Kate McClanaghan - How To Get More Voice Acting Jobs: Marketing 101 for Actors & Voiceovers

www.voiceoverinfo.com

Copyright 2013 by Kate McClanaghan

All Rights Reserved.

ISBN: 9781483512815

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Business has only two functionsmarketing and innovation.

Milan Kundera

Here at Sound Advice, we have extensively surveyed scores of your target audience for whom your demos have been produced, and what weve discovered is: Talent who consistently mass promote work the most. Those who dont have a much tougher time establishing themselves in this field and maintaining steady work.

Auditions are promo, too, however they simply arent the only promotions you should be relying on. Nor should you rely solely on one talent agent to generate all your opportunities, especially in voice-over.

Continual promotion is elementary for any business to succeed. Its Marketing 101. Lack of proper promotion explains why so few talent work with any regularity or accomplish their career goals.

Every single promotional piece you send out is essentially auditioning for you when youre not there: So any and all promotion is an opportunity to make yourself that much more accessible to the work. The more traffic you drive to your site with postcards and links, the greater your opportunity for auditions and bookings.

So much of your work as a talent is a numbers game. And by numbers, this means you must send numerous promotions out, numerous times, to many, many creatives.

Still, many very well-meaning professionals may be quick to offer you their two cents as to why continued postcard mailings promoting your demo Web site, isnt at all necessary. This could explain why so few talent work with any regularity. Promotion is a given for any other business. It only stands to reason this goes double for the entertainment industry.

So, regardless of how much you may respect the individual discouraging you from properly promoting yourself (especially as we have laid out in these pages), your career will atrophy without consistent promotion.

Great works are performed not by strength, but by perseverance.

Samuel Johnson

At Sound Advice were often asked, Whats it take to go the distance in this business?

Theres no single answer. There are four: pursue, persist, prepare, and promote. These four components are absolutely vital to succeed at ANYTHING, let alone an acting or voice-over career. Its your responsibility to ensure these elements are continually in play as they are required of you no matter how far along you may beregardless of whether you are just beginning, or if you have been established and are aiming to raise your game to the next level. They are a constant.

Whatever you accomplish in this business, youll succeed only if you pursue it. Nothing will come to you, no matter how much talent you may have. Even with the benefit of nepotism, its ultimately up to you to run your career. This is your business and no one elses. Own it. Opportunities are what you make of them.

You have to set your sights on your immediate goals, and then persist at them, and often beyond what you might first consider a comfortable margin. Additionally, developing and then maintaining your skills requires persistent dedication. This element only increases with success, not the other way aroundcontrary to what many novices may think.

So, if you find youre easily frustrated or simply give up after a few months of training or even after only a year or two of promotion, then you may never honestly know for yourself what you could have created without real, long-term persistence.

Preparation means continually developing your abilities, and along with ongoing promotion, this requires patience. Allow yourself to continue to develop your skills. Agility is not naturally intuitive and talent can atrophy with lack of use. It takes attention. Otherwise your skills wont be sharp when called upon at a moments notice, and they will be tested. Without persistence you will serve only to undermine your own confidence. Your confidence is directly related to your integrity as an artist. Regardless of your position, no matter how affluent you may be, no one can afford to lose his or her integrity. Even natural talent will degrade and weaken if not continually honed.

To add to this, your success is contingent on continual and repeated promotion far more than anyone in this business has previously ever lead you to believe. Consider it your staple from this point forward. Its up to you to drive attention to yourself through your very best promotional efforts. And with that thought in mind, as a rule: never set your sights on securing just one audition, or one big break, or wait until the time is just right. If so, you will secure only ONE audition, ONE break, and the time will never arrive because you never took the time to properly promote yourself. The time is right when you decide it is, so make that NOW. Make a decision as to what you want in your life and work toward those goals. In doing so youll accomplish far more than you ever imagined possible.

Every audition is a form of promotion, yet so many artists repel the idea of promotion that this could easily account for the scores of talented souls who have fallen into oblivion. If you leave your career alone I promise nothing will happen. It will slip through your fingers.

No one who has ever scored an Oscar accepted it saying, This was so easy. I dont know why you guys dont all have one. It was a piece of cake!

Nope. Anything worthwhile is accomplished from hard work and lots of it. And a good deal of that work comes from consistent and constant promotion. Consider it as much of your job as the performance itself. This is how we make ourselves known and familiar. Promotion comes with the territory and cant be ignored if you intend to succeed as a working talent.

The fact remains that talent who persist at promotion, while honing their performance skills, will make themselves known and valuable. What they may lack performance-wise at the onset of their careers will strengthen and develop from experience, but not from a single coaching once every eight to ten months, or a half-hearted promotional blitz once or twice a year.

Those who become consummate professionals make it their business to run their own careers rather than leave it to chance.

However, keep in mind from the moment you decide to commit completely to establish (or further) your career it will seem as if all the forces in the universe will set out to thwart you. Not because you shouldnt be pursuing this field, but rather the complete and utter opposite. Its an occupational hazard that will test your mettle at every turn. And while you may be a strong sprinter at the onset of your career, aim to go the distance. Its far more rewarding if you do.

And even with a thorough road map to follow, as weve laid out for you here at Sound Advice, youre the one who has to dedicate yourself to the task of getting it done. Certainly your odds are far greater with us than without us, but its still work and youre the one who has to do it. No one will give it to you, or create it for you. You cant purchase it, but you can invest in yourself effectively and prepare to deliver whats needed and wanted of you so youre ready at a moments notice. And that is extremely rewarding on many, many levels.