Information You Need to Know : What 100 Clients Told Me

Stephanie Ciccarelli

December 4, 2007

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Join Voice Over Expert Julie Williams as she shares the results of a brief yet telling survey that reveals some startling data specific to how clients really feel about being approached by voice over talent, where they go to get their voice overs, how often they receive cards, gifts or promotional materials from voice talent and more.

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Julie Williams, Voice-overs.com, Client survey, voice actors jobs, voice talent jobs, marketing, promotional survey, Voices.com, voice over jobs

Transcript of Information You Need to Know : What 100 Clients Told Me

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.
This week, Voices.com is pleased to present Julie Williams.
Julie Williams: Hello, I’m Julie Williams. Recently, I surveyed a number of clients asking them some questions that I thought you and I could benefit from having answered. Now I surveyed a little over 100 clients, so the study was a very small sample. Probably not statistically significant and it’s definitely an unscientific survey, but you just might find the answers enlightening. Before I tell you how they responded to some of the questions asked, here’s a little about the respondents themselves.
They’re all people who have higher voiceover talent, these particular voice seekers hire an equal number of male and female voice actors. Forty-two percent of them hire voice talents several times a month, and 85 percent of them say they are always on the look out for good voice talent. Most of them hire non-union talent which is not to say they don’t also hire union talent, because some may be in a right to work state like Texas and they come from all over the United States. When telling what types of voiceover they typically cast, 41 percent said commercials, 33 percent said narrations, 16 percent said e-learning, and eight percent said other. This is who these answers came from.
Now here are a couple of questions, and how they answered them. The first thing I asked was..
How do you like to be approached by voice over talent?
The interesting thing is, not one person answered, “I don’t like to be approached by voice talent”. And that option was there. Only 14 percent answered, “Send me a demo in the mail, I’ll listen to it”. So maybe we can save a little money, and not send out so many CDs. Forty-two percent said they want talent to approach them by e-mailing a demo. That was a surprise to me because I don’t want people to e-mail me a demo. I feel like it’s rude to clutter someone’s inbox with unsolicited demos and I always delete them. But 42 percent said that was okay. Not quite half , but it’s still quite a respectable number.
Twenty-eight percent said talent should ask permission to email a demo. And that’s what I’d recommend because it’s not unsolicited then, and you’ll keep this 28 percent and the 42 percent happy. That means between the two categories, 70 percent of voice seekers who responded to the survey want to receive your demo via e-mail these days. And 14 percent said to e-mail a link to your website to them.
Another question asked of these clients who hire voiceover talent was, when you need to hire a voiceover talent, what is the first thing you do?
Twenty five percent said, “I call a talent or an agent that I already know.” Twenty five percent said, “I search the internet to find a voice talent to contact directly.” And 50 percent said, I post the job on an online talent site, referring to sites like Voices.com.
The next question post was, how often do voice actors send you gifts or cards? These would include thank you gifts and cards, promotional postcards and holiday gifts and cards.
Twenty five percent of the clients said, they never got cards or gifts from voice over talent, promoting themselves or thanking them for work. Sixty two percent said, they occasionally got gifts or cards from voice talent, promoting themselves or thanking them for work. And 12 percent said, they sometimes get gifts thanking them for large jobs.
A follow-up question dealt with the recipient’s response to what was sent. Each category was rated on a scale of one to five, with one being, I have a very negative response to receiving this item. Two being negative, three – neutral, four – positive, and five – a very positive response to receiving this item.
The average response to these clients when receiving marketing postcards or e-mails was a 3.4, neutral to positive. The average response these clients have when receiving thank you postcards or e-mails was 4.1, positive. The average response they had when receiving thank you gifts like food baskets and wine, was a 4.3, more positive.
Again, this is average so some probably had a very positive response and some may have been more toward neutral.
The average response these clients said they have when receiving specialty advertising items, like a mug with your mug on it or a mouse pad or whatever as you promote yourself to them was a 3.4, neutral to positive. The same response they had if you sent a postcard or an e-mail, marketing yourself.
The average response they have if you send special gifts to them like food baskets or wine during the holidays, was 4.0, positive. But the average response if you send specialty items like the mug with your mug on it, or a mouse pad with your website on it as a holiday gift, not quite as well received, a 3.7.
Notice that it is higher than if you send those items at other times of the year. I guess they’re thinking is, you know, at least they thought of me. But not as high as sending holiday gifts that don’t appear to have an agenda.
I know that it’s really hard to grasp these numbers in a podcast. With surveys like this, it’s good to be able to sit down and look at the data, and see it in graph form and sift through the information. If you wanna see some of these information in graph form, it’s all in the December issue of the Voice Over Insider, which is the new name for the vZine. It is a free monthly online magazine for voiceover talent and it’s full of valuable information for talent every single month. And if you’d like to download the December issue, you can get it at http://voice-overs.com/DecemberVoiceOverInsider.pdf and you can sign up to receive a link to it each month at www.voice-overs.com
I hope this information has been valuable to you. Again, it’s not scientific, it’s not statistically significant, but it gives you a little idea of what some clients are saying about you sending marketing items and other gifts to them.
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.

Links from today’s show:

Julie Williams
VoiceOver Chocolate

Your Instructor this week:

Voice Over Expert Julie Williams
Julie Williams
“Voice-Over Chocolate”
Julie Williams is celebrating her 30th year in voice-overs. She has voiced thousands of commercials, narrations, video games, infomercials, documentaries, and other types of voice-over. Julie has been heard all over the world, and nationally on HGVT, WE, and other media outlets.
Julie Williams boasts such clients as Coca-Cola, Pampers, Pizza Hut, Billy Graham, The US Army, US steel, Imperial Sugar, Sunny Delight, Dominos Pizza, Adobe, and thousands of others. Currently, Julie is heard on national Eyeglass World commercials, The New Body Shaper infomercial, and Skincerity Skin Care Product ads, as well as hundreds of regional and local spots, and non broadcast flash productions. In addition, she’s the voice of the video game “Stevie Learns Pool Safety.” Samples of Julie’s work can be heard at www.voice-overs.com.

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