Our plan is to make 2014 a year of growth for Diamond Certified companies. To accomplish this, we’re growing our investment in key areas of the Diamond Certified Program. We’ll increase our directory circulation, redesign our custom brochures to feature color photos, officially launch Diamond Certified Experts (which helps build each company’s brand and sales by contributing their expertise to their community), and expand our general media and digital marketing to build even more influence for the Diamond Certified symbol. This expansion is a major undertaking, but like all our upgrades, Diamond Certified companies won’t be charged any additional fees.

“Strength to Strength” Just Got 40% Stronger
I’m pleased to announce that we will increase the print circulation of our Diamond Certified Directory Update series by 40%, taking it up from 100,000 to 140,000 per quarter starting with the Summer 2014 edition. If you qualify for Diamond Certified, your company will be presented in each of your area’s print and digital update editions, with 85% reaching consumers and 15% reaching local business managers. The idea of launching the Update edition last summer was to add what I call “strength to strength.” We’re sending more of our strongest feature (our directories) to our strongest users (our consumer members), plus above average income homeowners and local businesses. Since we published the first Update last summer, we’ve tracked its effect by looking at call tracking number performance of Diamond Certified companies. As you can see from the chart below, we’ve experienced an average 19% jump in calls in quarters when we delivered our new Updates compared to previous years.

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New Brochures Help Grow Sales and Generate Customer Referrals
If you qualify for Diamond Certified, your potential customers are more likely to choose your company when they’re handed powerful visual and tactile proof that your team has been independently rated Highest in Quality. Your custom Diamond Certified brochures will help turn shoppers into buyers and build customer confidence, which will directly influence your referral rates. Our new brochure design features a number of improvements, including:

  1. An additional panel devoted to custom information about your company.
  2. Color photos and logo to give you higher visual impact.
  3. A larger quantity of survey responses presented in a more compelling format to appeal to personalities who want to hear the customer voices behind the rating.
  4. Your company’s Capabilities Table, which appeals to analytical personalities.
  5. A new panel that compares the Diamond Certified rating methodology to that of review sites, which helps your prospects value the difference between our statically reliable research and some websites that are salted with fake and cherry-picked reviews.

It’s What They Want: Add “Expert” to Your Company’s Attributes
Your prospective customers want more than just a top rated company. Put yourself in their shoes. In broad terms, they want to buy from a company that:

  1. Is proven to deliver on its promises and satisfy customers. {Diamond Certified Rating}
  2. Uses its field expertise to answer questions and give custom advice for its particular job attributes. {Diamond Certified Expert Contributor}
  3. Is guaranteed to perform to contract and industry standards {Diamond Certified Performance Guarantee}
  4. Is friendly and provides responsive service so calls and emails are returned in a reasonable timeframe. {Your team demonstrates this in your presale interactions}

Our vision is that by 2017, in addition to being seen as top rated for quality, Diamond Certified companies will be widely known by consumers as the most helpful local experts in their fields. In pursuit of this, we completed a successful soft launch of Diamond Certified Experts in the second half of 2013, helping 63 owners and managers of Diamond Certified companies contribute their expertise by creating Expert Reports, which include subject-based bylined articles, videos and tip sheets. These web-based and reprinted Expert Reports are used by each company to elevate their “expertise and give back to the community” positioning of their brand.

Symbol Surge on Bigger Digital and Broadcast Marketing Campaigns
In 2013, we generated a record 450 million media impressions of the Diamond Certified message, with strong reach and frequency of our message in broadcast and cable. These “aerial” campaigns combined nicely with our large newspaper ads and extensive digital marketing in search, mobile, and web via Google AdWords, Yahoo!, video pre-roll, and remarketing banners. If you qualify for Diamond Certified, we’ll surge the power of the Diamond Certified symbol to differentiate you from local competitors by investing record amounts in these and other marketing programs and media partnerships.