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

By Kate McClanaghan

It’s a common misconception, among actors and voice talent alike, that your talent agent is solely responsible for promoting you for voiceovers and acting jobs. That approach takes all the control out of your hands and leaves you relying chiefly on your agent to book work. This would explain why scores of talent book very seldom, if at all.

Like any business, your career only moves forward if you take it upon yourself to effectively promote and market yourself. Successful business owners will tell you that it generally takes three to five years to establish any small business. The same is true for the voiceover and acting business provided you utilize the tools necessary to running your voiceover and acting career.

Discover what’s required of you to be successful, and how to establish and run your small business as a professional voice actor and talent. You’ll find current industry standards detailed in How To Get More Voice Acting Jobs: Marketing 101 for Actors & Voiceovers. Learn trade secrets to secure voice acting jobs through the talent agents and their most-trusted online sources.

This dynamic industry is dependent on multiple media, promotions, communications, and the technologies that drive them. In order for art to meet commerce, you need to know How To Get More Voice Acting Jobs: Marketing 101 for Actors & Voiceovers to establish and further your career as a professional talent. Learn the essentials required to offer the greatest opportunities in promoting yourself and maintaining your acting career and voice acting career regardless of location or experience level to land voice overs and on-camera jobs.

Discover what no voice acting classes will teach you from the author of The SOUND ADVICE Encyclopedia of Voice-over & the Business of Being a Working Talent and expert in the voice acting and entertainment field to allow you the best chance to secure voice acting jobs as well as on-camera work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 25, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483512815

Book preview

Chapter 1

Going the Distance

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

—Samuel Johnson

At Sound Advice we’re often asked, What’s it take to go the distance in this business?

There’s 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. It’s your responsibility to ensure these elements are continually in play as they are required of you no matter how far along you may be—regardless 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, you’ll 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, it’s ultimately up to you to run your career. This is your business and no one else’s. 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 around—contrary to what many novices may think.

So, if you find you’re 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 won’t be sharp when called upon at a moment’s 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. It’s 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