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Welcome to part two of ‘How To Get Free Radio Advertising’. In part one we looked at how to get in touch with the radio station manager and how to broach the subject of getting 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 suggestion his consideration, put all your material in a package with a covering letter reiterating 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, perhaps next time’ note and move on to the next name. If you are rejected frequently, perhaps you ought to sweeten your offer a little by raising their percentage of the cut or increasing 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 usually hard-pressed for time. However, it would be feasible to do all this over the Internet, except sending samples, naturally, if the manager is comfortable using the Internet.

It always amazes 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 stuff over but do not be pushy about it, because the manager might be too embarrassed to declare that he cannot use the Internet. It could also be faxed over, but faxes frequently 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 difficult one, so ask the manager in your initial discussion, 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 totally 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 out loud several times to check them for length. Try getting a few friends to read them back to you as well.

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 summation, 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 suggest a couple of tips. Whilst you are composing your commercials, try to include a catchphrase of some kind 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 thought composing your advert: radio station managers are busy, professional people and they cannot afford to waste valuable air time on failures.

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 author of this article, writes on a variety of subjects, but is now involved with Bose radio alarm clocks. If you would like to know more, please go to our web site at Bose Digital Radio.

Most business owners recognize that advertising is essential to their business. However, in spite of knowing this, most business owners dislike advertising because it is dreadfully expensive. The trouble is that if you do not advertise, only your friends and neighbours will ever get to hear of you.

For instance, 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 the same as 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, methods of advertising on the radio is ‘per inquiry’ or PI Advertising. This is a type of radio advertising that is very advantageous to the advertiser, because advertisers only pay for every inquiry about their advertisement. It is a bit the same as 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 perhaps not worth advertising on a Classical FM music station.

The next step is to get in touch with 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 shown will sell well in your broadcast district if it is advertised on your radio. However, I want to do a test run before committing to any long term advertising strategy”.

“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 issues and returns quickly and efficiently”.

“You will receive xx% of every sale we make. You take the phone numbers of the inquiries, pass them on to me and I will treat every name you give me as a sale for you. The item 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 article, writes on a variety of topics, but is now concerned with Bose Radioss. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Bose Digital Radio.