The Perfect Demo?

The perfect demo doesn’t exist. A demo is a sales pitch for your voice…you need different pitches for different projects. It’s hard make one demo that covers all bases well. The most specific sales pitch for your voice is the audition, targeted exactly to the script you’re hoping to be cast for. Still, even when you do an audition for a specific spot or narration, there are variables beyond your control. The casting director might tell you to read the copy with a lot of inflection and personality, while the producer who is ultimately going to be in charge of creating the final spot may be looking for a much flatter, more impersonal read. You just do the best you can to present your voice and delivery in the most favorable light.

I do occasionally get cries for help from voiceover students who think their demo is not getting them work and needs to be redone. Maybe the demo is faulty…maybe a bit of retooling will make it much more effective….but in many cases, the weakness is not in the demo itself, but in the lack of persistence and creativity in marketing it. I recently read an article that suggested a high-level business client might not respond to a sales pitch until he/or she had been contacted as many as ten times. It just takes that long to get the message through to a busy person. And, of course, the busy person is precisely the one you want to get your voice demo to.

When I say that a lead may need to be contacted up to 10 times before you get the kind of attention you want, I don’t mean ten emails in ten days… You may need to mix up the phone call, email (targeted, never a mass mailing), post card, and letter approaches. If you can think of another way of contacting your prospect, you should do that as well. It all takes time.

The up side is that after a year or even two of persistent contact, the client knows you’re in the business…your name has become familiar to them…”Oh, yeah, Ernie Voiceguy, sure…I’ve heard of him. Let’s have him audition for this spot.” He may only have heard of you from your own marketing, but the effect is the same…and basically quite valid. If you’ve been professionally marketing yourself to a client for two or three years, that client is right in assuming that you are a committed professional, not a one-time wannabe. A committed professional is someone the client will feel comfortable trusting with an important project. The only better testimonial comes when you’ve done a job for the client and done it well.

There’s no way around it. A demo seldom is good enough to do the job with just one contact, just one mailing…so it may be a bit foolish to assume that there’s something wrong with the demo because is isn’t getting you six figures worth of work in the first six months. Especially if you only sent it to six potential clients. Marketing is a numbers game, and a persistence game…and if you approach it as fun and a positive experience you will do better than somebody who is grudgingly slugging it out. And the slugger is liable to quit, because it simply isn’t fun. Marketing is different for everybody, I do it my way, you do it yours, Joe Voiceguy does it his way. What works for one person may or may not work for another. There are no guarantees…think about who you know, think about who knows you, and take advantage of everything that might work in your favor. But do it all with a smile…the professional thing is to be confident, positive, and persistent. Your voicework is a service that you offer…and the whole point is to help your client with their important project. As a byproduct, you get to eat and pay the mortgage.