How to Get Lots of Free Gigs on Radio Shows

A veteran of over 100 radio interviews tells how you can promote yourself as a talk show guest.

(Shel Horowitz's Frugal Marketing Tip, November, 1998)

Every year, I do about 50 interviews with radio talkshow hosts all around the U.S. and Canada, and sometimes even abroad. (In fact, I just taped an interview with Voice of America, so I'll be making my European debut some time this month). These radio shows not only add to my credibility and reputation, but also sell a significant number of books.

For those of you who have a product that ships easily and who can talk articulately on the air without freezing up, radio may be a perfect medium—especially those of you selling information products (books, videos, seminars, etc.). But how do you get on the shows?

I have a friend who uses a saturation fax campaign. He claims it's so successful that he gets 1500 interviews a year. However, this particular friend has been caught exaggerating every now and then.

Personally, I find it much easier to let show producers come to me, rather than go after them. I may not get the numbers he gets, but then again, I have a life, too! Plus I think my cost is lower.

There are several ways to put yourself in front of talkshow hosts. Of the ones I've tried, I get the best results for the least cost from a website called GuestFinder.com. I pay an annual fee (I believe it's $200 without an association discount) and get a website that includes 10 questions interviewers can ask me, background on me and my book, and so forth. It also has a search engine so that producers can search by topic, by seasonal theme, and by guest. Feel free to visit the site, and tell me what you think of my page. Your mileage may vary, but I'm pulling about 30 interviews per year from this source. Mostly radio, but I did get one national TV show (I ended up on the cutting room floor, but that's another story). I've also written GuestFinder pages for a number of publishing industry clients.

Other tools include showideas.com, Radio TV Interview Report, and Broadcast Interview Source, among others. There are also a number of "expert" directories. Check with your reference librarian for contact info.

Thank you reading this back issue of Shel Horowitz's Monthly Frugal Marketing Tips, published every month since May, 1997; please click here to view the complete archives, grouped by subject. Shel is an internationally known copywriter and marketing consultant, author of Grassroots Marketing Getting Noticed in a Noisy World, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First and several other books, and creator of the Frugal Marketing web site. Please click here to contact Shel.


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