How to Define Your Audio Brand and Where to be Heard Online – In Just 7 Minutes with David Ciccarelli

Resources/Links:

• Wanting to Bring the Voice Out of Your Brand? Find out how you can connect with your audience, market your products or services, and increase your profit through the power of the right voice: voices.com

Summary

Have you been wanting to know how to give a voice to your business but just don’t know how to do it?

Do you want to know how audio branding can help give your business a bit more authenticity and connection with your clients?

Are you ready to find out the magic of defining your audio brand?

David Ciccarelli is an entrepreneur at heart. For the last decade, David, with the help of his team, has grown Voices.com from the ground up to become the leader in the voice industry.

In this episode, David talks about what an audio brand is and how you can define it to attract more clients, connect with your audience, expand your platforms and gain more profit. He also shares his insights and tips on how you can make the most out of your audio brand.

Check out these episode highlights:

• 01:50 – David’s ideal client: “Our ideal client would be a creative producer. They might work at a corporate brand marketing department or marketing department.”
• 02:08 – Problem David helps solve: “Brand marketers really have a story to tell. They want to educate, inform and entertain their audience. And they’ve discovered that the human voice is one of the most influential, you know, form factors that can take to tell that story.”
• 02:51 – Typical symptoms that clients experience before reaching out to David: “For them, it could be a matter of capacity. You know, a lot of us have, you know, creative talent, like graphic designers that we work with full time. Others, such as voiceover, or voice acting.”
• 04:18 – Common mistakes that people make before they find David’s solution: “One of the most common mistakes is just lacking creative direction. And I would even go a little step further before that, lacking, you know, Sonic brand or audio brand guidelines.”
• 05:39 – David’s Valuable Free Action (VFA): “It really just kind of picking up from the previous question is, you know, we run a lot of clients through this exercise of translating the visual identity into the audio identity. Now, their visual identity might imbue certain values.”
• 07:07 – David’s Valuable Free Resource (VFR): Check out David’s Website: voices.com
• 08:17 – Q: If they’re looking to get a hold of me or anyone from our team? A: Simply visit voices.com

Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode:

“People buy from people who sound like them.” -David Ciccarelli Share on X

Transcript
(Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Tom Poland 00:10
Greetings, everyone, and a very warm welcome to another edition of Marketing the Invisible. My name is Tom Poland beaming out to you from little Castaways Beach in Queensland, Australia, joined today by David Ciccarelli. David, good day. Sir, a very warm welcome from down under. Where are you hanging out?

David Ciccarelli 00:25
I’m hanging out just outside of Toronto, Canada. So pretty much the polar opposite from where you are, but great to be here together!

Tom Poland 00:31
Talking about polar, you probably are sliding into fall. Are you?

David Ciccarelli 00:36
Before you know it. Absolutely! And that’s kind of synonymous with Canadians. People think it’s all frigid here, but we have plenty of land. It’s actually further south, believe it or not, than much of the United States. But happy to be here, nonetheless, despite what season it might be outside.

Tom Poland 00:51
Thank you, sir. Thanks for being here, too. David, folks, if you don’t know him, he’s got this really, really interesting niche, his service niche that he provides, but we’ll get to that in a moment. Background though, he’s an entrepreneur at heart for the last decade with the help of his team, he has grown Voices.com from the ground up to become the leader in the voice industry. And that’s the clue to the specialty I referenced. The title is, “How to Define Your Audio Brand and Where to be Heard Online”. A lot of us used protocols around our visual brand, but our audio brand, now online, with the videos and the live streaming of podcasts, etc. is right up there in terms of determining the quality of your reputation and brand consistency, which, hopefully, is going to be a reflection of the quality of your product and services and consistency. So, again, “How to Define Your Audio Brand and Where to be Heard Online”. David, our seven minutes starts now. Sir, question number one, who is your ideal client?

David Ciccarelli 01:50
Well, our ideal client would be a creative producer. They might work at a corporate brand marketing department or marketing department. They might work at an advertising agency, but somebody who’s creating content– could be on video, could be on audio, but that’s our ideal client.

Tom Poland 02:04
Perfect! Thank you, sir. Question two, six and a half minutes left, what’s the problem you solve for them?

David Ciccarelli 02:08
Well, brand marketers really have a story to tell. They want to educate, inform and entertain their audience. And they’ve discovered that the human voice is one of the most influential, you know, form factors that can take to tell that story. But the challenge becomes, “Where do I go to get that done?”, “What is the kind of the rules of engagement?” And so that’s the problem that we’re trying to solve both the finding of talent and helping them complete it in a fast, easy way.

Tom Poland 02:37
So tell me- thank you for that. Question three, we’ve got six minutes left, doing well for the time. What are some of the symptoms? So if you’ve got this ideal client out there, somewhere, how do they know they need to dive more into your specialty? What’s going on?

David Ciccarelli 02:51
Well, for them, it could be a matter of capacity. You know, a lot of us have, you know, creative talent, like graphic designers that we work with full time. Others, such as voiceover, or voice acting. You’re not necessarily going to have that type of work on all the time. So that’s kind of capacity and being able to hire someone on a freelance basis, easily. That’s certainly something that’s going on. But even if you were to choose, you know, a project comes onto your plate, or you, as a marketing leader, decide to move into a new channel that is heavily reliant on voice. Now, one of the challenges is just lacking that lexicon. “How do I describe a voice?” We all have these references for describing the visual identity– space, color, shape? But how do you describe the voice? So we try to guide people through that type of creative direction when looking for that perfect voice for your project on the platform.

Tom Poland 03:44
So, folks, we’re talking about getting the voice that people are hearing and influencing them towards choosing your services or products or engaging with them, talking about having consistency in that and applying the same sort of protocols you might have visual appearances. So there is consistency and brand recognition and so on. David, what would you say- this is question number four. We’ve got four and a half minutes left. What would you say are some of the common mistakes that people make when, other than not even being aware of that as a significant problem or potential opportunity, what would you say are some of the mistakes you see people making before they find your service?

David Ciccarelli 04:18
One of the most common mistakes is just lacking creative direction. And I would even go a little step further before that, lacking, you know, Sonic brand or audio brand guidelines. Now, the way you might overcome that is, you know, if you could picture your brand, walk into a room or speak. You know, if you had a mascot, it’s a little bit easier. But if your brand was personified, what would they sound like? And what’s often missing is we see the creative direction where someone says, “Oh, I want somebody professional.” Well, is that more indicative of the quality of the recording? Or are you actually looking for a career professional, a corporate executive, if you will? So I would challenge, you know, again, marketers, creative producers out there to actually describe the role, who it is that you want to be kind of narrating, and the style. How is that performed? Those two things will help you overcome the lack of creative direction and actually provide the voice talent out there with clear direction to deliver you that read that you go, “Yes! That’s the person that represents or personifies my brand.”

Tom Poland 05:26
Perfect! Thank you, sir. Question number five, we’ve got three minutes left, one valuable free action or item, a top tip, if you’d like, that someone listening to this could take. May not solve the whole problem, but it might take them a step in the right direction?

David Ciccarelli 05:39
Well, you know, it really just kind of picking up from the previous question is, you know, we run a lot of clients through this exercise of translating the visual identity into the audio identity. Now, their visual identity might imbue certain values. Well, what are the equivalent audio terms that can do that? And an example was, “Oh, our brand is purple.” Okay, does that mean that it’s passionate? And is that the kind of read that you’re looking for? Or, you know, “Our brand, you know, we think of who we’re selling to or people who are, you know, very smart and witty.” Okay, well, then that should be- you know, if that’s kind of the target market, that should be the same attributes that you would provide a voice actor to perform. So people buy from people that sound like them, so that’s a really key takeaway. So think about who your ideal customer persona would be.

Tom Poland 06:36
That’s so smart!

David Ciccarelli 06:36
And then, how white they sound. And then that’s kind of the artistic direction that you would provide. So if you sell predominantly to a particular gender, or age range, or demographic, that’s probably the persona that you want to hire to become your audio ambassador, because people buy from people who sound like them.

Tom Poland 06:54
Right. That’s fascinating! A whole new world of marketing influence opens up. Question six, we’ve got 90 seconds left, one valuable free resource. Where can we direct people to go to get even more value?

David Ciccarelli 07:07
Sure. Well, one of the tools that we’ve developed is what we call “sonic brand or audio brand guidelines”. Most organizations have, you know, visual identity guidelines. But I would encourage those who just want to see, “Well, what does a sonic logo look like and sound like?”, “What do the audio guidelines look like?” You can actually go to voices.com, our homepage, and if you scroll to the very bottom in the press section, you’ll get a link to our media kit. And in there, there’s actually a link where you can listen to our sonic logo. So again, it’s just a three-second musical clip that we put at the beginning of our phone system, at the end of our YouTube videos. That is that constant reminder. It’s just a sing-songy voice that’s what it says, but then there are the audio guidelines of when and where you might use that. What’s the kind of musical genre that we might be using as well too? Are there sound effects? Yes or no? So that’s a great PDF resource that hopefully inspires people to use.

Tom Poland 08:03
Thank you, sir. So go to voices.com. Scroll down, look for the company page, go to “press” and then media kit. Question number seven, sir, we’ve got 12 seconds left. The one question I should have asked you but didn’t? And we’ve got 10 seconds for it.

David Ciccarelli 08:17
Well, I hope people will find some value. If they’re looking to get a hold of me or anyone from our team, just simply visit voices.com.

Tom Poland 08:29
Thanks for checking out our Marketing The Invisible podcast. If you like what we’re doing here please head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate us, and leave us a review. It’s very much appreciated. And if you want to generate five fresh leads in just five hours then check out www.fivehourchallenge.com.