When finding radio advertising: Your first step is the initial contact after searching through the SRDS or Broadcasting Yearbook. Actual contact with the stations is by phone or mail. When turned down, simply say thanks, and go on to the next station on your list. For those who want to know more about your proposal, you immediately get a PI Advertising Package off to them via the fastest way possible. Don't let the interest wane.

Your Advertising Package should contain the following:

1. Cover letter

2. Sample brochure, product literature

3. Thirty-second and sixty-second commercials

4. PI Advertising Contract

5. Self-addressed, stamped postcard for station acknowledgment and acceptance of your program.

Before you ask why you need an acknowledgment postcard when you have already given them a contract, remember that everything about business changes from day to day - conditions change, people get busy, and other things come up. The station manager may sign a contract with your advertising to begin the 1st of March. The contract is signed on the 1st of January, but when March 1 rolls around, he may have forgotten, been replaced, or even decided against running your program. A lot of paper seemingly "covering all the minute details" can be very impressive to many radio station managers, and convince them that your company is a good one to do business with.

Let's say that right now you're impatient to get started with your own PI Advertising campaign. Before you "jump off the deep end," remember this: Radio station people are just as professional and dedicated as anyone else in business - even more so in some instances - so be sure you have a product or service that lends itself well to selling via the radio inquiry system.

Anything can be sold, and sold easily with any method you decide upon, providing you present it from the right angle. "Hello out there! Who wants to buy a mailing list for 10 cents a thousand names?" would not even be allowed on the air. However, if you have the addresses of the top 100 movie stars, and you put together an idea enabling the people to write to them direct, you might have a winner, and sell a lot of mailing lists of the stars.

At the bottom line, a lot is riding on the content of your commercial - the benefits you suggest to the listener, and how easy it is for him to enjoy those benefits. For in stance, if you have a new book on how to find jobs when there aren't any jobs: You want to talk to people who are desperately searching for employment. You have to appeal to them in words that not only "perk up" their ears, but cause them to feel that whatever it is that you're offering will solve their problems. It's the product, and in the writing of the advertising message about that product is going to bring in those responses.

Radio station managers are sales people, and sales people the world over will be sold on your idea if you put your selling package together properly. And if the responses come in to your first offer, you have set yourself up for an entire series of successes. Success has a "ripple effect," but you have to start on that first one. We wish you success!