For voice actors, there’s no shortage of things to do in a day, from performing and taking direction during a session, to figuring out which auditions are a good fit. It’s a lot to juggle, but one thing that shouldn’t be neglected is creating and investing in your personal brand.
Unlike other tasks, such as accounting, this aspect of your business should be handled by you. Your brand must be authentic.
In this article
- Your Personal Brand as a Voice Actor Affects the Clients You Attract
- Be Clear with Your Personal Brand Across all Platforms
- The Words You Choose to Describe Your Voice Acting Sound Are Crucial
- Always Make Professionalism Part of Your Voice Acting Brand
- Your Brand Needs to Be at the Forefront
The direction of your branding and what is important to you is a decision only you can make. If it’s seen as part of a promise you’re making to your clients, you have to be sure you can come through.
Components of your personal brand can include the areas of work that you’re interested in, your sound and your skill set, your core values, and the image you want to put out into the world.
In addition, how your brand is expressed can be as varied as your brand itself. There are so many ways it comes to life – like business cards, websites, demos, and even how you approach customer service and the clients you set your sights on attracting.
We’ve put together some directives on branding, so you can get a handle on this integral aspect of your business.
Your Personal Brand as a Voice Actor Affects the Clients You Attract
It makes sense that how you position yourself to the world would be reflected back to you in the clients that you end up servicing.
An edgy voice is more likely to attract edgy clients. If you do character work, you might be better suited to narrate books or cartoons. You might have background knowledge from years of teaching science that helps you tackle that type of jargon with confidence, or it might mean you can read educational scripts with authority.
Knowing who you are and what you’re good at can help you be confident in what it is that you pursue. Focus your skills, know who you’d like to have as a client, and set your sights on that target.
However, if you don’t understand what makes you you, and you audition for anything, you might find yourself facing rejection, and getting overlooked by clients. A fun sounding voice that keeps going after edgy clients might not see success. Over time, that rejection can make you doubt yourself and forget your value.
Feature any niches you’re confident in. Just because it’s not what the majority of clients are looking for doesn’t mean that there isn’t still someone looking for it. If you feel confident in your abilities – for example, you’re fluent in a rare language – then be sure to make it part of your voice acting profile and include a demo that showcases it too.
Be Clear with Your Personal Brand Across all Platforms
Whether you’re a beginner or a professional, it can be helpful to see how other voice actors are branding themselves.
When it comes to what to use, there are many means through which you can express your personal brand. While what you choose is up to you, being consistent is important.
It’s important that no matter where they find you they get a clear idea of who you are and what you can offer right away. Do all these touchpoints have the same feel? Do they indicate what you can offer?
This is where an objective set of eyes can come in handy. By asking one of your friends or family members what they can find out about you online, they can give you a different perspective.
If your branding is creating an expectation, make sure that when a client first reaches out to you, you deliver on that expectation. The key is consistency. All of these elements need to work together to create the feeling of your brand. Although you may be a one-person company, looking at the example of a major brand can help you get an idea of how to formulate a brand.
The Words You Choose to Describe Your Voice Acting Sound Are Crucial
As a voice actor, you already know that words carry much weight. Charged with bringing nuance to words and scripts, you know the difference a few words can make. The words you use to describe yourself should be powerful.
You should pick a few words – like upbeat, cheeky, and fun – and then use those words regularly. This reinforces your brand, clarifies who you are, and gives you a better chance of sticking in someone’s mind.
Beyond that, highlighting what makes you unique – say, speaking an array of languages so you can shift seamlessly during a script – is also an important aspect of yourself to feature.
The words you choose should be accurate, which you repeat often over your marketing materials.
Always Make Professionalism Part of Your Voice Acting Brand
While your personality and skill set are unique to you, being professional is important no matter your brand.
Once you’ve built a consistent experience for your audience and leads start coming in, how you treat your clients matters just as much.
Their experience should align with the expectations you’ve set out – you should deliver on what you say you can and conduct yourself in such a way as to give your clients a positive experience.
By giving professionalism to your clients and leaving them with a product they love, you may even begin to get referrals. When you’re great to work with, people notice.
Your Brand Needs to Be at the Forefront
The amazing service you provide has to be found. But, once it is found, it’s important that you clearly communicate what you can do, and how you’ll do it.
Drawing the right clients to you is part of this – and having your branding in line can help them come to you. Once they’re aware of what you offer, have a clear description, and be sure to highlight your unique abilities throughout all your available platforms. And finally, once you have attracted a client make sure that their encounter with you meets (or exceeds) their expectations to keep them coming back for more!
Underpinning their whole experience with you is your brand; creating and maintaining it is in your hands.
If you’re ready to explore another avenue for your personal brand, sign up for an account at Voices today.
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