A rude awakening.
There is no other way to describe it.
This morning I decided to take a closer look at one of the voice-over casting websites I subscribe to, and I particularly looked at all the auditions I had submitted in the past couple of months. What I discovered didn’t exactly make my day. Here’s why.
In four months, I had submitted a total of 185 auditions. For about 80% of these job offers, the indicated deadline had passed. In other words: one might assume that the client would have hired a voice by now.
However, much to my surprise, I noticed that in only 10% of the above cases a talent had actually been selected. Mind you, not every selection ends in a booking. When I looked even deeper into the postings that never lead to anything, it got worse. I saw that at least half of those had over one hundred submissions!
THE BOTTOM LINE
A majority of auditions didn’t result in an actual booking, not because the job was awarded to another talent, but because the voice-shopper never became a buyer. In most cases, the client had plenty of talent to choose from. And with 100+ submissions per project, bidding must have been fierce. What’s going on here?
At least four things came to mind:
- Is this an overall trend or is it unique to my situation?
- These missed opportunities mean a huge loss in revenue for the site in question, as well as for the subscribers who pay to play, and not to be thrown away.
- There’s tremendous untapped potential! Why are some sites barely scratching the surface of a goldmine?
- What can be done to turn browsers into buyers?
BATTING AVERAGE
To take up the last question first, this refers to what marketing guru’s call the “conversion rate.” Consumer behavior expert Paco Underhill is the author of “Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping.” He writes:
“Conversion rate measures what you make of what you have- it shows how well (or how poorly) the entire enterprise is functioning where it counts most: in the store. Conversion rate is to retail what batting average is to baseball -without knowing it, you can say that somebody had a hundred hits last season, but you don’t know whether he had three hundred at-bats, or a thousand. Without conversion rate, you don’t know if you’re Mickey Mantle or Mickey Mouse.
One could also describe conversion rate is as “the percentage of visitors who take the action you wish for.” In the case of this blog, I hope my readers will leave a comment, become a subscriber and visit the rest of my website. Of course I also hope you find my writings entertaining and that you take away something useful. But what I’m ultimately aiming for is “engagement.” Remember that. I’ll get back to it later.
JUST LOOKING
It’s obvious that the conversion rate of the voice-over website I mentioned in the intro left a lot to be desired for. Yet, it’s nothing new for an internet-based business. Here’s the deal. This “just looking” behavior is ubiquitous online. That’s inherent to the medium. It gets worse, though. Some studies suggest that over half of all online shoppers abandon their carts part way through the check out process. Why is that?
The beginning of an answer to that question lies in the “interception rate,” the percentage of customers who have some contact with an employee. Paco Underhill:
“The more shopper-employee contacts that take place, the greater the average sale. Talking with an employee has a way of drawing a customer in closer. With no sales assistance it could be the difference between a conversion rate of 22 percent and a conversion rate that’s 50 to 60%.”
So, let me ask you this: when’s the last time you went on an online shopping spree, and had any type of interaction with an employee?
Where’s the engagement? Where’s the relationship? Where’s the interception?
Now, let’s go one step further and bring this closer to home. If you are a voice-over actor with a personal website or a blog, do you know your conversion rate? If not, wouldn’t you want to know? Do you even know how to measure your visitor’s response? I could care less about the number of hits you get on an average day, or your ranking on Bing. Bing doesn’t pay your bills. Don’t get me wrong: getting people in the door is a promising start. Keeping them inside is even better. Getting them to take action is the ultimate goal.
Here’s the 64 thousand dollar question: How do you do that? If customer-interception plays such a big part in increasing your sales, is such a thing even realistic in an anonymous, impersonal virtual world? How could you possibly turn browsers into buyers? Be sure to check out my next installment!
I really like the “Likely Hiring” – “You are rated #1 out of 52 auditions (there were 14 others who received the same feedback)”
I guess we’ll split the copy (and pay) 14 ways!
Paul,
Thank you for this blog… it is fantastic. These are definitely things we should all consider. Looking forward to Part II with ALL the answers. LOL!
Caryn
Paul,
Great article…but I think you may be missing one valuable point. Any time I’ve ever used any of the p2p sites to hire talent, I’ve always contacted the talent directly after hearing the “right” voice…so any stats you see on the p2p sites are skewed by that fact. There will be many producers who simply want to deal direct with the talent, and bypass the clunky p2p site email systems, the extra escrow fees involved, etc. If those producers don’t “rate” the talent, nor go through a particular site’s escrow or “job completion” process, then the job isn’t officially “closed.” This does not, however, mean that talent hasn’t already been chosen, booked, and paid.
As a voice talent, any time I’m tempted to dump the one site everyone complains about, I always book a job that more than pays for the service…so for me, it’s been worth it.
Still, though, a great article…thanks for sharing it!
-Craig
You make a couple of excellent points Craig, and I plan to address those in one of my upcoming postings. I completely agree that the statistics are off because talent does get hired directly. The problem is, I don’t know what percentage eventually bypasses the p2p system. Is it fifty percent? Twenty-five? And if you were running one of those sites, wouldn’t you want to know why you’re spending so much time and money getting these voice-seekers to post jobs, only to be dumped in the end?
Exceptional article. The pay-to-play sites should take note!
Recently I emailed V123 suggesting that if the prospective talent buyers get to rate talent – even if they don’t hire them – then talent should get to rate voice seekers. As an extension of your article, V123 ought to put the site’s conversion rate and the individual talent’s conversion rate on each talent’s home page.
Paul,
I’ve been noticing the same thing on the P2P sites lately. I will audition, check back later, and no more than 20% of the jobs I’ve auditioned for have selected a candidate.
I look forward to hearing your solution.
Jamee
Hello Paul,
As others have stated here, you have posed some valuable questions.
If I may be permitted to make what might be seen as a rather contrarian or unpopular comment on the subject of your goal for this blog; namely your desire for readers to take action and engage with you, thereby increasing your exposure to the market, it is very important that you engage your reader by providing solutions (or means to solutions) in a short time after presenting rapid-fire questions. I have read a couple of your blogs, but I have not seen you follow up yet with answers.
I have often heard the opinion that when providing a good or service, the customer should always feel that they are getting greater value than what they have paid for.
As a reader, (and fellow voice-actor), to be honest I am not compelled to return to this blog because though I would give you all credit for raising valid points, you, as the acting expert in this case, have presented a problem but not given your reader a means to a solution.
On the subject of P2P voice talent sites;
Most of these sites probably don’t even have a clue as to how to find or provide information about conversion rates, nor do I believe that they would be easily forthcoming with that information if they had it. I have worked with a few similar sites in the music sector, and they make most of their income on talent memberships. They are not really motivated to acquire or provide conversion information because they don’t really need to.
I mean no ill-will in these comments; I do believe that in order to learn and grow, we must be willing discuss varying perspectives in an opened forum.
Kind Regards,
Eva
Hello Eva:
Almost every type of comment is welcome on my blog. The only remarks I filter out are those of spammers and of people who are downright rude and insulting. If my writings left you hoping to hear more, my mission was -in part- accomplished.
Different bloggers have different publishing cycles. Some write a few posts a day. I tend to publish one blog a week. In these days of instant messaging, twitter and hour-by-hour facebook updates, I realize that some of my readers would like me to write more often.
The issue of audition results has obviously hit some nerves here and there, and some pay-to-play sites need some more time to respond.
You’ll also find that I try mix the professional with the personal and that some of my posts have more questions than answers. I’m not attempting to write the book on “getting results on the internet”, but I will pass along what I have found as I was researching this topic.
There’s a whole new field out there called “conversion marketing”, and what those who specialize in it are doing, can’t be summarized in one or two articles. All I can hope for is that the readers who are interested in getting more web exposure, stick with me and join me on my search for answers. I won’t always spoon-feed them. Things are much more likely to stick when people make their own discoveries.
It must have been quite frustrating for you. Submitting your work to so many sites without getting any results does happen. Yet, you will be glad to know that there is a new site that will give you a better chance at getting voice over work that you are qualified for. It’s called AmazingVoiceTalent.com
Thanks for sharing.