Female or male voice-over: Which is best?

You have your script ready, all it needs now is the perfect voice to bring it to life… but do you go for a male or female voice? This decision alone can have an impact on the clarity, consistency, and effectiveness of your message.

In this guide we’re going to uncover what the research says about the two, what listeners prefer, and whether it changes from one industry to the next.

The research

First and foremost, we should look at real-life data because this will underpin everything else we discuss here. Thanks to a research conducted by Adweek Media and Harris Poll back in 2010, we actually have some interesting data - nearly 2,200 adults answered the poll which is a good sample size. Here’s what they found:

49% of people said that gender makes no difference within a marketing campaign, explainer video, or whatever promotional material it may be.

Interestingly, the poll also returned a statistic suggesting a male voice sounded more forceful and dominating than a female voice (over 49%). For females, 46% of people said they sounded more smoothing. That’s something to keep in mind when planning the voice needs to fit the format and topic of the project.

The research also look at the power of persuasion - 19% of surveyed said that a female tone was quite persuasive while 18% thought that male voices were better for persuading an audience. This left 63% who didn’t think the voice matters when it comes to influencing listeners.

We can gauge that the gender of the voice-over artist could actually be pivotal if you want to see positive engagement. If you’re going for an authoritative explainer video and you want the audience to sit up and take note, a male voice will be better for this because it allows you to target 97% of people (49% who didn’t care about gender, alongside the 48% who thought the male voice sounded more dominating). By the same merit, 92% of your audience can be engaged if you choose a female voice for a soothing video.

A follow up study

Before we move onto the considerations you need to make for your business, we just want to take a look at one more study organised by ConversionXL, an e-commerce assistance website. They ran a survey to find out whether a certain voice was more trustworthy or attractive than another.

Starting with trustworthiness, the results were intriguing as they actually had professionals and amateurs record samples for the participants to rate.

For trust, the professional female came out first which is perhaps no surprise but the amateur female came second which was unexpected. The professional male artist came in third place while the amateur male voice was voted as the least trustworthy from all.

After trust, the participants were also asked to consider attractiveness in the voice and the professional male actually finished in last position. While professional female and amateur female voices took the top two spots respectively, the amateur male artist was voted as more attractive than the professional male.

What’s the current trend?

On the internet these days, trends are everything as they tell you exactly what each customer is looking for at any given point in time. With voice-overs, there’s a difference in preference depending on whether you’re producing a documentary, e-learning or marketing material. However, the current trend is very much in the favour of female voice-overs.

Why? For the most part, customers find it easier to relate and engage with a female voice and this intimate feeling engages emotion too, which is ideal for certain content.

That being said, there’s more to it than that because people also like the higher pitch. Phil McAleer, a well-known professional in the field of psychology, recorded the word ‘hello’ from 64 different people and the higher pitches were quoted as being more ‘trustworthy’ with confidence being the reason for this.

Additionally, we find female voices more soothing and melodic than a male voice. If we look at the science for a moment, this could actually come from the fact the male and female voices come from different regions within the brain.

While the male voice is processed in the ‘mind’s eye’ at the back of the brain, the female voice forms in the auditory region; this just so happens to be the same region that processes music.

Finally, by nature, females are more nurturing and this allows both men and women to feel more compassionate towards the voice. When we hear a female voice-over, we hear the voice of a helper and someone who isn’t threatening.

Choosing a voice for your content

If you’re a business looking to introduce a product to a new market, you need to find the voice that resonates with the viewer and builds on the persona and brand you’ve developed. If you’ve created a car business and the focus has been on men, bringing a female voice into the equation might cause some confusion and it could also lead to a loss of trust.

Similarly, a brand built around women would have to be careful when introducing a male voice because, no matter what you think, your customers might view your brand as an exclusive club.

If you’re promoting an explainer video, which voice will go along with the identity you’ve created for the business? If the video is explaining how to use the product, the voice needs to be confident and engaging regardless of gender.

If we head back to the first study for just a moment, nearly three in every ten said a male tone was more likely to encourage them to purchase a car; although this doesn’t sound very high, the same figure fell to below 7% for a female voice. Furthermore, 23% compared to 7% said that a male voice was more persuasive with technological devices.

If we take a step back from opinion and be objective, this makes sense because, on average, men are more likely to be interested in cars and gadgets than women.

Although some people will get a little defensive in this topic and suggest that gender really doesn’t matter, marketing - whether it’s a product or an explainer video - is and always has been about targeting the right audience.

Just because a few women are into cars, this doesn’t represent the larger audience which is why we don’t have too many women doing voice-overs for briefcases, while men struggle to get gigs talking about lipstick.

The bottom line

With all the science and current trends behind us, what are the other considerations you need to make when producing content?

Location

With any content, the idea is to speak to the widest possible audience as we’ve just seen. If you waste time trying to tend to the needs of everybody, you’re going to end up attracting nobody so look at the profile of your average customer and think of them when considering the voice-over.

With this, the first thing that should come to mind is your location. In the past, companies focused too much on using British actors in outside the UK. But consumers found it hard to relate to this just as we would struggle if an international company came here and tried the same technique.

If possible, contact a voice-over agency which can hire a local native actor who knows the area because they’ll know the slag, culture and the tone to which people respond.

After conversing with them and telling them exactly what you offer, they can buy into your brand and combine this with their own knowledge to hit the spot perfectly.

Long-term objectives

At this very moment, you might have a female-dominant customer base but what if you have aspirations to attract both genders? What if you have a new product range that will attract females after dealing with mostly males for many years? If this is the case, you might want to consider a combination of male and female voice-overs.

If you regularly produce video content (e.g. e-learning), why not play around a little and see what earns you the best results? Test what voices increase user retention and watch times.  If you have one piece of content you produce each year, can still release two version and test. That’s especially easy when you produce videos for social media.

As long as you create similar topics and a level playing field, you should be able to judge the success of all three after looking at engagement and many other statistics.

Our verdict

There we have it, the ultimate guide to choosing between a male and female voice-over artist for your content. You can find success in creating content that really resonates with your audience by testing different voices and really knowing your target market.