Direct Marketing for Your Voice Over Business with Tom Aglio

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

Hi there and welcome to Vox Talk, your weekly review from the world of voiceover. I'm your host, Stephanie Ciccarelli from Voices. Are you familiar with direct marketing? Tom Aglio joins me today to share tips for marketing to clients and best practices for getting on their radar to be heard, hired, and hopefully hired again. Tom is a voice actor with 20 years experience in the industry and a direct marketing coach. Get ready to take some notes because applying Tom's tips will get your business noticed. Welcome to the show, Tom.

Tom Aglio:

Thank you so much for having me, Stephanie. I appreciate it.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

Of course. So we'll get right into it here. It's a very exciting topic. So what is direct marketing and can you give us some examples?

Tom Aglio:

Yeah, so direct marketing is really any kind of outreach that you do on your own through whatever medium is comfortable for you via email, traditional phone call, LinkedIn, other social media sources. And it's basically you going directly to the client or to the production studio and seeing if there is some kind of roster that they keep a voice talent that they like to work with. And these are going to be jobs that you may not see in other places. And it's really just trying to find as much work out there as you can. So many different ways that you can market directly to clients.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

I was just thinking like, postcards, maybe someone still does that or

Tom Aglio:

Yeah, that's definitely apologize for interrupting. I've definitely seen some people, believe it or not, have success with the postcard. Still a lot of things that you would think are outdated still kind of work.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

Yeah, well, getting on the radar is the most important thing. And I know we're a very digital kind of world right now, but I think there's still nothing quite like getting a handwritten note. That's just me. But anyway, while we're still on the subject of all this direct marketing goodness, I wonder, Tom, what is the first thing a talent who is new to direct marketing should be considering?

Tom Aglio:

Yeah, one of the things that they want to really consider, and especially if they've been in the business for a decent amount of time, if they want to know where they shine, like, what's their niche. If they book a lot of work in, let's say, commercials, then maybe they should be reaching out to commercial production companies or to commercial sound studios or even end clients, big brands and really just reinforcing and highlighting that they specialize in commercial work. Same thing with narration, video games, animation. Of course they want to make sure that they have that relevant demo or body of work that they can present to the client. But that's really the first thing that they want to do because direct marketing, I mean, you can market to a million different things and feel like you haven't even made a dent. So really honing in on what you do well and what resonates the best with your business, I would say, is the first thing that someone should do before they really ever start direct marketing to anyone, no matter the medium that they decide to do it in.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

Right, but you have to know yourself, and that means having a brand, right?

Tom Aglio:

Exactly.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

So can you tell us, Tom, why is having a brand important and how does it impact marketing your voice over business?

Tom Aglio:

Sure. I tell everybody, I tell my students, you're a business. And businesses have brands, and trust is one of the main things that we look for nowadays, and we want to trust the companies that we do business with. So my brand is ‘your millennial guy next door.’ I tend to book a lot of young sounding, casual millennial type roles, and also I do a lot of work for companies that resonate well with that audience. So for me to go to a company and tell them, here's my brand and here's what I do best, I want to make sure that I can back that up. So by knowing your brand, and again, it goes back to, like you said, knowing who you are, and if you can really give what you claim to be selling, then it just makes you appear that much more trustworthy as a business, and it makes people want to hire you.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

Definitely. I think anyone who knows what their brand is, what they stand for, what they'll record, what they won't, how that impacts their decisions, and how they even present themselves, like, some talent have headshots, some talent don't, some talent want to have really neat colors and others are like, oh, I just want to go with this icon or whatever, something a little less flashy. So since every voice is unique, as we know, and voice actors always say that we're not really in competition with each other. We're more or less our own talent. And the client will decide, are the talent actually in competition with one another when they're direct marketing, or is the competition more about the reach and resonance that they have?

Tom Aglio:

You know, it's funny. Competition is something I talk a lot about and I say to a lot of people, it's community, not competition. Yes, of course. If you submit to a casting call and there are 100 other people who audition, sure, yeah, you can say that you're in competition with them. But in terms of the direct marketing, there's just so much work out there and there are so many companies that resonate differently with different types of people that there really is not competition when it comes to direct marketing. Some of my biggest clients and biggest jobs have come from referrals from other voice talent. And some of my friends’ biggest jobs and biggest and biggest clients have come from referrals from me. I'm always the first person to say, to a client. I even say it when I reach out to people, ‘If I'm not the right voice for you, I'm happy to refer you to somebody who is in some place where you can find that voice talent.’ And that really does come back to you in spades because I really believe that people like to help each other and want to be helped. So if you're willing to help people and refer clients to them, then I do believe that that does come back to you in spades. And I can attest to the fact that that is definitely the truth, at least for me and my business.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

And that's the beauty of the Voiceover community. I think this has got to be one of the friendliest communities out there, really. Voiceover is welcoming and people are so happy to share tips all the time and it's great to hear you say that. But for someone to be able to recommend or refer, they actually need to know what you do. So you need to have an elevator pitch or some way of distinguishing yourself from other people. So, for those talent who have determined what it is that they're really great at and they know how to go about marketing themselves, in what ways does direct marketing give someone that advantage that they have?

Tom Aglio:

You know, it's funny because there are a few different ways that people can really get that advantage by direct marketing, I mean, one, you go right to the end client. I have a friend who she was marketing to an ad agency. I don't remember the name of it, but they had said, ‘yeah, we just held auditions through agents and whatever for this big campaign for this big national supermarket chain, but we didn't like anybody. Want it? You give it a shot.’ So you could be getting auditions from these end clients or even like the ad agencies and stuff that other people may not be getting. So that naturally increases your chances of booking the job. But also it lets people know who you are. And one of the things that I do when I direct market is I like to talk a little bit about myself and who I am as a person. And because I really do believe that marketing is a business transaction and the basis for any business transaction is trust. And one of the main ways to build trust is through familiarity. So by you reaching out to somebody directly and really just getting to know the person and letting them get to know you, you find that oftentimes you have a lot of common ground and we want to work with people who we can get along with. So by you direct marketing to a client or to a brand or whatever it may be, you allow them into your world and you can show them who you are. And at the end of the day, I think that we all want that connection especially now in this post-covid world where many things are remote, it really does give you that human interaction advantage that I feel is really beneficial.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

Wow, that is really interesting. And I like the whole idea of you're finding auditions that aren't necessarily advertised because they're not right, because they'd be posting them somewhere or you get a call from somebody else or whoever. But when you go to a client directly and you build a relationship, then I find that it is so much better. And one of the ways that I know that I've just as someone who runs Voices or owner of Voices, whenever I see people kind of come on my radar, and I'm not in a position necessarily to hire any of them to do anything – But it's like. Oh. Well. They'll show up. Kind of follow you on your social stream. And then you might like something. They may comment and then possibly share or add value to that post. And all of a sudden you see a repeated behavior of this kind of interaction going on, and I'm getting to know you and each other's space. And now when I see something from you, I know who you are. Maybe not met in person, but nonetheless, there's some kind of a relationship that's established, and then all of a sudden it turns into, ‘hey, do you want to be on my podcast?’ Or any number of different opportunities could come up. Now, if you're actually looking at producers, like talent to producer, it could be, oh, you know what? ‘You really seem like someone we like to call in. You seem to follow what we're doing. You're up on what our studio is talking about. Oh, you're local. Oh, how great is that?’ You never know what could come of it.

Tom Aglio:

Yeah, it really is. It's that age old. It's not what you know, it's who you know. And networking is just it will never not be a good thing because again. It goes back to we want to call people in who we are familiar with. Because if we give somebody a job or if we refer somebody to our reputation on the line. So if we know who that person is and what they're about. Whether through their social media posts or through connections and mutual connections like we had with Gina, it can only help you. It can't really ever hurt you to just network and really get to know people.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

Right. And for those who weren't involved in our email thread, because I know it was only the three of us, it was Gina Scarpa, who everyone knows has been on the show a couple of times and a wonderful coach and in our program and that kind of thing. Awesome talent on voices. Anyway, Gina happened to say to me, ‘oh, well, you know, I think Tom would be a great guest on your show, and he can talk to you about all kinds of things. How about marketing?’ And she already knew what it was that you could speak to. And so that's a perfect example of that kind of networking effect the networking effect of having connections who know what you're really great at, and then seeing opportunities, spotting them, and then referring you along, making a nice email intro or whoever, it happens. And then here we are today. So perfect example of, I would say an organic, not necessarily calculated marketing activity.

Tom Aglio:

Sure.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

But these are sometimes the best ways to get on somebody's radar is through that common thread that you have, or the connection. So that's wonderful. So Tom, as we continue to talk about all this marketing, obviously you've had success with this. You're coaching people, there's a variety of different courses that they can take with you, which we'll talk a little bit at the end. But what have you had the most success with and how do you know if your efforts have been effective?

Tom Aglio:

Sure, I definitely have had the most success in terms of building my business with direct marketing. And one of the ways that I measure that in a few ways, I measure that in my response rate and the people that respond favorably to me that say, yeah, I add you to a roster, people who've given me auditions or jobs and stuff like that. But I really also measure it in my repeat work. And I'm very fortunate that I have a lot of repeat clients who I've made through my agents or even on Voices or through my direct marketing. And that's really how I think I measure my success, because when it comes to direct marketing, I'm really selling myself. And the fact that people do come back to me, it makes me realize that what I'm doing is the right thing. And again, because direct marketing, it's all about just building that relationship. And when you work with people, you want to do a good job and you build that relationship with them. So I think my true measure, the way that I truly measure success, is the clients who keep coming back to me again and again and they say to me, ‘Tom is my guy. He could do this no problem.’ And putting that trust in me, to me, that's the greatest success.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

I think getting hired is going to be the best feedback you can get, right? Everyone always says that it doesn't matter how many auditions you're doing, the real feedback, the real ‘yes, you are great,’ it's because you were paid for doing the job for them. So as we're talking about this tracking and metrics and ways of knowing if we're successful, are you using a customer relationship management software of any kind to note who these people are so that you can go back and say, ‘oh, I was successful with this person, or I need to follow that person?’

Tom Aglio:

Yup. I use a program called Upper Level CRM, and it's by a guy named Brad Newman who is just ridiculously, just so brilliant when it comes to anything tech. But it's a CRM. It's browser based. And what it does is it allows me to upload my marketing clients. I can make notes on individual clients saying, okay, I need to address this when I contact this person next or maybe this person has a birthday, let me reach out to them about those things. I've worked with this person. I have an outstanding invoice with this person and it really allows me to keep everything all in one place and neatly organized. And when it comes time to email people, I can upload everybody to a list and I can reach out to them accordingly based on how I want to, things I want to say. And it really does automate a lot of my email outreach once I set everything up, which automation is king and time is money, so anyway that I can save time I'm good with. And my CRM has really afforded me that ability.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

Right. Because I don't know about you, but not everyone likes marketing. It might be a funny thing to say to a direct marketing coach, but not everybody is really enthused with that part of their business. They're kind of like, ‘oh well, I'd rather be in the booth doing what I love,’ right? But when you have an automation process or you've set up a certain schedule for yourself to reach out to people and you have a database and you're working from that and perhaps you have a monthly newsletter or you're doing any number of different activities. But when you do have that system. I believe you can actually make more time for the things that you really want to be doing. But you do need to be reaching out nonetheless. So how would you recommend that people set something up to get in contact with what is a good cadence for reaching out to someone over the course of the year?

Tom Aglio:

Sure. What I like to do is I'll reach out to somebody initially and I'll follow up with them about two or three times and I'll follow up once a week if I don't hear from them and eventually if I don't hear from them, I just kind of let it go. There's too much opportunity out there to spend all my time on one. But more often than not I will get a response and it's favorable, ‘Yeah, I’ll add you to my roster.’ And I will always ask, I will always make sure that it's okay that I check in just to stay on their radar. If they say no, then it's no. I respect their wishes, but if they say yes, then what I like to do is I like to follow up with people about like every 60 to 90 days and I just check in, just doing quick little check ins, doing my quarterly check in. Because I always tell everyone it's not their job to remember you. It's your job to make them remember you. And just a simple email to jog their memory because they're busy, right? So just a little simple email to jog their memory and you never know, they might have something for you. And that's definitely happened for me with clients who I may not work with as regularly as some others. But I've reached out to them and they said, oh, this is actually a good time, I'm casting this. I think you'd be a great fit. And it's definitely turned into work.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

Absolutely. And I'm on a number of talent newsletter lists. I'm not sure, over time I think I've just been a fan of so many of our great customers that I end up on their email list where they're writing to their clients, and I see a variety of different things from newsletters that are regularly timed. This comes out every Tuesday on the first month or whatever. And then there's one where people are talking more about, ‘oh, I'm going away and if you need work done, we've got this window that you can book me because I'm going to be away from my studio.’ And there's any number of different ways that talent are communicating. They're sharing stories about what they're up to in some cases, or maybe new clients they've just welcomed into the fold, if you will, or success stories. So what kind of information do you find that someone wants to receive in a newsletter? Sometimes you just don't know what to put in the newsletter because you've got so many different clients who use it for different things, for different frequencies altogether. What is the best way to kind of go out a newsletter knowing that it could be read by any of your clients, not just ones who've hired you for say, audiobook narration?

Tom Aglio:

Sure. What I think is first and foremost with any kind of newsletter or anything like regular outreach like that, you want to make sure that you get permission and you want to say to someone, hey, so and so, is it okay that I add you to my newsletter or add you to my follow up list or whatever it may be? And if they say no, then one of the quickest ways to lose a client is not respecting that wish. But a lot of times they'll say yes. So what I think is, I think it's a nice little healthy balance in a newsletter. I think it's things that you've been up to. I think also things that you've been up to in your personal life. I think too often we are so focused on the worker and not so much the person. And I think that it's refreshing to see a peak behind the curtain and see what somebody is all about outside of work and then also book out dates and stuff like that. It's so funny. I always tell everyone like the week before a vacation that I'm going away is like one of the busiest because everybody all of a sudden need so much work. But I think those three things, a nice little healthy balance between those three things is a good recipe for success.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

Definitely. And I know the talent are often posting on social too, and they're hoping that the clients are following them there or maybe trying to get clients through social media. I know Instagram and TikTok, I'm not active on TikTok much at all. I don't think I've posted a TikTok. I don't know. Do you call it you posted TikTok? I don't even know. But anyway, my ignorance aside, are these channels actually effective for talent who are using them for direct marketing? In which social networks would you say are the best places to focus their time?

Tom Aglio:

Well, I definitely recommend all talent having a presence on the four main ones, which are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. Because again, you're a business and businesses have social media feeds and channels and pages. So it's important to do that now in terms of the type of work that you can get. I've booked a good amount of work on LinkedIn, which has been great because it is a place for people to reach out for work and for jobs and everything like that and to network. But it depends on what you're into. If you're really into like the animation and video game scene, then Twitter may be your best bet. If you're into more narration or just general kind of commercial and stuff like that, they made something like LinkedIn or Facebook would be your best bet. Instagram has a world, which I actually learned from a good friend of mine named Joshua Alexander. He's a voice actor in Seattle, but he opened me to a whole world of LinkedIn, of Instagram marketing. You can actually search for production companies and ad agencies and stuff like that. And their email addresses are readily visible and available on their Instagram page if you do mobile,

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

I guess it would be, yes. That's crazy.

Tom Aglio:

It's great. And then through keyboard shortcuts, you can message, you can email people. Instagram is particularly good for eLearning and things like that because there's just so many companies on there. TikTok, the people who do TikTok, it's so funny. A good friend of mine, Lucas Arnold, he became like TikTok famous, and I can't really speak too much to the work on there, but people have reached out to him for work because he's such a presence on TikTok. And I think that's more of like a celebrity influencer type thing as opposed to anything else. And the fact that he's really talented, it just adds to it. So TikTok and YouTube are one of those things, two of those things that are harder to build up. But if you are a content creator and you can make it happen, then the world is just it opens you up to the world because it's like the celebrities nowadays or influencers.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

Yeah, absolutely. And I would say LinkedIn I think has the most activity that I've seen so far as professionals kind of talking shop. They're in there and they're saying, oh, my gear, this or that or this experience in the field or what have you. There's a ton of mentoring, by the way, that goes on LinkedIn, it's really nice to see. And Twitter, I think is more of like the ‘rah rah, I got a job, look at this.’ I'm fascinated because these channels are not going away and talent need to know how to use them effectively and not get sucked into the whole other aspects of those networks, which is any negativity or conversations that are not aligning with the brand that they wish to project to other people. But yeah, you want to be careful because when you are direct marketing in public and your clients will see all of your activity on social as well if they're following you. So just keeping in mind that if you want to have a cohesive, coherent and consistent brand, then you need to behave that way, both online, offline, through email, on the phone, in person, whatever.

Tom Aglio:

Yeah, I mean, nothing you post on social media ever goes away. And especially nowadays where people are actively looking on social media to make sure that you do not go against what they stand for as a brand. It is so important to conduct yourself as a business because it's not just a personal page. You're out there and everything that you do is going to be under the radar. It's going to be looked at, it under the microscope. So it's important to carry yourself properly on social media.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

So obviously, we went down like a little rabbit trail. We found ourselves somewhere else on the planet. So everyone, we're coming back to direct marketing in terms of not social networking. But Tom. So obviously there's a difference between your existing clientele that you market to and you keep up to date and all this versus someone that's a prospect. So I think it might be worthwhile for us to go over language like what is a lead, what is a prospect and what is a client and then how do you market to those three?

Tom Aglio:

Sure. So the easy one as a client is somebody that you've worked with. And I also regard people who have sent me auditions as my clients because they'll kind of fall into that outreach of how I handle existing clients and stuff like that. Now, in terms of a lead and a prospect, these are potentials, these are potential clients. And you have it on good, with good information that this person could in fact hire Voice Talent or could refer you to somebody who could hire Voice talent. What I will do is when it comes to those people, those first outreaches, I like to be as professional as possible and I like to be as upfront as possible. I tell them a little bit about myself and then I kind of get right to it because time is money and that's the most valuable thing that any client wants is time. So I make sure that I'm respecting their time and I get right to the point. Once I work with you and we kind of have established this relationship, then our emails may get a little bit less formal, we may chat a little bit more back and forth and stuff like that. But when it comes to really just reaching out to somebody right away, I like to keep it business and as quick and to the point as possible. And also with my existing clients, a lot of times they'll come to me that they need a voice type and I will let them know about Voices.com and tell them they can find a lot of different talent out there that I may not fit the bill for. So I like to handle referrals and be very informal with my existing clients, but for new prospects and new leads, I like to make sure that I stay as quick and to the point as possible.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

I like it. I think everyone else is going to like that too. So it's having this conversation because you've just answered a lot of questions for me, I know, and others as well. When you have your existing clientele, they know you, you've built up before and there's that permission marketing that's happening basically. They've given you that and then there's the others where you have to earn it. So one question that did come to mind. I know this is probably the last question I'll ask you before our time is done, but so far as those initial introductions to people in cold emails or whoever you're going about it, how long should this email be? You said to get to the point to be direct, but what does that actually mean? Like how many words or how many sentences?

Tom Aglio:

Sure. So what I like to do is my rule of thumb is when you email somebody, if you look at the email that you sent them on like a computer, no more than six lines, and even then six lines, I like to keep it more four to five lines. So literally when you email somebody, it'll just be like five to six lines of text. Reason being also you want to keep it short and sweet and to the point, but also a lot of people, more than half of people are checking their email on the phone. So you want to make sure that you're not forcing them to scroll up and down to read your email. And I always leave with my call to action because at the end of the day, that's what I want an answer to. And if that's the only thing that they see and that they have time to look at, then I feel like I did my job. So I like to keep it no more than like five to six lines per email.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

That's a great tip. I was just thinking, when you're doing an introduction to someone or you're trying to connect on LinkedIn, when they let you send that initial message, you can only send so many characters, and it's probably a good look if you're used to sending short little messages to kind of say, ‘hi, this is who I am. I think we should connect because of this reason’ that's likely about the length you're talking about. Said no. That was quite clarifying. Thank you so much. And Tom, obviously you are a gold mine of tips for this sort of thing. So now is the time for me to ask you, how can people get a hold of you and where can they learn more about what you do?

Tom Aglio:

Absolutely. So you can find me on TomAglio.com. I'm a full time voice actor as well as a coach. And if you wanted to coach with me specifically, it's TomAglio.com/coaching. And what I do is I have a one on one sessions with my students, potential students, who I teach them my marketing methods, I teach them how to find email addresses, the different job titles to reach out to, best practices, what to say, what not to say, and I also help them craft emails if needed. [email protected] is my email address. And I also work with, who I know you guys know is, Bruce Kronenberg over at Abacus. I'm a performance and career coach there as well, so you can also find me through them, too.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

Wonderful. I'm so glad to hear it. Yes, shout out and some love to Abacus there. Thank you, Tom. It's been such a pleasure to have you here today, and hopefully we'll talk to you again soon.

Tom Aglio:

Yes, thank you so much, Stephanie. It's been a pleasure. Thank you.

Stephanie Ciccarelli:

And that's the way we saw the world through the lens of Voiceover this week. Thank you for following Vox Talk and for being part of our community. Thank you also to our special guest, Tom Aglio, for sharing his vast knowledge of direct marketing and how to get the word out about your business. If you found this episode valuable, share it with your friends so they can listen to it, too. For Voices. I'm your host, Stephanie Ciccarelli. Vox talk is produced by Geoff Bremner. Thank you again for listening, and we'll see you next week.