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Here at Paradiso Insurance, we believe in our local community here in the small town of Stafford Springs, CT. Not only that, but we also believe that, with the help of local independent insurance agencies everywhere, we can change the world, starting with one community at a time. We’ve had a great impact on Stafford Springs in the last year, and we are proud to say we are involved members of our community. If you didn’t get a chance to see our first article on Community Based Marketing back in last October, you can check that out here. But today, we are going to talk about how you can get involved with your local community, how it will benefit your insurance agency’s marketing, and what campaigns we’ve had our hands-on with in the past few months.

Bikes for Reading

One of our campaigns that we are running annually for our local community is called Bikes for Reading. If you’re following any of our social networks for Paradiso Insurance, then you may have already heard about this campaign. We are trying to create young scholars at our local elementary school, by giving them incentives to read more. The idea is that we ask our students to read 70 hours or more for the school year, which is signed off by their parents and teachers. Once they achieve 70 hours total for the year, they are entered into our raffle. We do three raffles for the last three months of the school year, and give away four bikes to each raffle. We give one bike to each grade between grades 2-5. At the end of the day, our local students are excited, and we are making a positive impact on our community. We are not only getting our students more excited about reading, but also giving them hope for Stafford Springs, so our bright young minds will be encouraged to stick around for the long haul and make a difference in our community as well when they grow older.

Our Bikes for Reading campaign really is something special. The students get incredibly excited, and when I say that it is a moving experience, I can only really get that point across by showing you first hand…

When we produced the blog, video, visuals and other digital content about Bikes for Reading, our social media following truly did love it. Not only did this content speak to our brand, but it gave us incredible visibility online. The true point of theses campaigns is to make a difference in your local community, but if you can build a large audience with it online as well, then you should take the opportunity to capitalize. And of course, it was well worth it at the end of the day when thank you letters came into the insurance agency from the students and their parents with words that truly moved myself and my staff.

The Stafford Springs Easter Egg Hunt 2017

Our other most recent community event was getting involved with the Stafford Springs Easter Egg Hunt this year. Our town would normally have an annual egg hunt at this time of year, but due to the town’s regulations, it was labeled a religious event, and therefore could not take place this year. Now, this is understandable in large cities and what-not, but we live in a small, rural mill town, so this was quite unexpected for a lot of our local residents here in Stafford. Our insurance agency jumped in to sponsor and help organize the event shortly thereafter, and within no time, we had many, many other sponsors jumping on board to help us out. Not only that, but we managed to create a panel of event organizers, and the event ended up having an amazing turnout with over 500 attendees.

Of course, the effect on social media and online on all of our networks was similar in response to the Bikes for Reading campaign – we had many people thanking us for our involvement in the community and appreciate that we were so willing to help.

Here’s a quick video recap of how the Egg Hunt went:

Getting Involved

Alright folks, it’s clear that community based marketing is incredibly powerful for your insurance agency to get more visibility online. Of course, at the end of the day, we have a voice as independent agents, and we can use that voice to make our local communities better places to live. We can certainly change the world for the better, and it starts with one local community at a time. If you’re looking to implement something similar to our Bikes for Reading campaign in your hometown, I would highly encourage you to check out our plan online for organizing the event. Additionally, you can always look for other charities, donation drives, or things of that nature to get involved with as well. And if you’re town presents the opportunity to help out, like ours did with the Easter Egg Hunt, don’t be shy on getting on board!

How has your insurance agency got involved with your local community? Let us know by leaving us a comment below.