 Great photo by Pixabay. Y’know, it’s funny. A voiceover is truly an old-school skill: it dates back to the birth of radio about 100 years ago. And radio itself, while still around, isn’t the front-and-center medium it once was.
But what about voiceovers? Have they suffered the same fate? Au contraire. They’ve not only survived. They’ve flourished. They’ve exploded. The internet—specifically things like B2B and B2C videos on YouTube and Vimeo, cross-posted to platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook—have made them ubiquitous. Essential. And the way they’re done has changed, too. But we’ll get into that in a minute. The point of this article is to help you get more out of each voiceover you buy, so that your target audience buys more stuff from you. Basic premise, but packed with nuances. The new reality As we’d noted above, online videos are everywhere. And pretty much all of them have a voiceover—if not for the entire thing, then definitely portions of it. Even if (and this is common) it’s a little video that will scroll by, with the sound off, and big “closed captions” rolling past, Karaoke-style, you’ll still have that voiceover track, which you can hear, the instant you click the “un-mute” icon. Voiceovers are important. Sure, they tell the story. They explain what’s going on. But, done right, they do much more than that. In a subtle way, they represent, and sell, your brand. Is that voice authoritative? Seductive? Approachable? Intelligent? Likable? Or what if it’s the opposite? There’s a lot at stake here. Which leads to casting. Which leads to the new modality of simply producing voiceovers. The new modality Here at Copel Communications, we’ve been directing (and of course writing) voiceovers for decades. Back in the day, we’d do them at sound studios and/or radio stations, and everything was in person. We’d show up. The voiceover artist would show up. The engineer would show up. We’d bring the script, printed on paper, in triplicate, so each party could have a copy. And then we’d sit in the control room while the V.O. artist sat, on the other side of the soundproof glass, in the booth. We could see each other. (Although we could only hear each other via headphones and microphones.) And seeing is a huge asset when recording a V.O. As the producer, we could see how the artist was performing. They could see our reactions: good, bad, and indifferent. And there was instant feedback. After a take, we’d rate and review it. We might request a quick punch-in fix. And we could get everyone out of the studio pretty quickly, most of the time, with a great product in-hand. Fast-forward to the 21st century. No one works like that anymore... at least for the scope and budget of projects such as those we’re discussing here. For the business videos you’re producing, you’ll be posting them online—and you’ll be casting and producing them online, too. The downside is you lose the eye-contact and the immediacy. But pretty much everything else is better:
About that last point. Decades ago, we’d pay about $150 for a voiceover session in a studio. Today, we’re getting the same product (actually a better product, since it’s digital and not analog) for about a third of that. And that’s after decades of inflation, so the real cost was higher then... or less, now, depending on how you look at it. There are lots of places to find V.O. talent. There’s Upwork. We’ve had good results with Fiverr. Which gets back to that first bullet: “Infinitely more talent.” We recently wanted a Morgan Freeman-style voice, and searched on “Morgan Freeman-style voice,” and found lots of them. And many of them were quite good! Just like that! It was a real gig-economy moment: This obscure Morgan Freeman sound-alike was just sitting there, when, bang!, he got work from us. Everyone was happy. Direct without directing We won’t get into the intricacies of casting here; that goes beyond the scope of this article. So we’ll assume you’ve found the talent that you like and need. But they might be halfway across the country... or the world. (We use lots of British voices, for example.) So how do you direct them if you can’t be in the control room while they’re in the booth? The answer is the script. That might sound like a no-brainer, but it’s how you craft the script that matters. Sure, you’ve got your “V.O.” in the “Audio” column of the script. (The other column is “Video.”) But you need to help that announcer along. Consider this V.O. passage (which we’re making up) for a corporate video aimed at banking executives:
That’s tricky! There are a few ways a V.O. artist could read this... but only one that you want. Let’s make it a little more artist-friendly:
“Brackets” signify “directions to the artist.” Pretty obvious. As fixed, above, you’ll now know that your artist won’t say “S-O-X” or “Ock”, which wouldn’t help you. Also note the addition of that hugely important hyphen. “Issue adverse action letters” became “Issue adverse-action letters.” So “adverse-action” will get read [“red,” not “reed,” get it?] as if it were just one word (technically a compound adjective), and just guide that artist along. Help them with things like numbers, too. Don’t write “1,600.” Choose what you want: either “one-thousand six-hundred” or “16-hundred.” Make it clear. Here’s another trick: Toss some intriguing direction, for the artist, on the overall character and tonality, at the top of the script. Make it challenging and fun for them; they’ll love you for it... and deliver a better read. We recently penned a script which included a voice for a robot character who was “nerdy yet likeable” with a touch of “efficient British butler” to him. We got a dynamite read out of our artist for that one. We work on this kind of stuff all the time (heck, we even served as preliminary judge for the Clio Awards for “U.S. Radio”). Need help? We’d love to come to the rescue. Contact us today.
0 Comments
 Great photo by icon0.com We recently worked with a consultant who targeted certain professional-services firms, with the aim of improving their cashflow. While we were working on the website copy for this client, the conversation took an interesting turn:
Who was this website to target? Sure, it’s the “professional-services firms.” But who within them? Aha. Big question. Defining, and ranking, the “person target” within your intended audience is one of the most important, yet overlooked, exercises you can undertake in your business. So let’s talk about that. Concentric circles For the client we’d mentioned above, the initial target was the owners of these professional-services firms. But since the offering was all about improving cashflow, the better target was those people within those proserv firms handling the billing. While both audiences would appreciate the offering—and even though the practice owners would be the ones to approve the purchase, and sign the checks—it was determined that the billing people were the ones who were more desperate, who needed this yesterday, and who would beg, plead, coerce, and threaten their bosses to spring for this offering until they actually did... compared to the owners, who might regard this more as a nice-to-have. Hmm. Mind you, this is a subtle distinction. It required a good degree of customer intimacy for our client to see, and then act upon, the difference. But it certainly affected our job, and our messaging. It’s a totally different offer, addressing a totally different set of pain points, if you’re selling to the billing person vs. the practice owner. Not that we intended to alienate the latter. “Speak to the target, but let others listen,” is the old Leo Burnett quote. But remember—always remember—that you’ve only got so much space. And so much time. That prospect is in instant-gratification mode when they’re up in the sales funnel, still trying to quickly learn about your business and the realm in which it competes. So you’ve got to nail that message, and place it above-the-fold where it’s most prominent. But what if (of course you’re thinking of this already) Target Audience A and Target Audience B are basically equal in value? And what do you do if the messaging to each isn’t subtly different, but rather significantly different? Divide and conquer We actually wrote an entire blog on this subject, and we’ll recommend it here. The gist is that you can basically create a bifurcated website, which presents the visitor with two different “doors” to enter once they arrive. So they self-select, and enter through the “door” that’s right for them. It works. But you should only use that approach when it’s appropriate. (Don’t worry: that blog includes examples.) For most other situations, you’ll want to “target the target,” and be as laser-focused as you can. This leads to another common question of target-audience ranking (or, as some of our consulting clients would phrase it, “value-delivery-based market segmentation”). In the world of consultancies, there are, broadly, two types of audiences: the do-it-myself’s and the do-it-for-me’s. Those monikers are pretty obvious, but let’s make it extra clear: The do-it-myself’s (or DIYs) are often looking for the control and satisfaction of doing something on their own (albeit with professional help and/or tools), and almost always are looking to save money in the process. The do-it-for-me’s, by contrast, value time and lack of aggravation so much that they’re willing to spend—a premium, no less—in order to get it. Your business may well serve both. So you need to determine which camp you prefer to serve (i.e., which is more lucrative and smoother), and reflect that weighting in your marketing and messaging, accordingly. Questions—and distinctions—like these sometimes seem so subtle as to not be worth mentioning, let alone dedicating time and effort toward. But nothing could be further from the truth. The better you define, and target, your audience, the more they’ll thank you for addressing their unique challenges... and reward you with business in the process. Need help with target-audience segmentation? Contact us. We work on projects like these all the time. |