Sep 18, 2023
If you don't know who Marc Scott is, you should. The VOpreneur is helping Voice Artists around the world navigate the nightmare that is marketing your Voice!
This week, we have him on the show to talk about everything from emailing leads to the Red Socks...
Find out more about him and his great services here:
https://www.vopreneur.com/
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Hunter S Thompson
Summary
On this episode of Pro Audio Suite, voiceover and marketing coach
Mark Scott is featured. Mark shares how he started his career in
marketing out of necessity to make it in the voiceover industry.
Now, he helps other voiceover artists navigate their own marketing
journey. Covering a range of topics from social media strategy,
dealing with rejection, the power of micro habits, and avoiding
distractions, Mark provides valuable insights on how to set
yourself apart in a saturated market. He also emphasizes the
importance of continually bringing in new prospects to maintain
success. The episode also dives into his experimentation with
affiliate marketing and his innovative use of national days for
promotional sales. He shares his approach to gifting clients,
stressing the importance of showing appreciation. The discussion
also touches on techniques for enhancing creativity, a crucial
skill for both voiceover work and marketing.
#VoiceoverMarketingGuru #ProAudioSuitePodcast
#MarketingInAudioIndustry
Timestamps
[00:00:00] Pro Audio Suite Introduction
[00:00:39] Guest Introduction - Marketing Guru Mark Scott
[00:01:27] Mark Scott's Journey to Voiceover Marketing
[00:03:21] The Challenge of Offline Marketing for Voiceover
Artists
[00:08:49] Pros and Cons of Social Media in Marketing
[00:10:37] Cultural Influences in Marketing Strategies
[00:11:42] The Power of 'No' in Building Relationships
[00:13:55] The Impact of Micro Habits on Growth
[00:17:05] Distraction - The Enemy of Marketing
[00:20:56] Tailored Marketing Advice for Voiceover Artist
Andrew
[00:28:49] Mark's Recent Marketing Endeavors
[00:31:48] The Danger of Complacency in Successful Businesses
[00:33:04] The Art of Gifting in Business Relationships
[00:34:27] Capitalizing on Unconventional Sales Opportunities
[00:36:36] Sparking Creativity for Social Media Content
[00:42:30] Pro Audio Suite Closing Remarks
Transcript
Speaker A: Y'all ready be history.,Speaker B: Get started.,Speaker
C: Welcome.,Speaker B: Hi. Hi.,: Hello, everyone, to the Pro Audio
Suite. These guys are professional. They're motivated with
tech.,Speaker C: To the Vo stars George Wittam, founder of Source
Elements Robert Marshall, international audio engineer Darren Robbo
Robertson and global voice Andrew Peters. Thanks to Triboo Austrian
audio making passion heard. Source elements. George the tech.
Wittam and robbo and AP's. International demo. To find out more
about us, check thepro audiosuite.com line up.,Speaker B: Learner.
Here we go.,Speaker C: And don't forget the code. Trip a P 200 to
get $200 off your tribooth. This week we have a guest. He hasn't as
many kids as Robbo, not as cute as Robert, not as smart as George,
but he's one of us, and that counts for something. Would you please
welcome the marketing guru, Mark Scott. How you doing?,Speaker B:
Mark, I see what you did there. I totally caught what you did.
Somebody's been listening to my podcast and playing off my
opener.,Speaker A: Who would do that?,Speaker C: Exactly.,Speaker
A: Really?,: Cheeky monkey.,Speaker B: Look at you guys doing your
research.,Speaker A: I appreciate know we go out of our way. We do
work hard.,Speaker C: We do indeed.,: Don't speak for yourself. I
just show up.,Speaker C: Actually, I was lying before. I'm the
same. Yeah. So the question I have to get the ball rolling. How did
you sort of end up being like the voiceover marketing guru?,Speaker
B: Because I needed to make money in voiceover, and I had to figure
out how to do it. I'm one of those voice actors, show of hands,
who's been ceremoniously, dumped from their radio career, right.
And defaulted into voiceover. And I wasn't making any money when I
first started in Voiceover, and I was like, I know I can do this. I
know there's a way to make money. Casting sites will only take me
so far. And so I started figuring out, at first by accident and
then with a little bit greater intention, how to actually market
myself. And I remember I read a book that Gary Vee wrote. Everybody
knows Gary Vee in the marketing space and in that book, Gary Vee
said, you should write a blog. And so I thought, all right, well,
if Gary Vee says I should write a blog, I should write a blog. But
I didn't know what to blog about. So I just started blogging about
all of the marketing stuff that I was learning while I was on this
journey. And I guess the end result of that was people thought that
I was a marketing guru. And so I just roll with it.,Speaker A: Is
that how you see yourself?,Speaker B: I mean, now I do see myself
as a voice actor and a marketing coach for voice actors. And even
though that was never the original intention, voiceover was
obviously the original intention. The coaching thing was just one
of those things where I guess you get to a point where the market
kind of dictates it when you start getting a lot of people emailing
you saying, can you help me with this? Or do you offer coaching? Or
I got invited to speak at a couple of conferences and I was like,
man, maybe there's something to this, maybe I should roll with
this. And I think the best part of it is that it helps to keep me
sharp. I can't get complacent because I'm helping other people and
having to stay on top of what's going on and having to pay
attention. And so that keeps me sharp too.,Speaker A: Because
marketing yourself is a hell of a job, isn't it? It takes a lot of
time.,Speaker B: It is.,Speaker A: Is that something that you sort
of, as part of your coaching, you're teaching people, is how to
best use their time as well, to fit all this stuff in, to run a
database and to do prospecting and to send emails and are you sort
of helping them with their time on that as well?,Speaker B: Well, I
mean, the thing that I always joke about is people ask me, how many
marketing emails should I be sending? And my response is what
you're really asking me is what is the minimum amount of marketing
that I can do and still get away with it? Because this is not what
voice actors want to do. Right. They sign up to be in the booth and
do the recording, but the reality is, if you're not in the booth
and you're not doing the recording, it's probably because you're
not doing the marketing. So it takes time. Yes, but for me, it's
like, what else am I going to do if I'm not recording? I might as
well be spending my day making new connections, getting in front of
new people, so that I can open the door to do more recording down
the road. Right?,: It's probably better than obsessing on whether
you have the best microphone for voiceover.,Speaker B: Yeah, I
think so.,: It's much better use of your time, I can tell
you.,Speaker A: Yeah, because marketing is something that I mean,
I'm basing my assumptions here on the Australian market, but 20
years ago, a voiceover artist marketing themselves was unheard of
because you had an agent and they pretty much did all that for you.
So it's only a sort of recent thing. Do you find that maybe that's
part of the issue is that voiceover artists in general have only
just recently been thrown into this situation and they're madly
trying to figure it out without really anyone to sort of base their
marketing strategy on or whatever. Do you find that maybe we're all
a bit new to this?,Speaker B: It might be an oversimplification,
but I think looking out at the macro level, I think there's
probably three different classes of voice actors. There's the
voiceover veterans who were around in the glory days of voiceover
when it was all agents and in studio, and your agents did
everything for you and they brought you in studio and obviously the
industry still exists like that in certain areas, but not in a lot
of areas anymore. Then there was a group of voice actors who kind
of came in during what I call the glory days of online casting. And
so for them it meant signing up for a Pay to Play membership,
submitting auditions on Pay to Play and maybe they had an agent or
two as well. And for voice actors that have come in, we'll say the
COVID era voice actors, the glory days of online casting are over.
It's not really a sustainable way to build a full time business.
Obviously the agent model has shifted a ton and so I think those
voice actors are more in tune with the fact that marketing is how
this gets done. And I think that voice, like, I came in the glory
days of online casting and I was in denial for a while, but when I
started seeing things change on the Pay to Play, I knew, okay, I
got to figure out a better way. And I don't happen to live in a New
York or in La or a Chicago where the full agent model may still
work for some people. And so I do think that for a lot of voice
actors, they're creatives. They operate from the creative side of
their brain. They want to be in the booth doing creative things.
And marketing, I think, comes from the other side of the brain and
so it's not a natural fit and that's why they don't think about it
initially, it's why they don't necessarily want to do it. Can't
blame them for that either. But it opened up the door for somebody
like me to be able to come in and help them with it because I'm
actually not a creative. So I operate from the business side of my
brain first.,Speaker C: Yeah, it's interesting though, because
winding the clock back, I remember when I like, you finished my
radio career and moved to Melbourne 25 years ago. I got into
voiceover, got an agent and I was sort of started working, but it
was a slow thing. And I walked into a studio one day and I remember
sitting and waiting to go in. They had no idea who I was, they just
had a name on a piece of paper that I was coming in to do a voice.
But I watched the way they communicated with the talent that was
leaving and it was like, hey, see you Matt, blah, blah, blah,
whatever. It was all like face to face. They knew each other, so I
thought there's got to be a way of shortcutting this so I can
actually become visible to them as opposed to just being a name on
a piece of paper. So I went out and found a photographer and I got
a whole bunch of shots taken. And the brief was there were certain
colors that I wanted to do, but I wanted to make it look like I was
releasing an album on a CD. And I was the singer, so I was the
artist on the front cover, which I did. And so I produced all these
videos, which in those days was VHS for on camera stuff. I did a
bunch of CDs with this picture on it and it was an immediate
shortcut because I just did every studio, went to every studio,
dropped these kits off with my demo and all that kind of stuff, and
it was amazing. When I walked in, they knew who I was because on
their desk was my photograph on the CD and everybody else just had
their name and a contact number.,Speaker B: Yeah, I was going to
say at that point in time, probably nobody else was doing that. So
it makes it so much easier for you to stand out. Right. That's how
you get noticed.,Speaker C: Yeah. And it worked. It was like, it
was an immediate shortcut. I probably saved about six months of
traipsing around the studios.,Speaker B: Yeah, for sure.,Speaker A:
Is there an online equivalent of that today, do you reckon, Mark,
or is it just a slow slog?,Speaker B: I mean, social media is I
wouldn't call it a shortcut. Can you get lucky on social media if
you find the right audience or hit the right niche or do the right
thing? Of course, I've seen many voice actors who have gone viral
on TikTok or on YouTube or on Instagram, and that has led to
opportunities. I wouldn't say that it's necessarily the norm for it
to happen quickly, but I do think that if you use some of those
tools consistently, over time, you start to build a following, you
start to get recognition and people start to notice who you are and
pay a little bit more attention.,: Yeah. I can tell you from
someone who's started his business at the beginning of social
media, it's been a very long slog because you do just spend time
building up the brand and the name recognition and establishing
yourself as an authority on the subject of something. So, yeah,
it's a way to do it. It's definitely not the fastest, I would
say.,Speaker B: Yeah, I would say now, I don't know that I would
release the VHS, but I would say that there's a full circle coming
around. Like I've had some success doing things like postcards
because everybody else is doing email and inbox and social media
and nobody's sending anything through the mail anymore. And so
that's one of the ways that you stand out. So walking into a studio
today and dropping off a package, nobody's doing that again now
because everybody's doing email and social media, so there might be
a full circle opportunity to kind of jump the line a little bit in
that regard.,Speaker A: Will that be the next episode of your
podcast, Mark?,Speaker B: Yeah, maybe I'll bring you guys on the
show and we'll talk through that one.,Speaker C: As far as
countries are concerned, do you find the attitude towards marketing
changes depending on which country you're marketing yourself
into?,Speaker B: I don't know if the attitude changes as much. I
think maybe the platforms change a little bit. Like for example,
I've got some clients in South America who don't do email at all.
Everything happens on WhatsApp. And so if you're emailing them and
they're not responding to you, that's why. Because they don't
actually operate on their inbox, they operate out of WhatsApp. And
so that's a little bit different. I think the whole North American
24/7 hustle culture, I don't think that necessarily plays the same
way in certain European markets where they actually take time off
and leave the office and end their workday. And so if you're
dropping marketing emails in their inbox at eight or 09:00 at night
or whatever, I don't know that that necessarily lands. So I think
there's little things, little nuances maybe from country to
country, region to region. But at the end of the day, we're all
trying to accomplish the same thing. We want people to hear our
voice and if our demos are great, then hopefully that does the
selling for us.,Speaker A: Yeah, well, talking about email, I've
heard you mention a couple of times that no hearing no is actually
a good thing. Do you want to explain that to people who maybe
haven't heard you talk about this before?,Speaker B: I think that
when we're sending out our marketing emails, obviously we want
everybody to say yes and we want everybody to hire us and we want
every email that we send to be a potential opportunity. And so when
we get that rejection, our natural instinct is to take it as know,
I might not be any good or maybe my demos aren't good enough or
maybe my studio stinks, I need to call George. Whatever. Right. We
start to go into all of this negative spiral of everything that's
wrong with us when the reality is maybe they don't use voice actors
or maybe they've already got a full roster or maybe there's just
nothing that fits your voice or whatever. Right. There's 1000
reasons why they don't need you. Only one of those reasons is they
didn't like you. But by them just telling you no straight up now,
you know, so you don't have to put any more effort into building a
relationship with that person going forward. And so much of
marketing is building relationships. I would rather devote my time,
my effort, my energy to building relationships with people who are
potentially going to hire me than spending it on somebody who was
never going to hire me in the first place. So the sooner they tell
me no, I'm not interested, the better it is for me in that regard
because I can devote more time to better prospects.,: Yeah, kind of
the same thing as like unsubscribes. Like whenever I send out an
email campaign, there's a certain percentages of unsubscribes,
maybe a half a percent, but I used to be like, oh man, people don't
want to hear it. And it's like, no, that's good. Now you've weeded
it down. Now the ones that are left are the ones that really do
want to hear from you. And that lets you know people that's true
from you, because they're telling you they don't want to hear from
you. It's not a bad thing.,Speaker B: When I started building my
email list, I took it so personal. Like, I wanted to call up every
person who unsubscribed and be like, did I say something wrong? I'm
so sorry. Right? You don't want that rejection, right? But now the
unsubscribe is a gift in that sense, because now you know that's
somebody who was never going to work with you anyway, so focus your
attention somewhere else.,Speaker A: I want to take a bit of an off
ramp here and head in a different direction, just for a second,
because you and I have one thing in common that I know of and we're
a bit of a fan of a book called Atomic Habits from a gentleman who
I've been lucky enough to interview for an hour or so. A guy called
James clear. And his book talks about how micro habits can actually
change our lives. Just little things that we do every day that
become a habit, can actually change our business, our family life,
anything that you want to change, really. And I was wondering if
you, in your time of reading James's book and sort of thinking
about the things that he's spoken about, if you might have like
three habits or so that a voiceover artist should get into in terms
of their marketing if they want to become more successful.,Speaker
B: One of the things that I talk about all the time with email
marketing is send ten emails a day, which is not a big number when
you break it down. Ten emails a day, that's not a big number.
That's something that realistically, you could probably do in about
an hour. It doesn't seem like a lot ultimately, but if you do that
five days a week, you just sent 50 emails. And if you do that
consistently for a year, that's 2500 emails. And if you get a ten
or 15% response rate, that's 200 and 5275 prospects that are now in
your database. After a year of just sending ten emails a day, like
just focusing on one simple, small task that's an hour out of your
day at most, but can create an exponential growth opportunity for
you if you do it consistently for a year. And so I think the same
applies to social media, though, too, right? Like if you post once
a week or twice a week, but you just do it consistently, you get
into that habit of doing it consistently, not sharing an update
when you've got an update and then falling off for 30 days and then
coming back. And now you got to start all over again with the
algorithm, and you've got to retrain the algorithm, right? I think
some of those simple little things that you can break down into
daily tasks that you can accomplish in 10 minutes, 15 minutes, an
hour to send those emails or whatever, it does make a big
difference, and it's important. I work with voice actors. There's a
group of voice actors that I coach for an entire year. Every year,
I build out a mastermind group, and in December, we meet. I meet
with each of one of them one on one, and we set the big goals for
the entire year. Like, when I get to the end of the next year,
these are the things that I want to accomplish. And then the next
step from that is breaking it down into, okay, what does that look
like over individual quarters? What does that look like over a
month to month basis? And then, what does that look like on a day
to day basis? So that you don't just focus on the great big
overarching goal for the entire year, but you're breaking that down
into more bite sized pieces, right? It's the whole idea of eating
the elephant one bite at a time. And I think that's the concept,
basically, of the micro habits. And that's why I love that book. I
think everybody should read that book.,Speaker A: It's a ripper,
isn't it?,Speaker B: It really is.,Speaker A: What do you think's
the biggest enemy of doing? Easy to for me, it's so easy. If I'm
getting on to do my socials, it's so easily to get distracted and
go, oh, look what my mate Sean posted last week. And look at this,
look at that. Do you reckon distraction is an enemy of our
marketing?,Speaker B: 100%. There was a study that came out, and I
know I'm going to get the numbers wrong, but it was something like,
for every time that we allow ourselves to get taken off focus, it
takes, like, 26 minutes to get back on track or something like
that, right? And so one of the things that I say with social media,
and I teach this to voice actors, like, okay, you're going to use
LinkedIn because you think that that's a really good platform for
you based on the type of work that you want to get. One of the
things that you got to do on LinkedIn, if you really want to gain
traction, is you've got to be consistent. Okay, what does that look
like? And I say set a ten minute block in your calendar every
morning and use an alarm. And when that alarm goes off after 10
minutes, get off. Because social media is designed for the endless
scroll, right? Like, they've literally engineered these sites to
keep us there as long as humanly possible. And so you have to be
intentional about getting off and moving on to the next task.
Otherwise it is 2 hours later and you're still flipping through
reels on Instagram or whatever. And so I think you've got to be
very careful about stuff like that.,: Yeah, I had to come up with a
hack for me, I am one of those keep many tabs open in Chrome,
people, all the things I use to run my business, all the different
software websites, everything is like tabs, right? So what I do now
is I check Facebook and then I close the just that one little thing
keeps it from looking at me and taunting me to click on it because
it's just not there. And that's my little hack.,Speaker A: James
Clee would be proud of you mate. That's an atomic habit.,Speaker B:
So often during the day my phone is not in my office because it's
too easy, right? It's too easy. Apple lets you set up the custom
focuses in the operating system and so I can set a custom focus
that the only people that can text me or get a call through to me
during certain times of the day. When I'm in that focus is like my
wife and my kids, right? Everybody else can wait at that point
because I don't want one ping on your phone. One notification is
never just let me just check that one text or let me just answer
that one email. It's always 25 minutes later and checked the
weather and checked the stock market and went on Twitter and had to
look at Instagram or whatever, right? And so it's too easy to lose
the time.,Speaker A: Is that a thing for you if you've got that set
up on your phone? Does that mean that there's a time of the day, I
guess given outside of voiceover sessions and stuff but is there a
particular time of the day that you do this sort of work?,Speaker
B: When it is available in my schedule because my days are very
unpredictable but I try to leave certain parts. Like you can't
schedule a session with me before 11:00 a.m. So the first couple of
hours of the morning, that's time when I can really just focus on
my business and you can't schedule a session with me after 04:00 in
the afternoon and so there might be an hour or two after 04:00
where I'm focused and that's where I'm going to do my things. But
then if I have spare time in a day where somebody hasn't booked me
for whatever reason, phone goes into the focus and it lets me
settle in to do whatever the task is that I need to do. 30 minutes
of deep focused work is so much more productive than 2 hours of
periodic distracted work in between checking socials and text
messages and getting yourself into a.,Speaker A: So let's let's,
let's get a little bit micro on know, let's take Andrew as an
example. Andrew's got an agent here in Australia. He's got an agent
in the States. He does work that he drums up himself out of
Singapore and Dubai. What should a media strategy for someone like
Andrew, and I'm not asking you to give him a freebie here, but in
general terms, what sort of things should Andrew be thinking about
if he's going to go out there now and market himself and drum up
some more work?,Speaker B: What kind of work is Andrew looking
for?,Speaker C: That's a very good question.,Speaker B: Probably
particular genre.,Speaker C: I'm just kind of thinking the things
that I probably do mainly, which is promo work, TV promos, radio
imaging.,Speaker B: Then.,Speaker C: I do quite a lot of mainly
commercials, long form stuff. So I do like everything really. But I
guess the main thing is what I'm booked for is the imaging or promo
and also the soft sell sort of luxury product kind of
voice.,Speaker B: So one of the things that I think you could be
doing is looking at you got a great voice, you got that you sound
like a TV promo documentary.,Speaker A: God, don't strike his ego
anymore, please.,Speaker C: Oh, come on, someone's got two.,Speaker
B: You have the kind of voice that people will sit and listen to on
TikTok. You do. And I think there's one of two things that you
could do. I think that you could either just do it straight and
record yourself reading promos imaging, stuff like that, make some
videos in the studio of you doing that as just a way to
demonstrate, but also give people the opportunity to hear your
voice. Or I think there's an opportunity to go in a completely
different direction. The person I'm thinking of in particular is
Christopher Tester. He's a voice actor out of the UK who is a
classically trained British RP theater actor. And he goes on TikTok
and reads monologues know, plays and historic books, different
things like that, right? And he's created this whole niche with
videos that constantly are going viral, but then people are also
constantly writing him and saying, hey, do this one next, or do
this one next, which keeps the audience coming back, keeps them
watching, keeps the videos going viral. But it was a demonstration
of his acting ability and so people end up booking him for
voiceover work specifically because of that, because they're seeing
his acting abilities. So I think if you could come up with a fun
way to do some social media content that highlights your voice but
demonstrates your skill, I think that's one of the things that
could be done in a relatively short amount of time every day,
dedicate 30 minutes to it. Making videos for social media doesn't
need to be a complex task anymore. If you've got an iPhone or
whatever, you've already got a superior camera and you've got a
studio, so you've got great audio, so that's really easy. And I
think that would be one thing that I would be looking at. And then
the other thing is, I would set a target for myself of I'm going to
connect with whatever it is, five radio station program directors
every day. And maybe that's going to be through LinkedIn, or maybe
that's going to be through email, but it's just getting yourself in
front of a few new people every day, and that number is going to
change. Right. For a successful working, six figure talent who
doesn't have a lot of time, right? They can contact 2025 people a
week and just keep some new, fresh people in the pipeline. For the
voice actor who doesn't have a whole lot of work right now and is
still trying to build their business, you're going to contact ten
or 20 people a day and work at filling up and creating that
pipeline. But those are two things that I think that you could do
to open up some opportunities for yourself. And that one's okay.
That's okay. It's on the house.,Speaker A: There you go. And I'll
be expecting to see the first video tomorrow. Andrew? Yes.,Speaker
C: I wonder what I'll do on TikTok. I dread to think we're going
to.,Speaker B: Premier it with the podcast episode.,Speaker A: So
you know what's interesting in hearing you talk about that, Mark,
is that how niched our marketing needs to get. Then? If we're
aiming for a TikTok audience, do we really need to niche it down
to, okay, I'm going to do it about acting, or I'm going to do it,
or is there any scope anymore for just that I'm a voiceover actor
and I can pretty much do everything? Or do we need to niche all our
marketing down?,Speaker B: I think that it's possible to do a niche
that has absolutely nothing to do with voiceover whatsoever. If it
is a niche that you have a skill in or a passion in, and you can
connect with an audience in. The best example of that is Stefan
Johnson. So he's an American voice actor who does food reviews on
TikTok, and they're hilarious, irreverent, fun. And the guy's got I
don't even know at this point, he's probably got ten or 11 million
followers on TikTok. Every video he does, I think, goes viral. That
pretty much is the way it works. Now, he is not talking about
voiceover. He's just talking about food and snacks and fast food
and doing his reviews, who's got the best burger, who's got the
best pizza, whatever. But because he reaches such a broad audience,
so many people are watching his videos, it's inevitable that
somewhere in that audience of millions of people are people who
make buying decisions about voiceover for whatever, from the local
video production company to the executive producer at a cable
network or whatever. And so that has opened up a door for him for
tons of voiceover opportunity. And so I think sometimes we limit
ourselves by getting too focused on the voiceover box and thinking
we have to. Be in the voiceover box. And so is there something that
you can talk about, that you are passionate about, that you love,
that you have a skill for, that you have an education for?
Whatever? Is there a way that you could create content around that
that highlights your voice still or highlights your narration skill
or your acting skill or whatever? Doesn't specifically have to do
with voiceover, but I think the two tie themselves together
eventually.,Speaker A: Now people out there are going to go, it's
all right for you, Mark, you've been doing this for a while now,
you've got it down pat. I'm just a lowly little voiceover artist
sitting in my home studio. I have no idea where to start. Would
your advice be just bite the bullet and start?,Speaker B: Yeah.
Because your first video is not going to be your best video. The
first email that you send is not going to be the best email that
you send. The first social media, a post that you create is not
going to be the best, but you've got to get the first one out of
the way to get to the next one, which is going to be a little
better. And the one after that, it's going to be a little better.
Honestly, if I go back to, let's say, 2008 910, somewhere in there,
when I first started doing a little bit of email marketing, it is
honestly an act of God that I ever booked a voiceover at all
because I can go back and look at some of those early emails and be
like, what the heck? I didn't have a clue what I.,Speaker C: Was
doing, but I was just exactly.,Speaker B: Doing it and then
learning as I went, getting incrementally better. And that's what
opens up the door to more opportunity down the road. And so, yeah,
I think it's really easy to get perfection paralysis, right? I've
got to have everything lined up before I got to have the perfect
camera, the perfect audio, the perfect studio, the perfect backdrop
before I can make my first video. Or I've got to have the exact
formula worked out for the ultimate marketing email before I can
ever send the first marketing email. And we let that become a
crutch or an excuse that keeps us from just doing the thing when
the reality is it's just like voiceover. My guess is, and you guys
could probably attest to this your first time in the booth and your
hundredth time in the booth, I'm hoping on the hundredth time you
were better, you get in your reps and you get better over
time.,Speaker A: Yeah. So, George, I know you're deep in marketing.
George, the tech at the moment, is there anything you reckon Mark
could I'm.,: Writing virtual postcards on a website right
now.,Speaker A: You're deeply engrossed in this interview then,
George, I can see.,Speaker C: Yeah. But I'm thinking that that
postcard idea is an absolute cracker.,: Yeah. I mean, I just
received a postcard from a consultant who's doing some financial
consulting for me, like a financial planner type person. And I was
like, oh, I haven't gotten a handwritten thank you card in the mail
in a really long time. In this case, it looks legitimately. Like,
she legitimately handwrote this card and sent it to me.,Speaker B:
Yes.,: And I thought, man, if she's got time to do that, I mean, we
have time to do that now. My handwriting sucks. It just does. And I
could pay my assistant to write these cards, which I might consider
doing. And there's also these websites where you can do, quote
unquote, handwritten postcards and send them out and they mail them
for you and they print them and they do all that stuff. So it's
something I'm considering trying in those postcards, having a
little coupon code for a please come back. But I have been in
absolute, hardcore, full court press marketing mode for the last
three months. For George, the tech, you say when you're not
working, you need to be marketing. And sales really slumped in the
summer this year for us. And I was like, okay, I can either get
really frustrated and figure out ways to just start cutting costs
and slowing things down or really just go for it hardcore. With in
my case, the thing I've been really ramping up is affiliate
marketing. And that's been where I've been focusing my energy. And
I've got some great advisors around me. I talk to my own marketing
and strategist person almost every single week. And I need that
accountability, someone to follow up with me, someone to tell me,
hey, we had that meeting and I told you to do all this stuff, so go
do it. Because it's an insane undertaking to run this business,
keep everything functional still, keep my clients happy and on time
and keep all the marketing and the biz dev all going. And that's
what I've been doing the last few months, actually. I started to
realize I'm actually kind of enjoying doing more biz dev. And the
shift of my time, of my day is it's legitimately shifted. I don't
do as much billable time as I used to, but we have other people
doing more billable time and that's awesome.,Speaker B: It brings
up a whole other point, though, that I think is important to
consider, and that is there comes a point when you've been doing
your marketing and it has paid off and business is going really
well and you're busy and you're in the booth consistently or you're
doing studio builds consistently, or whatever it is that your thing
is that you're doing consistently. And what's the very first thing
that often gets cut from the schedule? It's the marketing.,: Yeah,
the marketing.,Speaker B: And then complacency sets in, right,
complacency sets in because you've built a successful business.
I've got a successful business, everything's running, firing on all
cylinders. But one thing that this industry will teach you over and
over again is that clients don't last forever. And so if you are
not constantly bringing new people into the mix, then you don't
have anyone to replace those clients that ultimately fall away. And
so complacency is one of the most dangerous things for any voice
actor or business owner for that matter, who's built a successful
business. Because it's really easy to work to get there and then
when you get there, to relax and enjoy it. And that doesn't mean
that you can't relax and enjoy it. Obviously, I don't market the
same way now that I did when I was building a full time business,
but it's important that I never just stop, that there's always
something new coming into the pipeline.,: Yeah, well, the thing
that always happens at the end of the year is everybody wants to
get out their holiday cards and all that stuff, right? And holiday
gifts. And the problem with the holidays is it's too damn busy to
do all that stuff, right. Like by the time you're thinking about
it's time to be doing my holiday stuff. Now work is like firing all
cylinders. You're really cooking. And that seems to happen almost
every year for me. And how do you decide and again, not expecting
extremely specific answer, but how do you decide about gifting?
Because I know some folks and actors and myself included, some of
your clients spent more with you than others this year or over the
last five years. Is it a very simple mathematics? You just look and
say, okay, someone spent more than X, I'm going to give them X? Is
that kind of how you look at it?,Speaker B: Honestly, it's
something that I don't do a ton of. And one of the reasons why is
because there are so many potential pitfalls. And I mean, I guess
it depends on where you're working. I do a lot of work for
corporate, right? It's a lot of corporate and Elearning and stuff.
So it's a lot of corporations. There's a lot of rules around
gifting and you can actually get yourself into trouble doing that.
And so it's not something that I do a lot of, but I do always make
sure I make a point of sending thank you cards or letting them know
that I appreciate them and all of that sort of stuff. I do think
that there's something to be said for that. I was going to mention
too, you got me thinking because you mentioned about the holidays
and it's such a busy time and everybody's doing marketing over
Christmas and New Year's or Cyber Monday, Black Friday, blah, blah,
blah. One of the most successful sales that I ever ran for my
coaching was on Groundhogs Day. I ran a Groundhogs Day sale because
who the heck runs a Groundhogs Day sale? And so when every other
voiceover organization is running a July 4 sale or a Labor Day sale
or a Black Friday sale or whatever, I was like, I'm going to do a
Groundhog Day sale and see how that goes. And I had no competition
on that day. And so that's a little bit outside of the box when
you're thinking about so can you look? There's a national day for
everything. George and Uncle Roy post them every day. There's a
national day for everything. You need to find a national day for
something that is related to audio, sound, studio, microphone,
whatever. And let that be your big marketing push day when nobody
else is thinking about it or nobody else is doing it. Own that day
instead of trying to compete with all the noise on a Black Friday
or a Cyber Monday or whatever.,Speaker A: Don't talk about Uncle
Roy around. AP. He's got huge marketing issues with Uncle Roy.,:
But yeah, I mean that whole top of mind, that Uncle Roy thing, that
whole top of mind thing that Uncle Roy does with that finding
literally a reason to every single day post something, it's a smart
idea, it's top of mind.,Speaker B: And now he's associated with it,
right?,Speaker A: Yeah, he's that guy.,Speaker B: So you got to
find your thing that you get associated with by default. Find that
holiday, find that thing and make that the George the Tech day, the
George the Tech event.,Speaker A: So we're sort of making our own
Black Friday, is that the deal?,Speaker B: Yeah, I think that
there's something to be said for that and it doesn't mean you
ignore all of those other opportunities. But doing something
special on a day that has some sort of relevance or significance
but nobody else is doing it, it is one of the ways that you can
potentially stand out.,: Love it.,Speaker A: So just quickly, just
to sort of wind this up. Creativity is a big part of what we do in
our work, obviously being voiceover artists and audio engineers and
George doing what he does and that obviously needs to be reflected
in our marketing. Is there any rituals or any sort of thing you do
around creativity to sort of spark ideas in terms of what you might
post on social media or what you might say in an email? Or do you
just open up a blank email and hope the words come out?,Speaker B:
Yeah, I spend ungodly amounts of time staring at a blank iPad pro
with an Apple pencil in my hand waiting for the idea to hit so that
I can write it down because it doesn't come. Believe it or not,
that creative side doesn't always come naturally to me. But one of
the things that I have gotten so much better at over the years and
George, this could specifically apply to what you're doing. I am
paying so much more attention to what my audience is talking about.
So I have a Facebook group with 6000 plus voice actors in it. And
the questions that they're asking in that group, the things that
they're complaining about, the pain points that they're very
obviously struggling with, every single one of those becomes a seed
for a video, a podcast topic, a social media post, a course that I
might eventually create. And so I've gotten to a point now and this
is one of the perks of building that kind of network and that kind
of following is that they don't realize it maybe necessarily, but
they are feeding me my content ideas. And George, I know you could
do the same thing. All you have to do is spend 5 minutes in a
Facebook group and see there's a dozen people a day complaining
about tech this, tech that, this problem that problem, whatever.
Every one of those is a potential piece of content that you could
create, whether it's a video, an audio piece of content, a Facebook
post, a blog article, whatever. It's all content that is right
there being handed to you specifically addressing the things that
your audience is struggling with. And so that's one of the things
that I do is just I survey my network a lot. What are you
struggling with? Or if you could have one podcast interview that
you would absolutely love to hear that would change your business,
who would the guest be or what would the topic be? And I throw out
surveys like that and that helps me to come up with ideas. And then
when all else fails, I go sit in the backyard by the fire and enjoy
the peace and quiet and hope that if I can clear my head enough and
quiet myself enough, a brilliant idea will strike.,Speaker A: They
do eventually though, don't they? That's the thing. It's true. I
know there's some science behind this, but it actually is those
moments when your brain's not actively thinking about the next
email or the next social post that the ideas actually come.,Speaker
B: Long walk always have a way to.,: Write things down or do a
voice memo in the shower. In fact, I have an Amazon Echo
Dot.,Speaker A: There's no camera in there that hangs.,: On the
wall right over the doorway. And if I'm like in the shower, I can
say hey yo Jimbo, remind me to do this while I'm in the middle of
the shower because I.,Speaker B: Don'T want to miss. That so
true.,Speaker A: Yep, yep, that's right. Well, I think it was AP
will probably correct me on this, but I think it was either Start
Me Up or Brown Sugar that Keith Richards wrote literally in his
sleep. Keith Richards sleeps with a cassette deck next to his bed.
And in the middle of the night, if he has an idea, he wakes up and
he sings it into his tape recorder. But whichever song it was, it
was one of their massive hits anyway, he woke up the next morning
and he didn't remember waking up during the night, but he looked at
this cassette deck and the cassette had been obviously played. It
was halfway through the cassette and he played it back and it was
Start Me Up, Brown Sugar. Whichever one it was, it was there. And
so he literally wrote it in his sleep.,Speaker C: Yeah, I do
remember the stories. I think it was a reel to reel and the tape
running out woke him up.,Speaker A: Was it something like
that?,Speaker C: Spooled off? Yeah. And he's sort of like, what the
hell was that running for? I don't remember starting played it
back.,Speaker A: And there was the song Crazy.,Speaker C: Just
crazy.,Speaker A: Our brain is an amazing thing.,Speaker B: It's
one of the reasons why I have so many issues with sleep, because,
honestly, that is one of the few times in the day where my brain is
completely quiet when I'm in bed at night. And so a lot of my best
ideas hit about three or 330 in the morning, and I can't be upset
about it because they're my best ideas, but at the same time, it's
like.,: I wish this would come during the day.,Speaker A: Well,
I've had a similar thing because AP and I have just started doing
demos together and writing scripts for those falls to me. And,
yeah, I'm sort of finding that I'll sort of jump into bed and I'll
start dozing off to sleep, and then I'm awake and dashing out of
the room with my iPhone and dictating a script idea that's just
comes into my head, into the phone. So, yeah, I think we're all the
same.,: Absolutely.,Speaker B: Yes.,Speaker A: Well, mate, this has
been a whole lot of fun. Thank you so much for your time.,Speaker
B: Yeah, for sure. It's been fun. Thank you.,Speaker A: If people
want to find out more about you, and you've got some amazing
courses and bits and pieces up for offer, and obviously the podcast
as well, what's the best place for people to go? To find out more
about the Mark Scott Experience, shall we call it?,Speaker B:
Funnily enough, that was actually the name of an old radio show.
Now it is Vopreneur.com. That old Mark Scott experience facebook
page might still exist somewhere. I'm not sure if that ever came
offline, but, yeah, the website is Vopepreneur.com.,Speaker A: As
soon as we're done here, I'm going to Google that.,Speaker B:
Shit.,Speaker A: I was going to say something and now it's gone out
of my head.,Speaker C: It'll come to you at three in the
morning?,Speaker A: Yeah, it'll come to me in the morning. I'll
give you a call, let you know.,Speaker B: All right.,Speaker A:
Best of luck with the Red Sox. I hope they get better for you,
mate.,Speaker B: Well, I mean, there's nowhere to go when you're at
the bottom but up, right?,Speaker C: This is true.,Speaker B: Well,
that was fun. Is it over?,Speaker C: The Pro audio suite with
thanks to Tribut and Austrian audio recorded using Source Connect,
edited by Andrew Peters and mixed by Robbo Got your own audio
issues? Just askrovo.com with tech support from George the tech
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