In the online age, professional voice-over work for online marketing materials is increasingly important. America’s small business owners know that Entrepreneurship 101 advocates outsourcing non-core activities.
That applies as much to voiceover artistry as it does to IT or accounting.
These are all functions that are best outsourced to companies that are professionals in these fields.
The value of a professional voice actor
Just like professionals in those other fields, there are special skills that American voice actors for hire bring to the table.
These include clear enunciation and pronunciation of the script, the upward and downward inflection to stress certain words, and the ability to showcase the brand’s values through voice acting. These skills are learned through training and experience.
These all serve to make the spoken word more professional and can help generate new business in a variety of scenarios.
Here are just a few of the applications of professional voice work in promoting a small business.
On hold messages
It might sound like a small detail but think about this: Your on-hold message might be the first contact that a potential client has with your business. And if it is not right, it could be the last.
Nobody likes to be put on hold, but if the message they hear is professionally delivered, on-brand, and informative, then you have a better chance of keeping the potential lead and converting it into a valued customer.
Narrating your marketing videos
Video is the most common form of content being published organically, and people are twice as likely to share video as any other medium.
Today’s smartphone technology means that any seven-year-old can create a two-minute video. The trouble is, when you try voicing it yourself, or using an AI voice, it ends up looking quite amateurish…
Shooting the footage is fine.
Whether you are selling sports goods, bridal wear, or classic cars, it is simple enough to take some good video footage of your wares. But describing them in a way that grabs the attention of viewers takes expertise.
A professional voice artist will exercise tone and timing to match your brand and give your video a professional edge.
Radio advertising is far from dead
Radio might not have the listener numbers that it did 10 or 20 years ago, but it still reaches about 82 percent of Americans. Local radio is a fantastic and cost-effective way of getting your business known locally.
Whether you work directly with a radio station or through an advertising agency, you’ll need to come up with a good script and then place it in the hands of a talented voice artist to get your message across in the right way.
Radio work can be very powerful. Done well, it can leave a lasting image in the mind of your audience. After all, we can all remember a few radio ads from our childhood.
Podcasts need professional bookends
From the most traditional form of advertising to one of the most modern, we finally moved to the world of podcasts.
While you will usually want to present the main content of the podcast yourself, it needs to be wrapped up in a professional package.
This means using a professional voice talent to create an intro and outro that are on-brand and will encourage your audience to keep on listening and find out what you will be covering next.
This kind of content is relatively inexpensive to produce and will just need a short amount of footage from the right voice artist, used in combination with some effective royalty-free music and sound effects that can be found online.
It will give your podcast that extra layer of professionalism to make it more dynamic, give it extra authority, and set it apart from the competition.