You should start at least four weeks in advance of your add date (also known as “adds”, the date a station can add your music to their playlist) to run a decent campaign, and a few extra weeks may be in order if you’re new to the game. During the start of your radio promotion push, you’ll mail out promo CDs to all the program directors of the stations that you’re targeting. After that, you’ll spend about a week confirming your packages were received, soliciting initial feedback and re-sending any promos that didn’t make it to their intended recipient.
The next few weeks will be spent soliciting feedback about the single while trying to get commitments from stations. All the while, you’ll be updating the program director with news about the musicians relevant to that market—shows, sales and so on. At this stage, you may also place ads in radio trade publications announcing the single and that you’re going for adds—especially if you’re going for plays in larger markets. During the last week of the campaign, you’ll do a final push for adds and then wait for the results to come in.
