Poller & Jordan Advertising Agency, Miami, Florida

The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), — I think — is currently running radio commercials urging listeners to “just Google “flood smart radio.” I thought that was odd… literally sending listeners on a wild goose chase when you could just as easily point them to your website.

When you hit the search button, Google shows results. At the very top of the page is a Google ad taking you to http://FloodSmart.gov, the official NFIP site. The first two organic links are also to FloodSmart.gov but then it gets interesting…

Search result number 3 on the page is to FloodSmartRadio.com which is registered privately. This site redirects visitors to pages at southeastfloodinformation.com which is registered at a trailer park office in Chandler Arizona. I’m guessing an entrepreneur heard the NFIP commercial, realized FloodSmartRadio.com was available and has created a nice little niche selling leads to insurance companies.

Moral of the story? Don’t try to be too cute, don’t use expensive radio advertising telling people to search for something online… It’s much easier to simply point them to your website.