Engineering of plasmon resonances is important for a variety of applications, including but not limited to surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) and near field scanning optical microscopy (NSOM). Of special interest are systems where the plasmon is coupled between a nanoparticle and a thin gold film. This coupling allows for a greater degree of control of the plasmon resonance of the system, as well as a strong, localized, enhancement of the incident electric field. We demonstrate that this coupling, and the resulting enhancement, can be used for SERS applications, and explore its impact on potential NSOM applications.