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 in the Diamond Certified Program this year. I’m thrilled that, despite a sluggish economy, both consumer awareness of and preference for Diamond Certified companies increased in 2012. To accomplish this, we:

• Employed a team of writers to add more than 30,000 “How To” expert articles to our website’s industry category pages, resulting in a 48% increase in traffic
• Conducted extensive consumer mailings to increase the number of people who joined our Diamond Certified Preferred Consumer program and requested our directories by 132%
• Ran more TV and radio spots to bigger audiences, which resulted in an estimated consumer impression increase of 10+ million (thanks Giants!)
• Implemented a year-long engagement campaign on Facebook, which added more than 5,800 “Likes” to our page (an increase of 1,100+ percent!)

I’m grateful for the commitment and talent each individual brought to our organization, and I’m very proud to work alongside each team member.

The Diamond Certified Program: A Winning Plan for 2013
We’re in the final stages of planning for next year, developing powerful plans to propel Diamond Certified companies in 2013. I’ll announce our winning plan in my January letter. I’m confident that in this coming year, we’ll see an increase in both the power of the Diamond Certified Program and the number of quality-seeking new customers Diamond Certified companies attract because of their top-rated status.

OK…as a reward for reading to the end of my blog, I’ll give you a quick preview of two of our special January announcements. The first is an initiative for 2013 to expand our popular Diamond Certified Directory by adding a special Update. If you qualify for Diamond Certified, you’ll get extra coverage with quality-seeking homeowners throughout the year. The second is a program to provide consumers with no-pressure expert help on local services while building each Diamond Certified company’s reputation for expertise and giving them access to buyers before their competitors. (As always, our philosophy is to add significant value to the Diamond Certified Program without tacking on any additional charges.)