Radio Annoucements Help You Reach Your Audience

Sometimes publicizing an event is an afterthought to planning the event itself. But I’ve found that publicity is equally important, especially if you don’t want to have dreams the week before where no one shows up and there are empty seats and only a handful of staff to soak up the words of your guest speaker.

Public Service Announcements (PSA) can help with getting people to your event. A PSA is no substitute for an individual phone call inviting your circle of supporters to an event, but it can help to cultivate new people and remind people to come to your celebration.

Often Bay Area businesses partner with a not-for-profit to do an event. If you are a small business owner, how many times have you donated something for a silent auction or provided food or services ... and not received visibility for doing it? Write a PSA and see if it will get picked up by a radio station…you’ll be doing yourself and the nonprofit a favor.
Getting a PSA aired can be hit or miss. Here are a few things to keep in mind so that your PSA won’t get overlooked:

1. Know who the public affairs director is at a station and address the PSA to them
2. Write 15 second and 30 second versions of your PSA and practice it out loud to make sure it falls in that time range
3. Once you send the PSA, usually 4-6 weeks before the event, follow up with the public affairs director on the phone

Last week Women's Initiative had a PSA aired on La Raza for our Fruitvale Grand Opening today. La Raza was a natural pick to pitch a PSA to because we have already done some paid advertising with them and they are going to come out to the grand opening and help us celebrate with the La Raza van.
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