Have you ever given thought to your voiceover brand? Does it kind of keep you up at night wondering about what the heck you’re going to do to brand yourself? Well that’s the topic of this week’s Inside Voiceover video training blog, and I have some tips for you that I think you’re going to find a little surprising because I think that common ideas about branding are actually wrong.
So what do most people think when they think of a brand? They come up … Or most voice talent anyway that I talk to. They try to come up with some gimmick that is going to make themselves stand out. They think about a cute little slogan like, “The voice you’ll love,” that type of thing or a little logo that they’re going to put on a coffee cup and a mouse pad or on a tee shirt or some other kind of swag or giveaway. They think that that’s branding, and actually nothing could be farther from the truth. Your branding needs to be customer-focused, and actually I love the definition of a brand that comes from the consultant Alan [Weiss] who says a brand is a credibility accelerator that excites passion and justifies higher fees. A credibility accelerator that excites passion and justifies higher fees.
So how do you apply this to your voiceover career? Let’s talk about it. A good brand I think is customer-focused. Alison Smith, who’s a great voice talent in the IVR space, does phone prompts. She has branded herself as the IVR voice. So if you need that type of service, if you’re an end user, she’s the gal you’re going to call. Now, you have to be careful there. What if she wants to suddenly get into e-learning or some other field of voiceover? She’s so well-branded in IVR so she might have to rebrand herself as something else. Same thing for us here at the Great Voice Company. If we ever want to do something completely different that has nothing to do with voice or recording or presentation skills, we’ve got to come up with a new company name, but let’s not go there because a good brand is customer-focused.
Here’s some other examples. I went online and there’s a guy known as the language guy named Mark Frobose who has language learning courses on Audible, and he is one of these guys that speaks like 10 different languages and he’s going to teach you how to do it. So he calls himself the language guy. I think that’s perfect. Then there’s StoryBrand, which is a great course that I took by a guy named Donald Miller who helps companies tell their story in a way that is clear and concise. Because this whole thing is that most people have no idea what companies do. So he helps you fix that problem. See how customer focused that is? So there’s some great branding ideas for you. I hope they’re helpful. I’m Susan Berkley. I’ll be back next week with more Inside Voiceover.
