Taking the extra steps for voiceover clients

I’m in the middle of working on my marketing and branding for 2020 and one of the things that I need is get new business cards made. Now, because I do have a graphic design background I could do it myself and come up with a really good design like I have in the past. But for some reason I just feel the need to have a fresh pair of eyes on this to give me something maybe I hadn’t thought of. So I decided to try to find a graphic designer via the website Upwork.

So I wrote a description of what I wanted to have done, attached some graphics that I wanted to use, in particular the character that you can see on my site. I also added a link to my website since I wanted whomever the designer would be to get an idea of what my current branding was so the card would fall in line with that. Then I sent it off.

Maybe an hour later I started to get proposals from different graphic designers offering their services and what their rates would be. For the most part it was generic responses, “I could do your job it’ll be super easy blah blah blah”. Some responses were even more generic than that. One person actually wrote in their proposal, ‘to whom it may concern’. LOL

Then I got one response that really stood out to me. Not only did this particular graphic designer give me a personalized response to what my needs were, he also took the time to go visit my website and even commented on my demos which he took the time to listen to.

I can’t tell you what a difference that made in my mind compared to the other designers. As the title implies, this guy took the extra steps to see what I was about and try to understand better who I was and what I was going for.

I will be frank with you, this guy is currently the front runner for me to hire even though his rates are actually higher than everyone else who sent in a proposal for this job.

There’s a real lesson in this when we are doing our outreach marketing to new clients. Think about how many times a production company or Ad Agency or anyone like that gets generic email or cold call from voice talent saying hey “I could do this and I can do that”. But the thing that can really make someone stand out from the rest of the crowd is taking the extra few minutes and really get into what the company is all about. Their philosophy, who they are, their culture, their general attitude. In my opinion it’s those things that sets someone apart when they show they actually care about and want to understand me and what my needs are.

When you’re doing your marketing are you just sending out generic emails based on a template or are you really taking the time to learn about who you’re marketing to and ultimately who you’re going to be partnering with?

I think that’s the key to really think about. This is not just going to be a client, this is going to be your partner in business. Once you adopt that attitude I think everything else can change around it.