As COVID-19 began to impact businesses in 2020, the need for financial support increased significantly as over 30 million small businesses in the U.S. needed support to make it through the pandemic.

As a local community bank based out of Greenwood, South Carolina with locations in Greenville, Anderson, Greer, and Simpsonville, Countybank took an aggressive approach to helping their customers access Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funds to keep their businesses going in the face of this economic disruption.

Infinity provided support to Countybank in telling this important branding story by developing an integrated campaign that leveraged Countybank’s unique response to help businesses gain access to PPP loan funding.

The overall goal of the campaign was to create immediate awareness of Countybank’s efforts to help small businesses with the PPP by leveraging their unique response to affect long-term positive perception among commercial and retail banking prospects.

Upon reading a few of the passionate stories told by the customers, we believed these stories expressed powerful reasons why others might consider switching to Countybank and should be the core of the campaign.

The short-term established objective was to increase web traffic. Tactics from the campaign included:

• Paid social
• Native
• Over the top
• Retargeting
• Organic social media posts
• Public relations
• Website content additions

The campaign launched in June 2020 and concluded at the end of October.

• Overall website metrics saw a 56% increase in traffic, a 65% increase in users, and a 91% increase in sessions
• The primary web page “The True Meaning of a Community Banking” saw over 7,000 pageviews and nearly 3,000 unique users
• The campaign received over 175,000 impressions and more than 1,700 post engagements on social media, along with five press release pickups in local and industry publications
• The media generated almost 1.5 million impressions, achieving close to 6,000 clicks

Countybank Paycheck Protection Program Support from Countybank on Vimeo.