VO Pro: The Business of Voiceover and Voice Acting

6 Steps You're Missing & Why it's KILLING Your VO Business

Paul Schmidt Season 1 Episode 144

Struggling to find voiceover clients? You’re not alone — and you’re not doing anything wrong. In this video, we break down how to find voiceover clients without relying on casting sites or burning yourself out.

Whether you’re brand new and looking for beginner voice acting clients or a seasoned talent trying to reboot your marketing, you’ll get real, actionable VO marketing tips that actually work.

Learn how to market your VO business
Discover what clients really want
Stop guessing — start booking

This is the real talk most voice actors never hear. We’ll cover everything from building a client list to writing cold emails that don’t suck. So if you’re ready to get serious about how to market VO, this video is your roadmap.

🔗 Top 10 Voice Actor Website Strategies: https://welcome.vopro.pro/7-steps-yt
🔗 The Big Book of VO Client Avatars: https://training.vopro.pro/bigbook
🔗 VO ClientConnect™ GPT: https://training.vopro.pro/clientconnect/

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#findvoiceoverclients #voiceovermarketing #VOmarketingtips #beginnervoiceactingclients #howtomarketVO

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Here’s what you’ll walk away with in our upcoming master class series:

  • How to reverse-engineer your VO marketing around client psychology
  • A proven outreach strategy that doesn’t rely on agents or pay-to-plays
  • The marketing infrastructure you need to grow

https://training.vopro.pro/ll-registration-2025-05/

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Welcome back. So, voiceover clients doesn't have to feel like chucking a bunch of spaghetti against a bunch of walls and seeing what sticks. I call that spaghetti marketing. And yet, that's exactly what a lot of newer voice actors do. Scrolling the pay-to-plays. Begging agents. Mass-emailing casting directors who don't keep a roster and don't work directly with talent. So, if your VO career feels more like guessing than it does a business, then... This video is for you. Because yeah, finding voiceover clients can be simple, can be strategic, and it can be repeatable, reproducible, but not if you keep chasing tactics. You need to start building systems. We say it all the time, it ain't about working harder, it's about working smarter. Now, the big myth is if I'm just good enough as a voice actor, then the clients will come find me. Nope. They absolutely will not, not unless you've been practicing SEO for years. And it's not because you're not talented, it's because clients don't spend their days trolling the pay-to-plays looking to discover new talent. They're busy, man, they're making content, they're under deadlines, they're juggling budgets, they're trying to get through the day and get a project approved without a billion rounds of revisions. And unless your name pops in their email inbox at the exact day and time that they have a project that is absolutely right for you and by the way the odds of that are astronomical, they ain't thinking about you. And that's not a you problem, that's a visibility problem. So here's the mindset shift. You don't need to be discovered, you need to be found by the right people in the right places with the right message. And that means learning how to market your VO business like a business. Step one, know who you're talking to. Stop talking to everybody trying to market to everyone who needs a voice is like trying to open a coffee shop that sells every different kind of beverage whiskey and water and Protein shakes and boba tea and kombucha god. I hate that shit and hoping somebody walks in the door You need to focus focus different clients care about different things a museum director Commissioning an audio tour doesn't have the same needs as a freelance video producer putting together a regional commercial for Capital Area Volvo dealers. So let's get specific. Ask yourself these questions. Who's already hiring voice actors like me? What kind of content are they producing? Where do they spend their time online? And what problems did they have that I solve? Now if you're new, start small. One or two genres. Don't overwhelm yourself. Pick a couple that you enjoy and have pro demos for and build client avatars around them. If you don't know what a client avatar is or you're not sure where to get started there, try this. The Big Book of VO Client Avatars. I'll put the link in the show notes and description below. You won't need to lift a finger after that. Step two, build a list. Yeah, even if you're new. Let's kill another myth while we're at it. I don't have the experience to reach out. Again, assuming you're well-trained. Nope. You don't need experience to introduce yourself. You need relevance. And relevance comes from aligning your skills with their needs. And that means you can absolutely reach out to video producers and marketing managers and creative directors as long as your message revolves around how you can help them and not your resume. Use tools like Apollo.io or LinkedIn to find decision makers. Hunter.io will help you verify email addresses. And if you're not using one already, get a good basic free CRM. I recommend HubSpot Sales Free. It's more powerful than a lot of paid CRMs and it's F-R-E-E free. Start with just 50 clients in your target genre. Keep it lean. Quality is better than quantity at this point. This is one of the most effective ways to find new clients. There is, and you can do it without burning out. Step 3, write your outreach emails to sound like a pro, not like a desperate freelancer. Most cold emails get deleted because they have this air of, please pick me, hire me, like me, I need work. And nothing, but nothing, kills trust and confidence quicker than desperation. Prospects smell that shit. Instead, Flip the script. Your goal is not to book a job with one email. Your goal is to build a relationship and to get a client. Here's a real simple structure for you. Subject line, opening line, body copy, call to action. Subject line, something short, something relevant, and something that will drive curiosity for them to open the email. Your opening line should be about them, not about you. In the body copy, address their pain points and challenges and most importantly how you solve them. And lastly, a call to action. Something like, hey, if you keep a roster and are open to fresh talent, then I'd be honored to be considered. You can download my demos at, and then throw your website address in there. Keep it short, keep it real, and follow up respectfully. Okay, I admit I just threw a lot at you, but if you need help writing these cold outreach emails, Try VO Client Connect, our brand new custom GPT, which will help you draft your outreach emails for you. It's our email copywriting assistant that's been trained on email outreach. Thousands of campaigns, thousands of successful email marketing campaigns. The link is in the show notes and description. Step four, if you don't have one already, create a client facing website and not just a pretty portfolio or a Google Drive folder. Now your website, this may come as a bit of a shock, should not be a shrine to all your fancy shiny gear or how you just love to do silly voices as a kid. No one cares. Here's what clients do care about though. What you sound like, how easy and professional are you to work with, how much of a fit are you for their brand or that project. So give them that. Your website should answer these three questions really fast. What do you do? How can you do it? And how can they hear you? guide them to action, book me, get a quote, let's talk, etc. Now, if you want to level your website up, get our free, yes I said free again, Top 10 Strategies for Voice Actor websites. I'll also put that link in the show notes and description below. You getting all this down? Step five, follow up like a pro without being a pest. And yeah, this is where most voice actors blow it. They send one email, they don't hear back, and then they ghost the prospect like a bad Tinder date. But the gold, kids, is in the follow up, not obnoxiously, not every single month, but with timing and tact, and most importantly, value. Use a system, build sequences. After you've introduced yourself and gotten the client to at least listen to your demo, your goal from then on out is simply to stay top of mind. You do that over time. How? Not begging for work, not checking in, not touching base, not... I hope this email finds you well. I catch you doing that shit. I'm going to drive to your house and slap you. You need to provide value to the prospect with every single touch. All right, what does that mean? It means understanding the prospect in a granular way as far as their role, their challenges, their pain points, and how you can help alleviate that pain. And here's the kicker, whether it has to do with your solutions or not. In fact, preferably not. You need to build awareness, yes, but more importantly, you need to build trust and consultative value over time. Remember, you're building familiarity, you're building confidence, you're building trust, you're staying top of mind, you're not trying to close somebody on a job in one email. Step six, make it a system, not a sprint. This is the difference between I'm trying to find voiceover clients and I've built a marketing machine that brings in clients relatively consistently. If you're hustling new outreach every single day without a system or a structure, you my friend are on the fast track to burnout. You're gonna end up just hating this business. Instead, set a weekly outreach goal. Let's say 25 new contacts a week. Block and schedule time for writing and research and outreach. Schedule time for follow-ups. Use a CRM to track all your outreach and follow-ups. And once a month, review your numbers, your open rates, your reply rates, your roster ads, how many auditions you received from those folks, and how many jobs did you actually book? Marketing requires data, it requires patience, and it requires persistence. And I'll tell you right now, you will not hear back from anywhere close to everybody. You will be ignored by the overwhelming majority of people that you reach out to. But occasionally, you will get a reply that turns into a dream client. Don't chase the dopamine. Build consistency. Alright, before we get out of here, let's talk about what not to do. Here are a few very common mistakes that voice actors make when they're trying to... build their businesses. Relying solely on the P2P's, on the casting sites, you're not building a business at that point, you're just renting opportunities. Posting to Instagram or the social platform you prefer and calling that marketing, that's not... Outreach that's content messaging people out of the blue without research without doing your homework and without most importantly the relevance that comes from that research and homework and finally waiting for work to come to you That's not marketing. That's hope and it doesn't work. So if you're stuck in any of these patterns, it's time to pivot You're not bad at marketing. You've just seen the wrong playbook. Let's review clients Don't hire you because you're the best actor in the world. They hire you because you're a professional you show up when they need you to early or at the very least on time. You make their job easier, smoother and more fun. And you sound great doing it. Your job is to make hiring you a no-brainer. That means being easy to find, easy to work with and consistently in their world. In other words, top of mind. That's it. No begging, no gimmicks, no crappy sales tactics. Just smart marketing and simple systems. Now if you're tired of Crossing your fingers and hoping and spaghetti marketing. And maybe today will be the day I get a casting notice that fits my voice. If you're done feeling like a passenger in your own VO career, then it's time to take the wheel and start building your outreach system. Download the big book of VO client avatars and our brand new VO client connect GPT. Those two together are incredibly powerful. Give it a month of consistent focused outreach and you, I promise you, will be miles ahead of most other voice actors. Finding voiceover clients, doesn't rely on blowing money on the pay to plays or finding a big fancy agent or just waiting around, waiting for your inbox to fill up and just hoping you'll get lucky. It takes a clear offer, clear target and clear communication. You don't need more talent. You just need more traction and that starts today. Now, if you got value out of this video, share it with another voice actor. Let's help as many people as we possibly can get through this incredibly difficult business. Also insanely rewarding. Give us a like if you're listening to the audio podcast, give us a follow, subscribe to the YouTube channel. The more we trade information, ideas and insights, the better, stronger industry we'll have for everybody. Thanks so much and we'll see you back here very soon.

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