Giving Thanks

Our entire team at American Ratings Corporation wishes you and your loved ones a wonderful Thanksgiving season. For me, this is the time of year to give thanks to special people and reflect on outstanding deeds—an ideal precursor for personal and business planning.

Besides focusing on family members and friends, I’d like to take stock of what we’ve achieved with the Diamond Certified Resource this year. I’m thrilled to report that both consumer awareness of and preference for Diamond Certified companies was very strong in 2015. To accomplish this, we:

• Increased the circulation of the new Diamond Certified Directory Update print and digital series, which was mailed and emailed quarterly to requesters and higher-income homeowners. This resulted in a 44% increase in our Update print circulation, taking it from 140,000 per edition in 2014 to 202,000 per edition this year. This big jump in books helped us generate thousands of additional tracked calls to Diamond Certified companies.
• Invested heavily in digital initiatives, which resulted in a 24% year-over-year increase in usage of our website’s company report and category pages (both of these pages are where Diamond Certified companies are presented to quality-seeking consumers).
• For radio, we added KGO and KSFO to our big KNBR campaign, which greatly increased the reach and frequency of our Diamond Certified Report announcements.
• For TV, we added AT&T and Dish networks and expanded our Comcast, KTVU, and KICU campaigns, giving us a 30% increase to 10,521 TV spots this year!
• Expanded the number of Diamond Certified Expert Contributors to 308 by helping these company owners create 1,200+ expert articles, tip sheets and video tips, which further positions the Diamond Certified brand as an indicator of local companies that are top rated for quality and provide helpful expertise in their area. Also added expert tip summaries to our Diamond Certified Directories.

A Winning Plan for 2016
We asked ourselves, “Can we top 2015’s performance in 2016?” The answer is, “Definitely!” We’re in the final stages of planning for next year, and we’re developing powerful plans to build Diamond Certified companies with quality customers. I’ll announce our winning plan in my January letter. I’m confident that we’ll see an increase in both the power of the Diamond Certified Resource and the number of new, quality-seeking customers you generate because of your top rated Diamond Certified status (if you qualify).