But first, Andy and Jim need to address the somewhat unpronounceable town in Louisiana where Andy resides. Between Andy’s residence in “Notchitoches” and Jim’s expertise on some of the baffling names scattered all throughout Massachusetts, it’s a wonder the conversation is able to proceed to any other topics.

When they do, Andy illustrates the odd journey that led him to his current career. As a schoolteacher overwhelmed with side-hustles, he initially began doing voices just to amuse his wife. When she pointed out that his parodies of announcer-type voices were good enough to serve as the real announcer, Andy began to explore the field. Soon, being a voice talent went from one more side-hustle and became a full-time, independent business.

Longform Voice Narration

Andy’s specialty is longform voice narration. What does that entail? It could be anything from voice-over recordings to accompany a TV commercial, a company needing 3-4 minutes of narration for a video on their website, to an over 40-minute video sales letter accompanying a professional marketing pitch.

And then there is all the voice narration needed for everything from audiobooks to e-learning. One of Andy’s steadiest employers is a law school building a massive database of audio companions detailing the ins and outs of every minute legal system. Andy estimates that he has now done thousands of videos just for this one client and this project.

What Goes Into Good Narration?

As Andy describes it to Jim, voice narration is an incredibly involved and demanding process. He’s had numerous conversations with businesses that opted to record their own narration rather than utilizing a professional, to uniformly disastrous results. Voice narration requires not only the time and patience devoted to getting every part of a long script correct, but also physical stamina and at least some acting ability.

The post Voices Carry Podcast 5, Long Form Narration and Other Southern Fried Voiceovers: Chewing the Fat With Andy appeared first on Marketing Messages.

Why Would I Need Narration?

Videos are becoming more and more popular as a means for companies to explain their histories, their cultures, their products, their services, and the personalities of their employees. Videos can be shared more easily than wordy articles, and can provide all the needed information in a compact format rather than forcing a customer or partner to scroll through pages and pages of text.

Even if you do not wish to go through all the fuss of shooting and cutting an entire video, the marriage of sound and pictures in a presentation works much better to stick in a viewer’s memory than static text and pictures. It enables the information to be better retained and remembered, servicing both audio and visual learners.

We have customers who create videos that take the form of two narrator voices, a male and one female, having a scripted dialogue exchange during which they convey all the information the customer needs to convey to their own clientele. The format allows for not only important information to be dispersed easily and effectively, but also humor and personality, the kind of things that make one company stand out from any other in the same field.

Okay, But Why Would I Need *Professional* Voice Narration?

So, accepting that videos and presentations that combine audio with images are effective, useful, and an increasing part of how companies express their identities and convey important info, we come then to the age old question: Why shouldn’t I, a pragmatic and careful business owner or employee, just record my own narration? Won’t that save time, money, and effort?

Well, not really.

Capturing good audio takes time, patience, and skill, especially with longer scripts that also require some degree of emotional performance. Meanwhile, professional narrator voices are trained and experienced in delivering exceptional takes over and over again, not to mention modulating their delivery to give the exact right emphasis exactly where it is desired.

Whether you want your narration to be delivered with a firm, moderate tempo, or if you are looking for more zest and energy to liven things up, these kinds of options are more readily accessed when you utilize professionals.

Global Audience

Making the commitment to hire professional narration services also benefits you when it comes to crafting material for a global audience. Whether you are hoping to entice US residents who speak Spanish or French as a native language, or hope to bring in business from around the globe, no one should underestimate the importance of having at least a few multi-language options for whatever face they present to a customer, up to and including any multimedia materials.

In order for those multi-language options to be as trustworthy and useful as possible, it is important to work with reliable partners with proven track records of accuracy. Bringing in professional translators to do your voice translation and utilizing voice talent who are fluent in the languages in question is a great way to ensure that no matter who finds your company’s materials, they will find a customer experience that is as accessible as it is professional.

Chat With Us!

So if this is an area that you are interested in pursuing, give us a call or check out some of our literature on voice narration here on the Marketing Messages website. We can’t wait to hear from you.

The post The Many Ways It Pays to Hire a Professional for Narration appeared first on Marketing Messages.

We’ve spoken in the past (links) about the use of voiceover talents for everything from auto attendant prompts to on hold messages, and we’ve described some of the industry-specific ways to utilize these productions. But voice narration is a different animal, necessitating a longer and potentially more complex form of performance.

Professional Narration Voice Over Talents

So why bring in professional narrator voices when you could, theoretically, provide your own narration for the project/presentation/video in question?

For one thing, there is the matter of quality control. A professional voice talent brings years of experience to the table, armed with a voice that through practice has been shaped to be as pleasant to listen to and as easily understood as possible.

Flexibility and Consistency

And the voice talent will bring a flexibility to the performance that will be lacking otherwise. Do you want the voice recordings for your video to be convivial and energetic? Or would you rather they be delivered with the utmost stentorian gravity? Maybe you want your words to be delivered in a way that is as conversational as possible, or maybe you want the text declaimed in the most methodical, straightforward manner imaginable.

Whatever tone and tempo fit the message you are conveying, a professional voice talent knows how to hit those marks and how to adjust their performance to suit whatever is requested. And once they have hit the correct mark, they can then maintain that performance consistently across any other deployment you might have. In this way, your voice narration will bear not only consistent sound, but consistent quality. You will be known as the presenter who goes the extra mile, who takes that extra incentive to ensure a high-end final product.

If we expand our scope to international attention, the benefits to using professional a professional voice talent and professional voice translation become even more apparent. If you know there will be audience members who speak English only as a second language, taking the time to translate and record a version in their native tongue allows for the broadest possible reach for your work. And it is always, always a good idea to make others, whether they be coworkers or clients, know that you have taken their needs into consideration and made the effort to be as accommodating as possible. When working with foreign languages, it is vital to use credited professionals to provide the highest quality, most trustworthy translations and performances possible.

So when you are preparing your slideshow or video, while you are assembling your presentation and considering all the ways you could be making it even stronger, it is worth investigating if a voice over narration professional talent would be the right move. There are countless voices out there, and one of them might just be the perfect choice to bring your words to the rich life that they deserve.

The post Voice Over Narration, Why It Pays to Hire a Professional Talent appeared first on Marketing Messages.

But yes, it is vitally important that the names of individuals, locations, and companies be pronounced correctly for customer-facing and internal recordings. While there are various methods that can be utilized to retrieve an audio example of the word in question, the simplest way to communicate a tricky name to a professional voice over talent is to write a pronouncer for your voiceover recording.

Write A Pronouncer For Your Voiceover Recording

Writing out a pronouncer for voiceover can be easier said than done, especially when you factor in the multitude of accents that vary from location to location. For the purposes of this article, we will restrict ourselves to examples in US English, but this matter becomes even more complicated when you begin to include global voice over talents whose basic relationship to the innate sounds of letters is totally different from an English-speaking American.

There is in fact an art to visually expressing an audible sound. One of the first steps should be to identify where the EMPHASIS is going to land when the voice over talent reads a particular word. Let’s use the word “emphasis” as an example. In this scenario, we’re talking about a company called “Emphasis Inc”, let’s say.

“Emphasis” is composed of three distinct syllables. “em” “fuh” and “sis”. So, reading that word out to yourself, where do you place the stress? Do you read it as “EM-fuh-sis”, or as “em-FUH-sis”? Or maybe even “em-fuh-SIS”? Where you place the stress dramatically changes the overall effect of a word on a listener.

At Marketing Messages, when we write out our pronouncers we always make a point of capitalizing the syllable that should be stressed. It is a simple, effective way to communicate the thrust of a word to a speaker who perhaps has never encountered it before.

And to back up even further, imagine you ask a voice over talent who is not a native English speaker to read some voice narration about “Emphasis Inc”. You will want the company name to remain unchanged even in a foreign language, so you are asking someone who has never encountered the word “Emphasis” to read it. Who is to say they won’t return audio read as “emp-HA-sis”? Or as “em-PHAS-is”?

To make the pronouncer completely foolproof, you might write it out as, “EM-fuh-sis”. But in writing out that version, I am of course assuming that you reading this say “emphasis” the way I do. Which brings us to our next piece of advice.

Don’t Make Assumptions

When you write a pronouncer for your voiceover recording, it is important to never take anything for granted. You should never assume that everyone will automatically say a given word the same way that you do. It is easy to fall into this trap, especially if you have worked at a company for a long period of time and its related names and terminology have become second nature to you.

But remember, not only does the voice over talent not work at your company, neither does a client calling in. Your office might be located in a town that you have known all your life and so you have never questioned how the name is said. But a customer doesn’t live in your town and does not have the same frame of reference. Having an audio file or Internet example that you can cite is a big help in both writing out the pronouncer and in coaching the talent.

Marketing Messages is based in Massachusetts, and here in New England we have a LOT of town names that people from New England pronounce in ways that make no sense to anyone from literally anywhere else in the country.

Here’s an example, a town not too far from us: Haverhill.
How would one pronounce that town name? Well, us folks in Massachusetts take it as a given that “Haverhill” is read as “HAY-vrill”. But if we were to ask a voice over talent who is NOT from Massachusetts to read that name, they will almost certainly come back with something like “HAVE-er-hill”.

For your assistance, below is a table compiled by NPR to show the way to best express certain specific sounds. For example, “long” is expressed with the same first syllable as the word “law”. In both cases, the sound is represented with “law”.

The post How To Write a Pronouncer For Voiceover Recording appeared first on Marketing Messages.

Great quality audio is the starting point, even for video. Are you thinking about adding video to your company’s messaging? We think you might be onto something! 75% of people prefer to watch a product video rather than read about it in text.

With video, in a matter of seconds, you can present your product in action, and your customers can see its features and benefits. Your audience comes away with a more complete picture of your offerings, in a shorter amount of time. For most people, video is easier to digest than text. Finally, you can’t upload an article to YouTube, the second largest search engine on the planet! But you can upload videos.

Combining visual and audio elements gives any multi-media presentation more impact, adds more emotion, and holds the attention of your audience. If your company is in the market for the audio component of a professionally-produced video or video series, Marketing Messages can help!

Whether your video projects are…

Company Overviews
Web videos that tell your stories quickly and with impact

Product Demonstrations
A memorable way to explain product features

Medical/Science Procedures
Medical instructional videos, clinical procedure guides, and medical practice overviews

Technical Assistance/Assembly and Repair
Guide customers through technical processes like assembly, maintenance, and repair

HR/Legal/Compliance Policies
Communicate policies and procedures while holding your audience’s attention

E-Learning Videos
Our voice artists can provide a sustained level of audience focus, particularly in self-paced training outside the classroom environment

Multi-Language for Existing Videos
Already have English narration? We’re your single point of support for localizing your videos globally, including translation, recording, and editing.

…our voice talents provide professionally recorded audio narration, adapting their narrative style to achieve your objectives.

Why should you require perfect audio in the recording and editing process?

You already know how important good visuals are. That’s why you’ll make the effort and spend money on achieving the best visuals for your video project. But did you know that the audio portion is just as important as the video? Several studies have shown that no matter how good the video quality if the audio quality is just medium to marginal, viewers are more likely to react negatively to the video content as a whole.

Furthermore, a recent study at the University of Southern California and the Australian National University shows that audio quality affects whether or not listeners believe what they hear and trust the information they’re hearing. A notable quote from the scientists:

“When the video was difficult to hear, viewers thought the talk was worse, the speaker less intelligent and less likeable and the research less important.”

Also, taking previously pristine audio of a geneticist and a physicist, and reducing the quality, had real consequences when it came to audience trust:

“As soon as we reduced the audio quality, all of a sudden, the scientists [geneticist & physicist] and their research lost credibility.”

You need your customers to trust you. So why not put your best foot forward to use great quality audio? Marketing Messages can provide that important audio narration component to your video project. It starts with professional voice recordings from our roster of voice talents. With pinpoint accuracy, we can sync the video narration to your existing video. And for global deployment, we can be your single point of support for international language translation and recording.

Ready to learn more about our video and multi-media voice narration services? Let us help you reinforce your message with the highest quality audio. View (and hear) projects that we’ve completed for other companies.

Want to contact us right away to talk about your specific audio and video needs? Call us or enter your information so we can schedule a meeting.

The post For Video Projects, Great Quality Audio Is Just as Important appeared first on Marketing Messages.

This top ten list offers tips to ensure that your web videos and e-learning modules are effectively supported globally by professional, multi-language voice narration.

1. Use professional voice actors

If you were casting a Broadway musical, would you pick Sally from the lighting department to play the lead just because she was there? Of course not! While this example may seem hyperbolic, the message holds true for narration: just as musical theater actors are trained to sing, dance, and act, so too are professional voice actors trained to speak clearly, to enunciate properly, and to convey emotions and ideas with their voices alone. This is a skill that not many people have, and only people who have the right training and experience will be able to provide the results you’re looking for. In other words, unless Sally from lighting is also trained in classical theater, you’re better off casting a professional.

This is especially true when it comes to long-form voice over narration for web videos or e-learning applications, which typically require a broader range of interpretative capabilities versus what’s required to record a telephone prompt, for instance. E-learning, in particular, demands an engaging voice that can hold somebody’s attention, guide them through the lesson, and ensure the information they’ve imparted actually sticks. Poor quality narration in an e-learning video is just as detrimental as a boring and monotonous teacher standing at the front of the classroom. Here are a few of the benefits of hiring professional voice actors:

• They’re trained to maintain consistent style, pace, energy levels, and pronunciation across different media and throughout a series of videos or modules, even if they’re recorded over an extended time period
• They have a dynamic vocal style that’s needed to grab and hold the attention of viewers, and to help them retain the information they’re supposed to learn
• When it comes to highly technical content with industry-specific terms, they’ll be adept at pronouncing long and complex words and phrases in a way that’s slow enough for learners to grasp but not so slow that people watching the video feel patronized

2. Employ professional translation services

Teaching something to another person is a very difficult task, even when the two people speak the same language. But when you throw in an additional obstacle—such as translating the lesson from one language to another—you increase the chances that the learner or viewer will not walk away with the message you’re trying to impart. Let’s look at an example of why it’s so important to hire professional translators:

Everybody is familiar with KFC’s famous slogan, Finger-lickin’ good. Well, when KFC decided to take this idiomatic slogan across the ocean and advertise in China, they ended up with the tagline We’ll eat your fingers off. See the problem? While this example is quite funny (and many translational blunders are), it illustrates a huge problem: phrases and sentences don’t often translate easily to other languages, especially when there are idioms and regional vernacular involved. The only way to ensure a successful translation is to hire a professional translator who is fluent in both languages.

Furthermore, when you endeavor to translate voice-narrated content into multiple languages, you need to ensure consistency across the board, and you cannot achieve this with the type of direct translation that you’d get from an amateur speaker or an online translation service. The job of a translator isn’t to take words from one language and convert them directly into another—it’s to convey the same idea in one language that was said in another.

Sometimes that means using different wording, different phrasing, and different figures of speech, and only a professional will be able to provide this level of specialization, quality, and consistency across multiple languages. Moreover, the last thing you want is for an amateur translation to be offensive, culturally sensitive, or politically incorrect. Not only will your message be lost, but you’ll also anger viewers, and your reputation and brand will suffer.

When possible, it’s advisable to use the same vendor for translation and recording, as this will ensure a unified, consistent process across all languages, will reduce errors, and will simplify the change management process down the road.

3. Circulate drafts to all language stakeholders regularly

It’s critical to solicit feedback from sponsoring business owners for each language or geography throughout the process. Especially at the beginning of the project, after the rough draft of the script is written, and right before narration begins. In the beginning, you want to gather broad feedback about the project in general that will guide you when making executive decisions down the road. One of the most important areas where this can help is cultural relevance and sensitivity. Again, let’s look at an example that can elucidate the issue:

When the California Milk Processor Board wanted to expand their advertising into Latin America, their famous Got Milk? slogan was mistranslated into Are you lactating? While this may seem like a humorous blunder to Americans, the mistake would not have been well-received in Latin America, where the idea of a mother running out of milk is actually offensive. With insight from the right people, you can guide the project appropriately to ensure it will be well-received across different geographies.

Once the script has been written, you should consult stakeholders again to ensure that scripting is accurate, that the translation is clear, concise, and conveys the right message, and that all pronunciation is accurate throughout the entire video. Here’s another quick example: if you were to use the British term “half seven” when referring to the time, you’d have Germans thinking 6:30, and Americans wondering if it was 6:30 or 7:30. (It’s 7:30.) It’s these small details that can derail an entire project, so it’s the small details you must focus on.

Finally, right before recording, you should solicit feedback again to ensure there aren’t any inconsistencies from one geography to the next. For instance, say you were creating a product video for a watch, but that the watch was digital in some regions and analog in others. You’d want to make sure that the scripting described the right product, and that the right product was featured in the video. The same holds true of process videos that might differ from one location to another.

4. Get your video and audio people collaborating early on

Any basic video has two major components: audio and video. These components are often tackled by different teams, but it’s essential that they work together from the very beginning of the project to ensure audio-to-video synchronization. Audio-video sync, which is the relative timing of audio components as they relate to video components, is relatively easy to achieve when audio and video are recorded together. However, the process is more complicated when audio and video are recorded separately, as is the case with voice-over videos. Recording the two separately is also the best way to ensure optimal audio quality, but it does make the job more difficult.

Audio-video sync is most important when the dialogue refers directly to what’s on the screen, such as when the narration is referring to a product feature that should be displayed in the video. When audio and visual work together, they can ensure that important time markers are included in the script, because these denote vital elements that appear on-screen at those exact moments. Time markers typically note the amount of time that’s elapsed since the beginning of the video, and the voice talent can use these to pace their narration.

5. Provide the voice over narration talent with the video

This may seem obvious, but seeing the video provides important context for the voice over narration talent to adapt her or his unique style, pacing, and intonation. Also, voice talents may see timing issues that were not originally anticipated, and can alert the video producer. The risk of producing the audio recording first before it making it available to the voice over narration talent:

• The audio may be too long to be synchronized with the video – either in its entire length or in key sections.
• For product demonstrations, there might be too much time between the visual display of product features to fill with sound – resulting in a lengthy, awkward pause that breaks up the flow of the video.
• It is generally easier to manipulate visual elements to fit the audio if changes need to be made. Once a script is a recorded, making changes could be costly if professional narration is engaged.

6. Nail the finished English product before localizing your product

When you’re dealing with multi-language and e-learning videos, the polished original English version should be the demo you use to attract new stakeholders and not the aim of the project after you’ve already found other-language stakeholders. In other words, don’t try to get other-language stakeholders on board until you’ve already completed the original video, complete with script and voice over narration.

Why? Because to paraphrase Benjamin Disraeli, you should hope for the best but prepare for the worst. Imagine you got your stakeholders on board with the script alone, but then encountered problems with key content or timing issues during production. You’d have to re-write the script and get everybody on board all over again. Not only will this recording change require more money, but it may also damage your credibility in the process.

Start by completing the English version first, and then you can work toward localizing it for other geographies. This is also a great way to get the stakeholder feedback discussed in tip three, because you’ll have a tangible finished project to show prospects. Furthermore, during the production process with the original version, you’ll likely learn a lot along the way about the audio-video sync, and you can use what you learn to facilitate production during subsequent versions.

7. Listen to multiple demos in each language

Professional voice over  narration service providers often offer multiple voice talents for a given language. Evaluating multiple demos will ensure that your choice best reflects your brand; in terms of style, pace, and energy level. Carefully listening to more than one voice can also give you and your colleagues a different perspective on how the language will sound and how it will be subliminally perceived.

One consideration is level of formality. Some customers may feel more comfortable with a more formal style, yet our experience has shown that if the person selecting the voice talent is not a native speaker of a given language, the risk is that the chosen voice talent may sound “less educated”, or “not professional”. The same person may not recognize regional accents when a delivery that is more neutral for a given geography is desired.

8. Pick a voice talent that aligns with your brand and customer personas

Many organizations define “customer personas” that represent the demographics and psychographic characteristics of their buyers. The voice over narration you choose acts as an important vehicle for creating comfort and familiarity with your customers, and should represent characteristics that are consistent with your brand. A professional voice services firm may offer voice talents with a broad variety of vocal styles that could potentially appeal to these personas, and these firms can assist in voice talent selection.

Professional voice actors are experienced in adapting their vocal style, pace, and intonation to appeal to their audience, so it is a good idea to provide a written customer persona profile to the chosen voice talent. You may also request a “coached session” in which the voice “buyer” can provide real-time guidance and feedback to the voice talent during recording, often supported by remote technology such as ipDTL, SourceConnect, or even a simple phone patch.

9. Use the same branded voice across all voice touchpoints

Everybody knows how important it is for a brand to maintain a consistent voice when communicating with customers, but did you know that you should take this advice literally as well? Many clients will come into contact with recorded voices multiple times during their relationship with your organization, and it’s important that they hear a familiar voice each time. This creates consistency, builds a relationship with each customer, reinforces your brand, and creates loyalty.

Imagine you had to call a customer service hotline on multiple occasions regarding the same issue and imagine you got a new rep each time and had to explain the problem over and over again. Frustrating, right? But then imagine the opposite: each time you called you got the same person, and that the rep remembered you each time and asked how you were before getting back to solving your problem. This is much better customer service because the rep is working at building a relationship with you. This becomes even more important when your clients only ever deal with recorded voices because there is no person on the other end to build a relationship with. However, if a client always hears the same voice, it’s like seeing a familiar face in a room full of strangers, and that voice will become a symbol of your organization. Here are a few places you may want to consider using the same voice over narration (or a few select voices):

• Web videos
• Phone greetings
• Automated call operators
• Interactive voice response systems
• Hold messages
• Broadcast advertisements

Going back to point three, this is another place where feedback from stakeholders can be invaluable, because while one style of voice may work in one geography, it may not fly in another. For instance, a high-energy and enthusiastic voice may work for one country, but that same voice might be considered inappropriate or off-target for clients elsewhere who prefer a more formal and professional tone.

10. Use one process and one vendor for all languages

When it comes to creating multi-language voice over narration for videos, there are many steps in the process, including script writing and review, recording, sound editing, file naming, archiving, and delivery. And at every step along the way, there is plenty of room for mistakes. Moreover, when you use different vendors for each language, each step will be approached and executed differently, meaning no two projects will be alike.

Not only is this inefficient, but it also leaves you open to inconsistencies, and makes it impossible for you to predict problems. For example, perhaps your French audio ends up sounding louder than your English, or maybe your Italian audio contains more silence leading into the first word than your German version. These inconsistencies in the audio-visual products are also inconsistencies in your brand, and as discussed, this is the opposite of what you’re going for.

Think back to tip six when you learned about using a polished English version as a guide to help you create localized versions. When you do that, you’re able to learn from your mistakes and perfect the process. When you use the same process and the same vendor for all your languages, the same principle holds true: the vendor has time to get used to the content and the process and is able to remain consistent across all language productions.

Moreover, that one vendor will be able to name and archive all the recordings in a consistent manner, which will make it much easier for you to locate those recordings down the road. The only way to achieve this level of perfection and consistency is to use the same professional voice services firm for each language production, because that firm will execute the process the same way over and over again, providing you with a uniform and reliable product every time.

The post Top 10 Tips for Multi-Language Video and E-Learning Voice Over Narration appeared first on Marketing Messages.

Should you use professional narration for your next project?

Incorporating professional narration into your company’s marketing audio is essential. It’s yet another layer of brand re-enforcement. However, finding the right voice for your project is just as important.

If you’re thinking about adding voice to your next project, stream this interactive, audio eBook to learn how to successfully use professional narration to reinforce your brand and elevate your presentation. We’ve incorporated audio into this eBook so you can experience first-hand the power of professional narration.

After listening to this eBook, you’ll learn:

• What is narration?
• When and why should I use professional narration?
• What is the process like for completing a successful narration project?
• How do I pick the right voice talent for my project?

A professional voiceover artist from Marketing Messages’ roster will enhance your presentation, ensuring an even delivery over any length of time. Running at a steady state for minutes, hours, and days, and over the years our voiceover pros maintain studio and vocal consistency as a way of life. This, along with our deep archives, ensures your voice narration can be updated at any time, for any reason, as often as you like. You can build an empire’s worth of audio narratives, capturing a library of work, in the voice of your choice. The choice is what makes this a great decision. When you get to choose between having someone from the office’s Aunt Mary record your prose, or a professional voiceover actor, which choice will you make?

Click the link, stream the eBook, then make the choice for yourself!

The post Free audio eBook: A Guide to Using Professional Narration. appeared first on Marketing Messages.

Many of the initial discussions we have with new customers center around the challenge of rationalizing the number of recorded voices one of their customers might encounter in the course of various phone and web interactions. Clients know they should employ a more unified voice approach, but don’t have a roadmap for thinking through how to make the right choices that will ultimately impact the overall customer experience. This blog post lays out an approach that addresses this challenge.

What Is a Voice Marketing Brand?

Voice Marketing is a branding strategy that aligns all of an organization’s professionally recorded messages and the unique attributes of a given voice with its value proposition. This alignment is achieved by employing a single voice or set of voices across a broad range of customer “voice touch points”, including phone, web, and other communication vehicles.

For example, when a caller is:

• Navigating through phone menus (auto attendant prompts)
• Conducting a phone transaction (IVR prompts)
• Waiting on hold (on-hold messages)
• Viewing a video on a website (web video narration)
• Being educated about a product or service (e-learning narration)

The chosen voice talent should deliver in a way that is emotionally compelling and consistently builds customer familiarity over time via continual reinforcement – whether the caller is talking to a call center application with touchtone voice prompts, viewing a web video, or participating in an E-learning presentation.

Principles of Voice Marketing

Voice Marketing presumes that the organization has established at least one of the following:

• Brand statement A description of how the organization wants to represent its products and services to its customers – i.e., its “promise” to these customers.
• Customer persona A short story that defines relevant characteristics, interests, and demographic information representative of individuals in its prospect and customer base.
• Value proposition The unique set of customer benefits offered by the organization’s products and services differentiate it from its competitors.

The development of professionally recorded voice prompts, messages and narration should consistently support each of these elements – and should proceed according to the following six guiding principles:

1. Voice attribute alignment

A voice talent’s vocal attributes should accurately represent and support the company and/or product brand. They should appeal to specific customer personas. Any personal characteristics, behaviors, and lifestyle information should be conveyed to the voice talent so the talent can more effectively establish a connection with the customer.

2. Voice channel alignment

A customer interacts with a company brand through a series of customer touch points. Each has the potential to become a “voice touch point” – or instance in which the customer comes in contact with a recorded voice. Each customer touch point should be evaluated to determine if the use of a recorded voice would be an effective communication vehicle – and if such use would be a cost-effective alternative or complement to other modes of communication.

3. User experience consistency

Use of a voice talent should create a consistent user experience. The same vocal style, emotion, and inflection should be employed across all vehicles enabled by professional voice services – and these same elements should remain consistent over time.

4. Messaging consistency and reinforcement

The messages communicated via voice-enabled vehicles should mirror and reinforce those conveyed through the organization’s overall marketing mix. This alignment should extend across as many marketing vehicles as appropriate – so that messaging is reinforced and made more memorable. Voice-enabled marketing vehicles should also reinforce messaging at the individual marketing program or initiative level – supporting new product/service introductions, special promotions, and feature enhancements.

5. Voice talent uniformity

The preceding principles suggest that a single voice talent should be deployed across all voice touch points. The talent should be professionally trained to deliver IVR prompts, onhold messages, and narration uniformly with respect to style, tone, emotion, and inflection. Multiple voice talents can be effectively utilized as long as each can be associated with a well-defined set of customers, products and/or brands – or thoughtful consideration is given to how the voice talents relate to each other.

6. Emotional engagement

The voice talent should elicit emotional responses that are conducive to establishing and maintaining a strong relationship with target customers – resulting in positive outcomes for the business. Vocal attributes should nurture a sense of familiarity that is constantly reinforced across multiple vehicles – strengthening the bond between the customer and the brand.

Benefits

Following these guiding principles will yield significant value in terms of brand equity:

• Consistent brand reinforcement
• More powerful value proposition
• Strengthened customer connection

One of our banking customers sums up these benefits as she describes how voice has become a unifying force in their overall marketing approach:

“Before we standardized all of our voice recordings using a single voice, the customer experience was disjointed and confusing. Callers heard a credible but very formal voice on our main auto attendant, a friendly, authentic voice for our commercial loan processing IVR prompts, and a highly energetic voice on our customer service line. Looking back, it was hard for the caller to understand what our brand stood for. Worst of all, we just looked – and sounded – less than professional. Now all of our recorded voice prompts reflect a friendly, welcoming tone, which is consistent with the image we’re trying to portray as a community-oriented regional bank.”
Stay tuned for our next blog post on the Voice Marketing Process, which describes a step-by-step approach for ensuring that your recording voices are aligned with your brand. We”ll provide real-life customer examples for illustrating these principles in future posts.

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