Laguna Hills-based Laer Pearce & Associates has expanded its services and staff in a bid to lure clients that need help weathering the housing downturn.
The public relations shop said it promoted two workers, hired one and launched a new practice area focused on branding and marketing businesses in the building industry.
“With the current housing marketing downturn many professional firms that serve the building industry are looking for ways to expand their client base,” President Laer Pearce said.
The shop said it has extensive contacts and specialized knowledge of the building industry that could help companies “during these trying times.”
The shop promoted Ben Boyce to vice president and Steven Greyshock to senior associate. Laer Pearce also hired Scott Cobett as associate.
It recently nabbed its first client in the building industry: GMU Geotechnical in Rancho Santa Margarita.
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Screen shot of real estate site at Register: revamped for easier navigation, improved searches |
The shop will create marketing materials and a Web site for GMU, which provides geotechnical engineering services.
It also handles crisis communications, public affairs for the building industry and public relations for businesses in the water industry.
Revamped Site
Orange County Register Communications Inc., which publishes the Orange County Register and other newspapers and Web sites, has expanded its real estate coverage and tweaked its advertising rates to lure more advertisers.
The Santa Ana-based company said that it renamed the Register’s Home Finder sections as “OC Homes” and revamped the online site, which now is called OCRegister.com/realestate.
Glenn Hall, the Register’s business editor, said the site “improves the depth, accessibility and interactivity of real estate information for anyone researching, selling, buying or improving homes” in OC.
The site is easier to navigate and has improved searches, which can be customized to find foreclosures, new homes, classified listings and more, the paper said.
The site also has two new coverage areas,apartments and foreclosures,since so many people have been searching these topics, Hall said.
Other improvements include forums, polls and self-publishing tools to post photos, videos or events.
Also new: a weekly e-mail newsletter, where readers can sign up to get the latest news on the real estate market.
The new print section and online site are “more useful to real estate agents, builders and home-related business interested in reaching real estate readers,” said Mike Hodges, director of real estate advertising at Orange County Register Communica-tions.
Real estate ads now are coded specifically for OCRegister.com/realestate pages, which lets advertisers deliver targeted messages, Hodges said.
“Given economic factors and current challenges in the real estate market, advertisers are faced with tighter budgets and have greater expectations based on what they can afford,” Hodges said. “We’ve restructured our real estate advertising programs in tandem with our content improvements to OC Homes and OCRegister.com/realestate to ensure these products will be useful and generate results for advertisers.”
OC Homes recently launched new pricing and “frequency incentives” to real estate agents, builders and other prospective advertisers “who want a presence in the print and online real estate products, but may have felt priced out in the past,” Hodges said.
“We’ve integrated search engine marketing, search engine optimization and pay-per-click services into our marketing programs, which helps our advertisers extend their reach across other effective online platforms as well,” he said.
On the Hunt
Fox Head Inc., formerly known as Fox Racing, has a new name and is looking for workers for its marketing department in Newport Beach.
The motorcycle equipment and accessories maker said it’s on the hunt for an online art director and flash Web designer.
The company, based south of San Jose in Morgan Hill, also is looking for an assistant designer for men’s jackets and a product developer for girl’s clothes.
