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Getting ready to play golf again.

by with No Comment GolfInternet Advertising

Masters week is upon us, and for those of you who play golf, this is a very special time of the year.  It’s also springtime, which means the golf season is just getting underway in many parts of the country.  It’s been a long winter for a lot of people, and I thought I might share a few tips that I use to get my game ready to go.

I played my college golf in Chicago, and professionally for 6 years thereafter.  And we currently live in the Denver area, so I know a thing or two about shaking off the winter rust.  Here are some pointers…

First, I like to focus the majority of my early-season practice on short game (wedge shots, chips, bunker shots, etc) and putting (particularly on those nerve-wracking short putts).  I have always felt that the best way to get your game back on solid footing is to spend the majority of your time getting the ball into the hole in as few shots as possible.  That isn’t likely to happen on the driving range, but rather the short shots and the putts.  That’s what will really lower your scores this year.

Work and young children take up most of my life, but when I do have the ability to practice I like to spend 75% of my time on and around the green.  I like to really focus on getting the ball into the hole, which means I typically putt and chip with only a few golf balls at a time, rather than hitting 50 straight chip shots at the same target.  Try that, especially early in the year, and it will really help to get your game back on track.

When I do my driving range work, I like to focus on target and tempo.  I always make sure I’m hitting to a specific target (you’d be surprised how many golfers simply aim at the middle of the range and swing away) and I always make sure I lay a club or alignment stick down at my feet for proper aim.  And I work on hitting shots at 3/4 speed, so that my swing is in-sync and balanced.  That is especially important after a long winter away from the game.

Lastly, I try and commit myself to being patient, and trusting that my game will come around with some effort and practice.  That first month back at the course is pretty damaging to anyone’s ego and confidence, so you’ll want to commit to accepting your bad shots, and resolve to work on your deficiencies as the season progresses.  This is the most difficult aspect of improvement, as we all tend to be our toughest critics.  But you will never reach your potential in this game if you aren’t being your best friend.  Golf is a tough sport, and you need to continually pump yourself up, not tear yourself down.

Try these tips and see if they help your golf game.  They have certainly helped mine, especially now that I sit behind a desk for a living.

SEO company Philadelphia

Want more leads? Try pay per call…

by with No Comment Internet Advertising

One of the things I frequently hear from current and potential clients is, “I need more leads”.  Typically, that means more inbound phone calls and website submissions.  New clients are the life-blood of any small business.

DanMatt Media is an internet advertising agency, and the fastest growing sector in our company is on the digital side (think SEO and SEM, both of which are great options for any organization).  But that doesn’t mean that the print channel is dead, and indeed the performance-based side of that solution (pay per call) is an outstanding choice for service-based businesses.

With a pay per call campaign, you are only paying for the phone calls (leads) that come in from your ads in the yellow page directories.  All pay per call campaigns have a “buffer” of 30-60 seconds, which gives your sales team the ability to qualify a lead before you get charged for it.  That means you can take a little time to find out if the caller is in the areas that you service, and looking for the services that you offer, before you pay for the lead.  If they’re not a fit, then you can get them off the phone before you get charged.  It’s as close to risk-free advertising as you’re likely to get these days.

So what types of businesses benefit from pay per call?  It’s a good fit for most service-based companies (plumbers, electricians, dentists, lawyers, etc) but we also run very successful campaigns with national flower retailers, debt consolidation companies, and other types of businesses that you wouldn’t necessarily assume are a fit for pay per call.

The easiest way to know if this is a good option for your business is to give us a call (877-924-1543) or send us a website submission (https://danmattmedia.com).  We’ll be happy to take a few minutes to let you know if we can help you to “get more leads”.

 

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How do you set up a saltwater aquarium?

by with No Comment Internet Advertising

Every now and again I try to sneak in a non work-related blog post for our website and social media pages.  Since my family and I just moved into a new house, I thought I would discuss the proper ways to set up a saltwater aquarium.  I just did this last week with both my reef tank (which I was able to break down and set up again in a single day) and my large fish-only system (which I detail below).

I took apart and drained my large saltwater fish-only system about a week before we moved.  The tank is close to 200 gallons, and I was fortunate to be able to take the fish to a local fish store for safe keeping during the move and subsequent set up process.  Upon moving into our new home, I went to work getting it set up again.

Once you have the tank and stand in place, the first step is to aquascape the aquarium with your sand, live rock, and dead coral.  You want to ensure the fish have enough hiding places (caves, overhangs, etc) to feel secure, but also enough open swimming space to eat, swim, and be seen by you (why have a fish tank if you can’t watch the fish?).  You also need to make sure the rock and dead coral are securely mounted, so that you don’t have rock slides.  At this point I like to position all the equipment (filters, skimmers, heaters, powerheads and pumps, etc) that will be used to run the system.

Once the tank is aquascaped and the equipment is in place you can fill it with freshwater, ideally from a garden hose.  That’s a lot faster than using buckets or pitchers.  When the tank is filled you can add enough salt mix to bring the salinity to your desired level (I recommend a specific gravity of 1.020 – 1.023 for fish only, and 1.024 – 1.025 for an aquarium housing corals and invertebrates) and turn on your equipment.  You’ll want to make sure you have your salinity and temperature where you want them prior to adding any fish (a good temperature range for most saltwater fish tanks is 77-80 degrees).

At this point you will have a tank full of sand, rock, and water but not fish.  Your temperature and salinity will be at ideal levels, but you’re probably not ready to add fish just yet.  How long your tank remains empty will depend upon what stage your water is in with respect to the nitrogen cycle.  Without boring you with too much science, you will typically see a spike in ammonia (which is lethal to fish and corals) within a few days of setting up the tank.  That toxic ammonia will be converted to somewhat less toxic nitrite, and eventually to relatively harmless nitrate.  The process can take anywhere from 7 to 50 days, and can be sped up with the use of bacterial additives or by seeding the new aquarium with a little sand or live rock from a healthy existing system.

The only way to know where your levels are is to test your water frequently with a good test kit.  Once you see zero ammonia and nitrite, and the resulting spike in nitrate, you’ll be ready to do a large water change (to reduce the nitrate) and begin stocking your aquarium with fish.  Best to stock slowly and start with a few hardy fish (such as damsels or cardinals).  When they are settled and doing well, you can slowly add more fish and eventually invertebrates like corals and shrimp.

It’s difficult to wait to stock your new aquarium, but patience and attentiveness really are the keys to success.  If you have any saltwater fish tank questions, please let me know.  I’m offering free aquarium advice with any new SEM or SEO campaign!

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It’s November. Here’s what I’m thankful for…

by with No Comment Internet Advertising

November is a great month.  The NFL is in full swing.  The leaves are changing and the air is getting crisp.  The weather is still warm enough to play golf, and the golf courses are still green.  And one of my favorite holidays, Thanksgiving, is right around the corner.  So it’s in that spirit that I thought I’d list some of the things I’m thankful for…

First, I’m thankful for a good job.  It sounds trite, but work provides more than just an income.  It provides structure, adult interaction, and most importantly, a sense of accomplishment.  Having to overcome obstacles and earn a paycheck feels good, even if work can get rough sometimes.

Second, I’m thankful for our clients.  Without our clients, item # 1 doesn’t exist.  Our clients have allowed us to partner with them to grow their businesses, and I am grateful for that opportunity.  And for their on-time payments…

Third, I’m thankful for our employees.  They say good workers are hard to find, and that’s true.  But we found ’em.  DanMatt Media is a small, family-owned business, but we’re blessed to have some of the best people in the industry working for us.  These guys (and girls) are the engine that drives the machine.

And last, but most importantly…

My family.  My wife has put up with me for the last 16 and a half years, and still finds a way to give me a kiss goodbye every morning before work.  She’s the glue that holds our family together.  My kids drive me nuts sometimes, but they’re the cutest, most wonderful children in the world.  My family is the reason I work so hard, and one day I hope my children will join their old man in the family business, as I did with my dad.

That’s an abbreviated but sincere list.  This Thanksgiving, my hope is that whomever reads this post has a few great things in their life to be thankful for as well.

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This place is going to the dogs…

by with No Comment DogsInternet Advertising

Who doesn’t love a great mascot?  All the major professional sports teams have mascots, and businesses should too.  I’m nominating my dog Chloe (pictured above as a puppy) as the official DanMatt Media mascot.

Chloe is a Bichon Frise, and she just celebrated her 10th birthday last month.  Unfortunately she has been handicapped for the last 7 years, the result of major spinal surgery to repair a disc that was impinging on her spinal cord when she was only 3 years old.  Chloe never fully regained the ability to walk, though she does manage to get around.  She is most definitely “front-wheel drive”, and tends to drag her hind legs a bit as she walks.  We have to manually express her bladder three times a day, but she’s a very sweet, very loving part of the family.  We wouldn’t change much about her, save for perhaps her atrocious doggie breath.

But we have other contenders for the title of official DanMatt Media mascot.  We have Bailey and Maggie, two beautiful dogs who were rescued from the pound by my father, the president of DanMatt Media.  Bailey is pretty much the ideal dog.  Smart, loyal, and well behaved.  Maggie is a continual work-in-progress, but she’s very cute and has a wonderful disposition.

Eugene, who runs our SEO and SEM teams, has Shiloh (a Puggle), and Mochi, (a Shepherd mix).  Shiloh is full of energy, and a bit stubborn.  Mochi is your typical puppy.  She loves attention, loves to lick, and loves to antagonize her older doggie sibling.

Justin, who runs our online marketing teams, has Bear, (a Pit Bull, Rottweiler, and Labrador mix), and Lucy, (a Rottweiler and hound mix).  Bear is 90 pounds of love, happiness, and energy.  Lucy is very playful and protective.

Perhaps the saying “this place is going to the dogs” isn’t such a bad thing after all…

washington dc search engine optimization

The value of a face-to-face meeting

by with No Comment Internet AdvertisingMarket ResearchOnline MarketingPrint AdvertisingSocial Media Marketing

We’ve all heard the saying… “Customer service is dead”.  One round trip flight on a US carrier will assuredly confirm that for most of us.  But here at DanMatt Media customer service is alive and well.

We’re fortunate to live at a time when technology makes our lives and businesses easier and more convenient.  Contracts can be negotiated and signed over email.  Meetings can be held on conference calls and web cams.  We can all have longterm, lucrative partnerships with clients and vendors without ever having met them face-to-face.  But is that really the way it should be?

There’s no doubt that most of my client and publisher relationships were born through email, and nurtured over the phone.  We have clients all over the United States, and a few overseas as well (including England, India, Australia, and Romania).  Seeing them in person is a tall order (though I have made it to England and Australia so far).  But whenever possible, I like to meet my clients face-to-face.

I want them to see the passion I have for their marketing efforts.  I want to look them in the eye and promise them that I will do everything I can to help them achieve their goals.  I want to visit their offices so that I can get a personal feel for what they do and how they do it.  You can’t do those things over email or phone calls, so whenever possible I make sure to visit them and meet with them face-to-face.

If you’re not getting that level of customer service from your marketing partners, you should be.  After all, it’s your money, and it’s your campaign.  Modern technology and convenience are great, and we all take advantage of it every single day.  But nothing beats the value of a face-to-face meeting.

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Do you trust your marketing partners?

by with No Comment Internet Advertising

About 3 weeks ago I was on the phone with a prospective SEM and SEO client.  They’re currently working with another agency for both their SEO and their pay-per-click marketing, and they were very frustrated by what they were receiving in return.  I asked the usual questions: “what is your monthly investment”, “how long have you been doing this”, “what kind of results are you seeing”, etc?  What I was told shocked me.

This prospective client has been working with an agency partner for the last 12 months, and in that time they have paid them tens of thousands of dollars to market their services.  Aside from the obvious problem relating to the lack of results, this company told me that they had never seen a single monthly report, and had never even been told which keyword phrases were being used on their behalf.  In short, they were paying thousands of dollars each month and were completely blind as to how their investment was being allocated.

I wish I could say that experiences like these are isolated, but the truth is that we hear this all the time.  There are a lot of shady companies advertising their services on the internet, and if your marketing partners are not sharing reporting data with you, then they’re clearly hiding something.  At the very least your company should be receiving reports each month telling you what keyword phrases are being used, and where they are ranking on Google.  Anything short of that, and you’re being taken advantage of.

It can be difficult to ascertain which companies are white-hat and which are not, but a clue can often be found in how long a company has been in business.  If the company hasn’t been around long, it doesn’t mean that they’re shady, but you don’t have the benefit of longevity to rely upon.  DanMatt Media has been around for a full 21 years, and you don’t stay in business 21 years and counting if you’re not taking care of your customers.  If you’re looking for great online marketing services, and a company you can trust, give us a call or send us a website inquiry.  We’re here to help!

 

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Is Olympia Fields Country Club overrated? Not in my book.

by with No Comment Internet Advertising

Golf.com, a website that I enjoy visiting quite frequently, just published a list of their 10 most overrated golf courses in the world (http://www.golf.com/photos/10-golf-courses-get-too-much-love).

Ironically, three of those courses were in my college hometown of Chicago (which I consider to have the best collection of golf courses outside of the state of New York).  I’ve played all three of the ones listed in the Chicago area, and I agree with one of them (Medinah).  But Olympia Fields North, which I’m set to play again in a few weeks during their National Fourball Championship, should not be on the list.

Olympia Fields CC is a great, old-fashioned club located in the southwest portion of Chicagoland.  They have two golf courses, the venerable North course (where Jim Furyk won his only major championship in the 2003 US Open) and the recently renovated South course.  The North is long, difficult, and tree-lined, but there are still opportunities for birdies.  Good shots are rewarded, and bad shots are punished.  It’s a scenic and classic test that I very much enjoy playing.  It has all the design elements that one would look for in a great course (length, elevation change, difficulty, water hazards, trees, and bunkers).  I’m not sure what Golf.com thought it was missing, but I haven’t seen anything lacking.

Truth be told Olympia Fields North is not in my top 10 favorite golf courses, and it’s not even my favorite golf course in Chicagoland (that would be Skokie CC), but it is deserving of its place among the Top 100 golf courses in the country.  If you get a chance to play it, I highly recommend that you do.  And the photo above is the beautiful par 4 third hole at Olympia Fields North, just to give you a sense of the grandeur of the place.

SEO company Philadelphia

What are you looking for in an agency partner?

by with No Comment Internet AdvertisingOnline Marketing

Typically I write one of these blog posts a month.  They usually take the form of an essay on either work-related topics, golf, or a timely event (like last month’s entry on March Madness).  But for the month of April I thought I might try something different.  Namely, I’d like to ask the handful of people who read my blog posts what they are ideally looking for in an agency partner.

Giving our clients the services they need at the prices they can afford is a difficult balancing act.  Often the budgets we have to work with are less than what we would like to have in order to guarantee success, but I’d like to think we do a good job with what we’re given.  If you’ve read these posts you know that customer service and transparency are a key component of our agency, and every DanMatt Media client receives both no matter how much they’re spending with us.

But what I’d really like to find out is where our future clients place their priorities.  Is price the most important factor when choosing an online and offline agency to help grow your business?  Is expertise and business acumen the first thing you look for when you select an agency to partner with on your digital marketing campaign?  Are you looking for a balance between the two?  Is your ROI the deciding factor when you make your choice?

I would like to invite anyone reading this post to share some quick feedback on what you would look for in an agency partner.  It’s always helpful to have outside opinions, and we welcome them.  You can send your feedback to info@danmattmedia.com, and I promise you it will be read, reviewed, and taken to heart.

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March Madness? You bet…

by with No Comment Internet AdvertisingMarket ResearchOnline Marketing

The calendar says it’s March, and you know what that means.  Everyone will be talking about March Madness.  Typically that refers to the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship (more on that below), but there are other things around here that contribute to March Madness too.

Work:  I suppose every month has some work madness built into it, and March is no exception.  Why?  Well Q1 is always one of the busiest times of the year for us.  We’re launching new initiatives to make our online and offline services more attractive.  We’re designing and implementing new marketing campaigns on behalf of our clients (especially the ones we picked-up in the beginning of the year).  We’re recruiting new affiliate marketing sources to run our performance-based offers in 2015.  It’s a busy time of year, but we’re on top of it.  When it comes to business, a little madness is a good thing.

Kids:  If you have children (particularly young children) then you already know that every month is chock-full of madness, but if not let me explain.  Fighting.  Sickness.  Ear infections.  Tantrums.  Attitude.  It’s not localized just to March, but since the weather is cold and the kids are indoors, you tend to notice it more this time of the year.

Basketball:  OK, here’s the real definition of March Madness.  The conference tournaments are beginning shortly.  After that, the NCAA selection committee will seed the teams and the national tournament will begin.  In our offices we have Duke fans, Maryland fans, and even a single Northwestern fan (yours truly).

Duke enters the month ranked in the top 4 in the nation and looking to punch their ticket to the Final Four.  Maryland enters the month ranked in the top 15 in the nation and looking to make a deep tournament run.  And Northwestern?  They’ll be sitting out the post-season as they do every year, but fear not, they’re getting better.  Another 2 or 3 years and my alma mater will be making their first NCAA Tournament appearance.