Chocolate Bars in the Mail? One Company’s Unique SEO Strategy
There’s an interesting post by Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Land today about a company currently in the midst of an innovative campaign that uses a unique SEO strategy. Plastering their name all over social media? Not really. Trading links with some black hat SEO firm huddled up in Siberia? Not that we know of! Instead, they’re falling back on an ancient but ever-reliable marketing method – the mail – and delivering a product that’s certain to grab anyone’s attention. Will you be the lucky recipient of one of Polaris’ personalized chocolate bars?
A Package You Can’t Help but Open
Barry received his chocolate bar yesterday from the U.K., so obviously Polaris is being pretty aggressive about this if they’re doing international mail just for chocolate bars. The bar featured a custom-tailored wrapper with the text, “Hey Barry, We wanted to send you a treat to introduce ourselves! To find out who we are type ‘Who Sent Me Chocolates’ into Google.” Unable to resist, Barry typed the words into Google as requested and clicked on the top link in the SERP (it should be noted that as of now, Barry’s article has taken over the #1 spot on Google for “who sent me chocolates,” though Polaris had the top spot up until today). Once Barry arrived at Polaris’ site, he was asked to enter a six-digit code, which then brought him to a landing page (personalized, once again) with a message. The message waxes a little philosophical, with questions like “Do search engines have too much control over the intellectual property of companies?” and “Is our copyright at the mercy of Google?” While these points can be debated, I’d say this is “mission accomplished” for Polaris. Regardless of the success of their overall campaign, the fact is that sending one bar of chocolate through the mail – to a highly targeted recipient, mind you – got their site mentioned on one of the biggest and most popular SEO sites in the world. What do you think? Will your company or site ever experiment with “unusual” marketing practices such as these? Is there some aspect of your niche that could serve as inspiration for an attention-grabbing, but still relatively inexpensive marketing tool?
