location - even mediocre talent in Los Angeles and New York can work occasionally.

I would suggest you look at tried and trrue publications like any of Jay Conrad Levinson's books on Guerrila Marketing. There are numerous publications that will speak to methodolgy of marketing oneself online.

The best opportunities still seem to filter through talent agents. The bulk of my work generally originates with one of my agents.

Robert Jadah · Posted: Sat Feb 17, 2007, 14:32 (GMT) Post subject: Do the Hustle

The voice sites should be just the tip of the iceberg, Thomas.
The odds of landing enough jobs to keep the wolves away are long, and only over a long period of time might you be lucky and good enough to acquire enough repeat business to create a nice revenue base.
Every year, I send about fifty demos to voice agents and advertising agencies in my area. I follow up on these, and generally score on a couple.
Then I'm lucky enought to have an agent who steers me towards the occasional big-time gig.
But contacts are the biggest thing...work them. A business card is a must; something to drop on every innocent who says, "You have a nice voice; you should be in radio..."
And a website is also high on the list. When an opportunity comes up, you want to be able to have them listen to you as soon as possible.
Plus, it gives you a nice pro cachet.
As Sid and JS suggest, you also want to chase after everyone from the corner grocer to the dry cleaner to the exterminators (next door, of course.) Joe j. Actor extolls NETWORKING.
In short, the business isn't going to find you. It's the other way around.
Hustle On!

Thomas C. Gass · Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2007, 19:28 (GMT) Post subject:

Hello JS and Robert

thanks a lot for your feedback! Althouhg I probably didn't explain myself clearly with my original thread, you already gave me a lot of input about how *you* do self-marketing in your country.
I'm in the business since more than 20 years and I'm lucky to say that I can make a good living out of it (knock knock knock on wood Wink

So, I'm primarily not looking for hints about marketing to increase the amount of jobs I get, but I am interested in learning about the differences in vo business between the US and Europe.

Here for example, only a fraction of vo talents have their own website and in my country e.g. there are barely no agents. So you have to put a lot of effort in promoting yourself directly to studios and end-clients. Open vo sites like this one do not exist in Europe and the ones that are run by vo unions do have forums with 1 message every 3 months...

You see, that's why I am so exited about voice123 and wanted to know if this is the main marketing tool you all use or if you also concentrate on other possibilities to get into contact with potential customers.

All the best

Thomas