3 Great Places to Find VO Leads that you Probably haven't Checked
Voice-Over Leads and Prospects come in many forms and from many different sources. Whether it's a referral from a previous client, a cold call, or a marketing email you sent, you never know where your next client will come from.
You might already be familiar with some of the most common places to find new leads and prospects for your voice-over business. Places like P2P sites, simple google searches, or production directories such as Mandy.com all offer a great wealth of leads that could turn into new business for you. But there are also some lesser known spots that can be equally as fruitful in terms of generating new VO work for you, let's take a look at three of them.
If you'd like a detailed guide on how to use the methods in this post to find new leads, be sure to check out the free Resource Package at the bottom of the post.
Social Media Accounts of Other Leads & Clients
Many prospects and clients will actually follow and be followed by their industry peers on social media. So if you have identified a production company that seems like a great potential match, take a look at their followers and those who they are following. This can be done on any social media platform, but two great ones in particular are Twitter and Vimeo.
On Twitter, simply go to the profile of a client or lead, and click on the number under "Following" and/or "Followers" and you'll get pages full of results. There's a great chance that many, if not most, of the results will be great potential leads.
On Vimeo, the process is similar. Just visit the profile of a good lead or client, and then click on "Following". Here you will see all of the Vimeo Profiles that they are following, and again, many of them are likely to be good leads.
Another great thing about this way of finding new prospects, is that if the clients or leads you are using to initiate your search are very active on social media, they are likely getting new followers and following new accounts all the time. This means you can keep checking back regularly for new leads. And further, when you find good leads this way, you can then use those profiles as a jumping off point and search through their followers and following. It's a very deep and very overlooked source of potential clients.
Google Alerts
Google Alerts are a great feature that you can customize in order to have Google notify you of new pages or posts on the internet that relate to specific search terms you choose.
A great way you can utilize this for lead generation, is to set up Google Alerts for key words that define good VO leads. Things like "Video Production", "Voice Casting", "Audiobook Narration", etc... there's plenty to choose from. When you do this, Google will send you an email roundup daily of new pages that meet your keyword criteria.
The great thing about this is that it's delivered directly to your inbox once you set up the Google Alerts, and all you have to do is take a quick minute to browse through the email and see if it contains anything worth checking out further.
Credits
While you may often fast forward through or end a video before the credits, you might want to think twice the next time you do so. Credits contain a lot of great info that can provide some new prospects for your VO business. Whether it's a commercial spot, documentary, or short film, the credits will often tip you off as to the production company, agency, or audio facility who worked on the project, and these companies can all be great leads.
You can find the credits simply by watching some videos like documentaries and films through to the end. For commercials and similar work where credits aren't typically displayed, you can simply do a google search or try finding the spot on a site or service that typically provides this info. For instance, AdWeek.com and iSpot.tv are two sites that showcase commercial work and clearly provide detailed credits. Vimeo is another great place for this, although it's up to the poster of the video on there whether or not they include credits.
In Conclusion...
While tried and true lead generation sources like Online Production Directories (Mandy.com, ProductionHub, etc...), or Google Searches are great places to find leads, there are tons of other ways to find new prospects that may have been right under your nose for a long time.
Marketing should be an evolving and changing part of your business, and you should always be looking for new ideas and new ways to generate work. Try adding some of the methods outlined in this post to your marketing mix to generate some new leads and grow your business further.
Have you used any of these methods before to generate leads? If so, what kind of success have you had? Do you find leads in any other interesting places? Let me know in the comments.
Resource Package
If you'd like more detailed information and step-by-step instructions on how to implement the strategies outlined in this post, as well as a PDF version of the post for offline reading, click the button below to download the free resource package.