How to pick the perfect voice over

Picking the right voice over isn’t as simple as one may think. Despite the fact that the voice needs to suit your brand, you’re not only hiring a mere voice, but that voice may one day be the voice to represent you. 

For the layman, picking a voice over may seem as simple as looking through options available to you. This post will take you through how to approach the search from a professional perspective, to ensure you make the right decision. 

 

Know who you’re targeting

The first step to choosing a voice over is knowing your target audience. Identifying this early on will help you make an informed choice on what type of gender, tonality as well as the level of formality that you’d need for your brand. 

When it comes to picking between a male and female voice, you should have your target audience in mind in advance. Remember, you’re talking to your target audience, so you want to be relatable to them initially. 

Male voices tend to be hired for more authoritative campaigns, or for projects targeting a male-dominated audience. Whereas female voice overs tend to be perceived as more trustworthy, and are also hired for ad campaigns targeting women, or parents of young children. 

Are you advertising for a new men’s razor? In that case you’d want to hire a male voice over. Advertising for the new baby formula to wean toddlers off mother’s milk? You’d be better off hiring a female voice over. 

Bear in mind, the two aren’t mutually exclusive, some ad campaigns can benefit from the opposite sex targeting them, such as for a deodorant advert, and some ad campaigns targeting a broader audience, for which you’d just require a specific voice, whether male or female. 

The choice is yours, just know that the first step of the process is to identify your target audience. 

 

Formal or informal

The next step after identifying your target audience, is knowing whether you need a formal or informal voice. Though voice overs can turn a formal voice on and off, more often than not the voice over you select will naturally gravitate to one type or another. 

Formal voices will work great for corporate campaigns targeting a more serious audience, as well as for technical elearning courses and the such. Informal voices will work great for everyday consumer ad campaigns, as well as less technical elearning courses, dependent on niche of course. 

Usually when browsing voice overs you’d be able to play both examples and make your decision based on that, be sure to already have your decision in mind prior to listening through. This will help you ensure the right voice artist for you is chosen. 

 

Analyse their tone of voice

Tone of voice is very important in the voice over world. It’s the difference between an energetic advert, a sensual ad voice over, and a non memorable one. 

As voice overs can vary by age, this will also affect tone of voice. A younger, more youthful voice over will be more suitable for targeting a younger audience, and vice versa for the more seasoned of the voice overs. 

Tone of voice is not only important for conveying the tone that you wish to achieve, but also to add that extra bit of pizazz that can help convert your audience. If you carefully consider tone of voice properly when looking through your selection, you’ll be able to make a better informed decision. 

 

Check their past work

One last thing to consider when choosing a voice over, is to request a showreel of their past work. You never know what types of voices they’ve done in the past that may inspire your campaign. 

Sometimes you may initially have an idea of what type of voice you’d want to have for a project; For those who don’t, it’s good to get a bit of inspiration in this way. 

Choosing the perfect voice-over can be a tedious process indeed, but it doesn’t need to be. 

With a bit of careful attention and awareness of the key aspects of what to look for when searching for a voice, you can rest assured you’re making the right decision.