Case Study · Local Brand Awareness
The Yeti Hunt made Storage Kings the talk of Fargo.
A 10-day, real-life treasure hunt turned a brand-new storage facility into a citywide event — reaching nearly the entire Fargo/Moorhead population and delivering an estimated $25K–$60K of media value for under $7K in spend.
The client
A brand-new facility nobody knew yet.
Storage Kings opened a new self-storage facility in Fargo, North Dakota. The building was ready — but the market wasn't aware of it. On top of that, the Google Business Profile had a map-visibility issue holding back local rankings. They needed the whole city to know they existed, fast.
- Get people calling to lease units
- Improve Google rankings and fix the map-visibility issue
- Drive brand searches for “Storage Kings Fargo”
- Make the entire city aware of the new facility
The idea
A citywide treasure hunt — not an ad campaign.
Instead of running standard awareness ads, we created The Yeti Hunt: a real-life treasure hunt across Fargo. Each day for 10 days we dropped a new clue leading to a hidden location and a chance at a prize. Paid ads put the content in front of the city; the mystery, daily clues, and community participation made it spread on its own.
The clever part
Clues engineered to boost Google rankings.
The hunt was designed to do more than win likes — it funneled hundreds of people through the exact actions Google rewards. Each clue pushed players to:
- Go to Google and search “Storage Kings Fargo”
- Tap the Business Profile to view the listing
- Hit “Directions” to navigate to the facility
Brand searches, profile taps, and direction requests are exactly the real-world-interest signals Google uses to rank local businesses — so the hunt directly improved Map Pack visibility while it entertained the city.
Searches for “Storage Kings Fargo” jumped from September into November — a direct lift aligned with the Yeti Hunt launch, strengthening Local SEO, Map Pack ranking, and direction/phone-call actions.
Why it took off
Paid reach lit the match. The city did the rest.
Facebook rewards conversation, not ad spend. The Yeti Hunt's comments, shares, and daily return visits told the algorithm this was a trending local story — so it pushed the content far beyond the follower base.
For context, most local business pages average 50–300 interactions a month and 5,000–30,000 views. The Yeti Hunt delivered engagement 30–100x above normal — the kind of traction usually reserved for pages with 10,000–50,000 followers.
The economics
$25K–$60K of exposure for under $7K.
Reaching 300K local impressions through traditional radio and TV would have cost a small fortune. The Yeti Hunt delivered the same reach — plus real engagement and leads — at a fraction of the price.
- Local radio$10–25K
- Local TV$15–35K
- EngagementNone
- Paid ads$6,560
- Boosted posts$281
- Value multiplier6–9x
Prize budget of $3,500 was tracked separately from marketing spend.
"The Yeti Hunt put us on the map — literally. In ten days the whole city knew our name, our phone was ringing, and we finally started showing up in Google searches for storage in Fargo."
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