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Welcome to part two of ‘How To Get Free Radio Advertising’. In part one we investigate how to get in touch with the radio station manager and how to broach the subject of procuring free on-air radio advertising. If you have not yet read it, please look for ‘How To Get Free Radio Advertising – part 1′ on this site.

Doing it this way makes saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’ very easy for the manager, because his only decisions are whether he trusts you and whether he can schedule you in or not. If the manager agrees to give your proposal his deliberation, put all your material in a package with a covering letter repeating what you said on the phone, a photo of or a gratis copy of your product and your advertising copy.

Send it off or deliver it immediately. Include a stamped, self addressed envelope, if you want a written reply or your material returned.

If your proposal is rejected, send him a ‘thank you, maybe next time’ note and move on to the next name. If you are rejected frequently, maybe you ought to sweeten your offer a bit by increasing their percentage of the cut or raising the price of the product. You will have to do some research there too, if you do not get it right first time.

Doing business such as this is traditionally done using the phone and the postal service, because radio managers are more often than not hard-pressed for time. However, it would be feasible to do all this over the Internet, except sending samples, of course, if the manager is comfortable using the Internet.

It always surprises me how many people there are out there in business who do not use the Internet very frequently because they do not understand much about it.

You could propose using the Internet for sending your material over but do not be pushy about it, because the manager might be a little embarrassed to admit that he cannot use the Internet. It could also be faxed over, but faxes often come out looking shabby and that might damage your chances. If in doubt, just post it.

If you get a green light to your application, be ready to act quickly, so always have your stuff bundled up and ready to go. Never give them time to forget who you are or ‘go off the boil’.

You will need to have written your advertisements first, but how long should they be? This is a tricky one, so ask the manager in your initial conversation, whether they have an advertising policy or predilection for the length of slots.

It could be thirty seconds a slot or sixty seconds (a double slot). As soon as you know, you can write your ads: two different adverts for each length of slot.

If you want to be completely pre-prepared, you could write two fifteen second, two thirty second and two sixty second ads before you even ring anyone. And do not forget to read them back aloud several times to check them for length. Try procuring a couple of friends to read them back to you too.

The radio station will require you to sign a contract and you should have a simple contract drawn up too showing your payment policy, returns policy, dispatch policy, et cetera, et cetera.

In summary, your P.I. Advertising Package should contain the following: 1. a cover letter 2. a sample or product literature 3. two thirty second and two sixty second adverts 4. your P.I. advertising contract 5. a stamped, self-addressed envelope.

In conclusion, I want to offer a couple of bits of advice. Whilst you are writing your commercials, try to incorporate a catchphrase of some sort so that you can use it in your off-air advertising to remind people that your product has been advertised on-air. Spend a lot of time composing your advert: radio station managers are busy, professional people and they cannot afford to waste valuable air time on non-earners.

If your item sells and makes money for them, you will be welcome back, otherwise you will be ostracized. Put a few ads in the paper and fliers through the doors to pre-warm people to your up-and-coming radio advertising campaign.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on a variety of topics, but is now concerned with Bose radio alarm clocks. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Bose Digital Radio.

Most business owners recognize that advertising is essential to their business. However, despite knowing this, most business owners detest advertising because it is dreadfully expensive. The problem is that if you do not advertise, only your friends and neighbours will ever get to know of you.

For example, in our average sized town of 65,000 inhabitants, there are thirty-eight pages of builders in the Yellow Pages; each page has two columns and each column has forty to fifty names on it.

These small businesses dream of TV and radio advertising like the big companies, but it is just too costly or at least they think that it is. Colossal companies such as Coca Cola and MacDonald’s expend hundreds of millions of dollars on radio and TV advertising, but small business have other, smaller opportunities to advertise locally.

One of these cheaper, sometimes even free, means of advertising on the radio is ‘per inquiry’ or PI Advertising. This is a form of radio advertising that is very advantageous to the advertiser, because advertisers only pay for every inquiry about their advertisement. It is a little like Google’s ‘pay per click’ or ‘PPC’ advertising on web sites.

First of all, you will require a list of all the radio stations in the locale that you are interested in. You can get hold of a list of licensed radio stations at your local library or they can get one in for you.

Then copy out the names of all the stations in your target region. It is usually best to begin with your own region and fan out from there, but if you have a precise target audience, you will have to some investigation first.

Next you should look through your list of radio stations and mark the ones that are of interest. For example, if you are selling skateboards, it is probably not worth advertising on a Classical FM music station.

The next step is to contact the manager of the station or maybe the Advertising Director. Explain your plan to that person in detail. it could go something along the lines of:

“I have a product that research has indicated will sell well in your catchment area if it is advertised on your radio. However, I want to do a test run before committing to any long term advertising plan”.

“I will do all the writing of the commercial and I will do all the book-keeping. I will send the product out and I will handle any complaints and returns quickly and efficiently”.

“You will derive xx% of every sale we make. You take the phone numbers of the inquiries, pass them on to me and I will regard every name you give me as a sale for you. The product I want to sell is a xxxxxxxx, which retails at $xx plus $1 postage and packing”.

This concludes ‘How To Get Free Radio Advertising – part 1′, in the second part, we will be looking at how to secure your free, on-air, radio advertising campaign. Please look for part two on this web site.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on a variety of topics, but is currently concerned with Bose Radioss. If you would like to kcurrently more, please go to our website at Bose Digital Radio.