How to Get Radio Publicity

A radio interview can help get customers to know and remember your name. Here are several tips to help you get you get noticed and interviewed often by radio reporters and talk show hosts.

Being a guest on a radio news program or on a radio talk show can give your business free publicity that helps sell your products and gain name recognition for your company.

But how can you get a radio’s staff to schedule you as a talk show guest or interview you for a news story?

Here are several tips to help you get noticed – and interviewed often by radio reporters and talk show hosts.

• Do your homework. Before you send out a press release or call local radio stations with a story or public service announcement you’d like aired, listen to them. Familiarize yourself with the station’s audience and informational needs.

• Target your promotional contacts at those radio stations whose audiences are most likely to be interested in your message or news story.

• Keep your mailing lists and contacts up-to-date. Changes in station personnel occur fairly often. Letters addressed to individuals who left the station months (or years) ago often wind up in the trash.

• Make yourself known as a spokesperson for an issue or organization. Because of the immediacy of radio, newspeople have precious little time to hunt down information sources when a story breaks.

• Contact radio stations or individual broadcasters when you have nothing special to promote and let them know you (or your client) have expertise in a particular area and are available to provide a local angle whenever necessary.

• Ask stations about their preferred style and length for public service announcements. And ask who PSAs should be mailed to.

• Understand what news is. Realize your company’s new widget or service will not be discussed on the news unless it has true news value. If there might be a human interest angle in the product or service, find out who at the various radio stations should be contacted with feature material.

• Don’t waste money sending radio stations photographs with your press releases. They will only wind up in the garbage.

• Be a good guest. Know your material, and answer the host’s questions, keeping their audience in mind. Keep your answers on the short side, but provide enough real information so the audience comes away feeling they’ve learned something. 

• Thank the host for having you as a guest.