Marketing

Why Voice Actors Need Their Own Brand

September 27, 2020 by Laura Schreiber

…. When We Are the Voice Of the Brands Everyone Knows and Loves

Brand Identity

When I started working with my first voice over coach, Anne Ganguzza, I loved her website. It made her standout not just from other voice over actors but from other coaches. It was bold, it was easy to navigate, and it established Anne as a professional. In large part, because of the brand that Anne created on her website before ever speaking with her I trusted that Anne was a voice over professional and if I worked with her I would be successful. This is no accident. If you met Anne Ganguzza, then you know that she is a branding genius.

As voice over actors, daily we play both the role of the talent and the role of the small business owner. Immediately in 2015 I decided that not only would I coach with Anne but I would hire her to help build my brand, as I needed to learn all that I could from her. She hit the nail on the head, working hard to get to know me so that the brand that we built for Laura Schreiber Voice is truly a reflection of the work that I do and what I bring to my clients. As a working creative, we are in a unique role because we ultimately get hired by other brands to represent them, but it is in solidly establishing our own unique brand that we can distinguish ourselves from others in our industry. According to Forbes article from March 2018, “your brand often acts as a function of your reputation and visibility.” As a professional voice over actor, it is essential to establish your brand so that your clients will get to know you as an individual and will trust you as a professional.

Your Website

As a solopreneur, your brand begins with your website. It is your store front. Clients can listen to your demos, see samples of your booked work, and find out how to contact you. Those are the basics, but the fun begins when you use your website to do two things: show clients how you are different than other voice over actors and how you will best meet their needs. Kristin Wendys of The SelfEmployed.com advises “Think first with the eyes of a client and analyze what he is looking for, what are his biggest concerns, and what problems he needs to solve.” Some voice actors have brief summaries so that clients can quickly learn about their services, but much in the way that I am very chatty, my website is overflowing with long narrative explanations that I hope will help my clients connect with me.

Your Logo

Visual images help create your brand and your logo is very much a part of this. I have both an avatar that I love and a Laura Schreiber Voice Logologo. I use them both differently. My logo is on official correspondences like invoices with my avatar is on my business cards, thank you notes, return address labels, stickers… all marketing materials essential to establishing my business brand. According to Entrepreneur, “Simple branding is best, especially if you can make an association in people’s minds that helps them remember you.” My hope is that the feeling that people get when they see my logo and avatar will help build our connection. Everything associated with my brand is very pink and matches.

Why Clients Need To Understand Your Brand to Relate to You

The more clients feel that the know you, the more they will trust you and want to work with you. They want to know not just that you can do the job, but that you will make their life easier because they trusted you to do the job over someone with similar abilities and qualifications. It is wonderful to meet clients in person, but now more than ever this is not often possible, so your brand helps clients get to know you!

What Your Brand Enables you to Do When Marketing

As small business owners, building a brand that clients recognize enables them to hire us directly in lieu of going through a casting site or a talent agency. This direct rapport, booking through our website without our middleman, is the goal of our branding. If we are savvy enough to create a unique brand, we have an opportunity to book voice work directly. According to Forbes in October 2019, “By definition, brand familiarity is the process of creating brand presence by providing awareness, emotional connection, value, accessibility and relevant differentiation for your audience. Building strong brand familiarity is one of the most significant hurdles companies face.” If you are getting direct bookings, this is a great sign you are doing a good job with your brand and if you are not you likely need to keep working on it.

Here are some useful links if you want to research more about branding for solopreneurs:

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/349667

https://www.forbes.com/sites/yec/2018/03/15/how-to-build-your-brand-as-a-solopreneur-in-2018/#3ce49ef69631

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/223070

https://www.theselfemployed.com/10-branding-hacks-for-solopreneurs/https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2019/10/22/to-convert-more-customers-focus-on-brand-awareness/#f5d566d20759

Branding and Voiceover

February 10, 2020 by Laura Schreiber

If My Job is to Voice Other Brands, Why Does my Brand Matter?

As a voice over artist, I have the privilege of voicing projects for the brands we know, love, and use in our daily lives! While every single job is exciting, when a brand name that my family uses all the time, like Dove or Gap or Kind Bar, books me I am ecstatic because those brand names have such huge brand recognition. Why, then, does it matter if I, as a voiceover actor, have a brand associated with my name? What I learned as soon as I began my VO journey years ago is that I am not just voicing projects for these brands. Instead, I myself am also a small business owner and need to create and maintain a brand that my clients can identify with and connect to in order to understand the service that I provide. Branding is essential to success in voiceover.

When Did My Own Branding Journey Begin?

My very first coach in voice over was the amazing Anne Ganguzza. When we started working together years ago on my commercial demo, I immediately had lots of questions about her website. Anne explained to me that we could have separate sessions to work on my branding as we got closer to my recording date. We scheduled everything so that my website would be ready to launch when I had my demo. Even though I was new to the industry, Anne’s website stood out to me because there was a grandiose impression to it that others simply lacked. I had considered doing my commercial demos with other coaches. Frankly, Anne’s website and the brilliance of Anne’s virtual store front was so impressive and resonated with me so much so that I just had to work with her. Over the years I have continued to follow Anne on all fronts and I continue to learn from her. Her marketing is seamless. Everything ties together. She is sets the bar high for us all.

So what was our approach? Well to really understand it you would have to work with Anne, but we did have a session where there was a lot of question and answer. To be clear, I think that Anne is able to help with branding so well because she works so hard to get to know her students on multiple levels. Anne then worked with creative genius Sarah Waters. They came up with the concept that is on my website and all of my marketing content today. It represents my personality, my hope, my dreams, and my vision for my small business. My branding concept was the result of a collaborative effort of a lot of creative people.

Your Website as Your Store Front

Now let’s enter the folks at https://www.voiceactorwebsites.com/, Joe Davis and Karin Barth, absolute geniuses!! At some point years ago Sara stepped away and Joe took over. Joe is so amazing and the transition was so seamless that I actually had no idea it happened. I have been working with Joe for so long that he has become a close and cherished friend. I value his advice and feedback as there is frankly no one who understands a voice actor’s SEO better than he does. I also work closely with Karin to make constant changes and updates and she has been a true blessing. She is wonderful. At some point, I think around 2018, I upgraded my website between the initial scrolling page that I had done with Anne and Sarah to the mega multi-page format that is alive today. This was a huge undertaking and a tremendous investment in my brand.

In voiceover, your website is your store front. If a client can’t find you, they can’t hire you. If they come to your store front and they don’t like what they see, or they can’t find what they need quickly and easily, you will lose the sale. Like all brands, you only have one chance to make a first impression. If you are in voice over, your demos should be obvious and easy to find, as well as your contact information. Everything else is gravy. How you dress it up is your branding. My web page is super pink and super bubbly. Just like me. Perhaps looking at some samples of other successful solopreneurs to find common trends makes sense, as there is certainly a pattern here:

Cast Study:

Let’s look at some women who are thriving in voiceover today and setting the bar high. I am throwing myself into the mix because I work really hard every single day on my brand and I try to follow the rule and trends that I observe. Here is a chart that I have created and from these examples there is a lot that we can extrapolate:

What Can We Learn From these Samples?

All of these websites have a real brand that is obvious as soon as you open the page. The branding set the tone or vibe about the voice over actor and is maintained through out the fresh content.
All of these women solopreneurs are active on at least one form of social media, and most are on multiple forms of social media. They consistently carry out the branding from their website in their posts.
Many of these women either have their own podcast or are regular guests on others’ podcasts.
These women are often teaching voice over or giving workshops either on their craft, marketing, branding, or something related to some aspect of their business.
These women all have a logo or theme from there website that is unique to their brand and has become recognizable in the industry from their postings.

VOcationNYC Year 1- WOW!

September 22, 2019 by Laura Schreiber

Conference for VOs Run by VOs

As a working mom, when I heard that there was a voice over conference with a focus on “the business of the business” right here at home in NYC, I did not hesitate to sign up, especially when I learned that Carin Gilfrey and Jamie Muffett were running it! From the start, VOcation was extremely well conceived. There is something so special about a conference run by voice actors for voice actors. It goes beyond the over all vibe. From the little details like having talents sign up to announce the speakers, to the clever swag they gave away, this dynamic duo thought of everything.

Panel of Working Pros

I can’t tell you how fantastic it was that the kick off panel on the main stage, moderated by Jamie, was three amazing women talents. Two of them, Elissa Zhea and Maria Pendelino, are union talents, and Joey Shaljo is a non-union talent like me. Simply put, these gals are killing it. They addressed all sorts of issues like when to make the jump to full-time, the unique situation of working in New York City and how leaving the city changes your business, and accounting. These women spoke so well. They set the bar high for the rest of us. Not only did they teach us well, they set a standard well for which we should all aspire to. In an industry where 65% of the bookings are male, I applaud Carin and Jamie’s voice to start the weekend with these women. It could not have been better.

Emphasis on marketing

Any solopreneur can tell you that marketing is essential to maintaining client relationships and growth, and the VOcation team sure had this in mind when they planned key sessions as well. I very much enjoyed Tracy Lindley, Joe Davis, Brad Newman, and Tom Dheere. I have heard Tracy, a LinkedIn expert, speak at other conferences too. To her credit, she always speaks about something different. This time she focussed on strategies for effective messaging. I hung on her every word and ate it up: it’s as if she knew just what I needed and was talking to me! Thank you, Tracy! Joe Davis of voice actor websites spoke about best ways to optimize your website for SEO. Joe’s team has been doing my website since 2015, so I enjoyed getting the most up to date tips from him. Like Tracy, Joe exudes a passion and genuine eagerness to help others, which makes him a true joy to be in the same room with. Good choice again, Carin and Jamie! I confess that I did not get to attend Brad’s break out session but to plan to attend at WoVoCon. I have the slides and they are incredible. Brad is super smart and I trust his business instinct any day of the week. He has been doing my hosting for years and I can’t wait to hear him speak. Last but certainly not least, was Tom Dheere. I was so excited to meet Tom and learn from him. I have a few industry friends who have been coached by Tom. I see why they all like working with him. Tom’s organized approach to Direct marketing would teach any new talent how to build a strong foundation. The marketing components of the conference were great!

The Future of VO

J. Michael Collins delivered the key note address on the future of voice over. JMC as we often call him is dynamic and inspirational. Everyone knows him and everyone loves him in our industry. At one point he remarked that if you think the sky is falling, move over. His talk was uplifting and optimistic. He gave hope and spoke of current trends. We are lucky to have such a competent talent walking among us. JMC is a good egg and his success brings success to us all. Like the women in the first panel, I believe he also sets the bar high. By keeping his standards high in the demos he produces and the talents he works with, this if good for the industry as a whole.

Overall Takeaways

Like everyone, I had panels that I loved and could sit through over and over again and panels that made me wish I were shopping at Bergdorffs. Maria Pendelino’s panel on negotiations was a home run. It was my favorite panel of the conference and if you don’t know her you should. Maria is a rock star genius and major goddess of voiceover who is making our entire industry better. Both of the panels on casting were not my favorites. There was nothing wrong with them per se, they just lacked the scintillating genius moments that I tend to cling to.

Lastly, I have heard from friends who were not at the conference that they had friends who complained about the venue and the picnic lunches. My response is that they need awareness about NYC. There will never be a shuttle in NYC. It is not that kind of city. I heard someone complained it was near the subway. In New York, it is a luxury to be near the subway, so having the venue directly across from the express subway line was very, very smart of Carin and Jamie. Further, space and food are extremely costly in New York. Options for talent were either to go out to eat on their own as I did or the provided lunch. There is always a choice, you just have to understand your options. For those who are not local, perhaps a better approach might be to reach out to one of us in advance next time, I’d be happy to go out for lunch and go shopping:)

Networking and Building Relationships

August 18, 2019 by Laura Schreiber

Why Leaving the Foam Booth is Worthwhile

As a full-time, working mom, working from home is a major perk. I realize often how lucky I am to have my home studio. Whether it’s a day where I can accommodate multiple client sessions and run to m kids’ school to watch a special presentation, or a day when I am feeling exhausted and want to stay in yoga pants and no one knows the difference, working from home is a pretty sweet gig. But I will also be the first to say that in order to be a successful solopreneur, I need to leave to comforts of the home office that I have worked so hard to build in order to broaden my professional network. I have made amazing connections in both expected and unexpected places because I made the effort to leave the booth!

Connections in expected places

Wonderful industry friends at WoVo Con, a night out with Uncle Roy in China Town the weekend of Sovas, an eLearning Guild conference in Orlando, and the WWRS in Burbank!

I have blogged in the past about my conference adventures. From voice conferences like WoVo Con and VO Atlanta, to eLearning conferences like DevLearn, I have made very important connections at these conferences. At voice over conferences, I have met industry friends in person that I otherwise only know online from facebook or instagram. The bonds that form are amazing and so meaningful. These folks have become my daily support, my confidants, and my work family. These are the people I trust and confide in. The relationships would never be the same if we were not together in person. We also often refer business to each other, and again, we would not trust each other to share clients if we did not know each other so well, the way you do when you actually spend time together.

I have traveled pretty far for eLearning conferences like DevLearn and other eLearning guild conferences too. These conferences are different because you are putting yourself face to face with the companies who might need your services. Some of my most regular clients are from the smallest conferences I have gone to! The tricky thing about these conferences is that companies often send their sales team, and these are not people who cast voice talent, so as a voice over actor, you have to learn how to access the people that you can work with. You also have to learn the difference between the people who create content and the LMS providers, as they never need our services. It is also important to note that simply meeting these people at a conference and exchanging pleasantries in know way guarantees the connection. Instead, it takes months if not years of consistent follow up to build a rapport and maintain the connection that began at the conference.

Connections in Unexpected Places

This is what the first glimpse looked like. It was an enormous expo and several days there was both a great opportunity and exhausting all at once!

I have also made wonderful connections for my business when I was not “on” or in “networking mode.” Once, at an ATD conference in Atlanta, I was totally exhausted. I did not know how I would get through the day in the massive venue with so many booths left to walk through in the expo center. I decided I needed a snack break. I had to take the escalator up four flights, which felt like an eternity, and I began chatting with a really nice lady from Boston who is now a client. She also needed a break and like me was desperate for a bottle of water, and being in that snack stand at that moment, seemed meant to be. We chatted and chatted and this instructional designer started venting about talents she had used in the past that had not worked out. The conversation flowed, and the opportunity was natural. Sometimes it is these genuine, real chats that make the most impact and help people get to know you and then if there is a professional synergy it is that much better!

Recently, I was at the AI conference at NJIT in Newark. To be honest, even though I was only about four miles from my house, I was petrified to be in such a tough part of town and I was seriously questioning the logic in having a potentially great conference at such a venue. Well, there was another young man and woman who also had to walk from the parking garage to the main building around the same time. We just started walking together. I was relieved and started venting immediately. It turns out this woman was a talent agent from Denver and we had so much in common! That first chat has led to multiple phone calls. I am now on their talent roster for voiceover, promotional modeling, and on-camera work:

Laura

So, like my experience at ATD years ago, this wonderful connection came from a genuine, heart-felt conversation and there also happened to be true professional synergy. I did not start out trying to market myself, I just sought out human connection. This is why leaving the booth is so essential!

How Much Are You Working?

August 5, 2019 by Laura Schreiber

“The possibilities are limited only by our imagination and determination, and not by physics.” ~ Mike Duke, PhD, NASA Geologist

THE question:

As a full-time, professional voice over actor, I get a lot of questions; but, the one I seem to get the most, is “So, how many hours would you say you work now?” Somehow saying that it’s a full time job has net been a clue. So, what I gather is that folks can’t imagine is how the work of a creative can fill an entire day, or perhaps weeks and years on end. Given the opportunity, I will happily, and enthusiastically elaborate and tell you what days are like for a working voiceover talent.

The Home Studio

Like most voice over actors, I have a professional home studio. This gives me the ability to accommodate clients in different time zones, not just in the Unites States, but abroad as well. I love getting started early, because I feel like I have gotten a lot done in a day. In truth a lot of my steady clients are on the West Coast, so I often go back down to record jobs that come in late after dinner as well.

Daily Tasks

The amount of booked work I have shapes my day. I typically record all booked work before doing anything else. If a big audition comes in, I will pause a job and record and submit that. While I record, I hydrate continually. I drink water all day long. I limit myself to one coffee a day. Once I am done recording actually bookings, my day is divided between auditions, client outreach emails, LinkIn follow ups, and general marketing tasks. I do try to do 20-40 auditions a day, and they come in from clients, Pay to Plays, and agents around the country. If a booking comes in mid-day, I stop what I am doing and record. For bigger jobs I typically have advance notice. For example, I did 20 videos on Thursday, but I new about them about 2 weeks in advance so that I could book out the day on my calendar. I do I lot of commercials and have a lot of RUSH work as well. I am always happy to do rush jobs. I understand when folks have deadlines, and I never mind getting audio right back to clients. Often when more booked work comes in, time on LinkedIn or for marketing takes a back seat. I tend to keep up with my client correspondence as that is very important to me!

Mom Life

It seems the more I get into a rhythm with my business, the less I feel in control of life at home. When my twins were small, they had all of my focus and attention. I was with them full time and I could spend all of my energy thinking about meals and school and their clothing. Now I worry a lot about their school work since they are in high school. But, our house is not as organized as it was. Our dinners are not planned. I often scramble to make lunches before taking them to the train in the morning. I am so so so thankful that the groceries can be delivered or I am not sure we would ever have any.

Another issue is that because I am a small business owner, even when I am driving my kids to sports or taking them to the doctor, I am still thinking about my work and checking for client emails. I can’t ever completely detach because there is no one else to man the fort. Since I am the business, if I disconnect, it ends. I find it challenging to find the right balance between savoring this precious time with my children, which goes entirely too fast, and catching the momentum of my business which I have worked so hard to build.

I do remind myself that my kids are learning from see me running a business at home. They see me working not just at nights but on weekends. They hear client calls. They get to hear and see my actual work. This all cushions the blow. So the house may not be perfectly tidy when the family comes for a visit. And we may have to get takeout more than we had planned. And I may often forget to go back out and put the cover on the grill.

My hope is that while friends that we meet for dinner may have natural questions about what it’s like to be a full-time working creative, my kids, the people who matter most to me in this world, will not have any questions because they see everything. I also try to talk to them about all of the issues that I grapple with and pose thought provoking questions.

So, I can tell you with certainty that a working voice talent has plenty to keep them busy! Odds are their more than 40 hour work week blows by and they have a hard time figuring out where the time has gone!

How a Voice Over Momtrepreneur Goes with the Flow

June 24, 2019 by Laura Schreiber

When People Just show Up

As a full-time working mom, I have a pretty rigid routine from day to day. On Sunday mornings, I typically relish my quiet time with my kids, and although I am home alone with them because my husband is usually playing basketball, I am usually working. On a Sunday morning, I tend not to be in my recording studio, but instead tend to be comfortably seated at the kitchen island and I usually maximize my time between 9am and 12 pm writing my weekly blog post and working on that weeks marketing goals. So this Sunday, when my very loved and very welcome in-laws walked-in unexpectedly and unannounced at around 9:15 am, I had a quick choice. And really, it was no choice. I needed to abandon my work plan and go with the flow. The work would be there when I came back to it but my opportunity to make my family feel welcome and appreciated would be fleeting.

In order to understand this scenario, you need to understand a few key details. First, members of our immediate family, both on my side and on my husband’s, all have our garage code. So, they tend to just enter the house, much like on a sitcom. We often have no idea who is coming when or how long they are staying. They just show up. Luckily they all get along really well. Next, this may give you the mis-impression that I am in some way relaxed. Quite to the contrary, I am wrapped very tight. When my twins were born, my husband and I agreed that an open-door policy was more fair to all grandparents. We didn’t want them to miss out, and so all of this craziness, is the result of said policy. So, I have had to change my behavior and learn to “go with the flow” a bit. What does that mean. Well, according to zenhabits.com, “What is going with the flow? It’s rolling with the punches. It’s accepting change without getting angry or frustrated. It’s taking what life gives you, rather than trying to mold life to be exactly as you want it to be.” So yesterday, it meant holding off for a better time to write and just enjoying my family. And you know what, I did!

There is another issue at play. I think people get a vibe when they are greeted. Do you want the people you love most in the world to feel welcome and like there is a red carpet for them, or do you want them to be unsure if they should be there? I want my family to want to come over. According to hospitality.net, “the spirit of welcome is so important in creating a strong foundation for the guest experience. Each person, each point of contact, can add so much to the ‘welcoming’ experience for guests! A welcome goes beyond words, it creates a feeling of caring and gives a sense of pleasure. A sincere welcome reaches out and positively pulls guests in to the hospitality environment they have chosen and makes guests feel like they have made a good choice. A cordial and courteous welcome gives guest the feeling they have been invited to join the setting even though they chose to go on their own. The power of welcome is to affirm the guest made the right choice and is further welcome to enjoy.” I think we only get one shot at this feeling, and if I had excused myself to go do work, it just would have been all wrong.

It takes a Village so In turn we need to be part of the Village

When I think about how families connect, I often think about this video I once saw of a family singing Les Mis karaoke:

https://youtu.be/IhA_AniwbRQ

"One Day More" LeBaron Family Sings Karaoke (https://youtu.be/IhA_AniwbRQ)

It’s amazing, right? I find this incredible because my family will come together to watch Seinfeld or a movie, and we really come together to eat, but this is well-beyond our skill set. But what I think we do best as a family is raise mensches, and I couldn’t do that alone. I think that the reason my kids are so sweet is because they have the attention not just of their parents, both of whom work, but of their grandparents, their aunts, and their uncles, and I think it does take a village. When that village is fragmented, the kids are the ones who suffer. When you wonder how these characters end up on Jerry Springer or Dr. Phil, maybe it was those moments of choice and instead of sticking together and just being together they chose wrong over and over again. My daughter has been watching a lot of Dr. Phil recently, and when I see clips where he admonishes family like this I gather that they made one mistake after another until they stopped supporting each other.

https://youtu.be/GoW8DqRQVVo

Dr. Phil Gives a Fractured Family Advice for Healing (https://youtu.be/GoW8DqRQVVo)

The Time Goes way to Fast

I feel like just yesterday my twins were tiny babies coming home from the hospital. We were worried that the pot holes would hurt their heads because they were so small. Now they will be driving in a month. I spend many hours every day alone in a padded foam booth. So, when family comes over unexpectedly, I have decided to look at it as a gift. I think sometimes it is life telling us to slow down and take it in. I do feel like hitting pause is ok. I am blogging 24 hours after I planned. I am not sure when I will work on my instagram posts. Will I get them done? Yes.

How did our day end up yesterday? We had a wonderful lunch as a family at our mall. We took my little niece with us too. We then went to Target and the grocery store. My family come out from NYC and we grilled for dinner. We were all together and it was wonderful. At the end of the day, it was more important to me that my family feel important and loved.

It happens to be a beautiful sunny day, so I may want to take my kids out for lunch, but I think that will be okay too.