Frequently Asked Questions
FAQs about the D4W Mega-Marketing System
The D4W Mega-Marketing System is a patient communication tool stems from a partnership between Centaur, the creators of the ever-popular Dental 4 Windows, and Dental Marketing Solutions (DMS), an award-winning marketing agency.
This systems combines the best of both worlds, integrating internal and external marketing into one easy solution, tailored to suit forward-thinking dental practices.
Centaur provides the D4W Marketing module, which offers a range of easy-to-use marketing tools focused on existing patients. This includes digital and physical resources such as electronic mail and birthday greetings, and through-the-post letters, postcards, and much more.
With the support of a dedicated Campaign Manager, you have a choice of set and forget options, as well as custom solutions for a wide range of applications through the year.
The SEO product from DMS means a guaranteed presence on the first page of Google in just 90 days, and a minimum 20% boost in your online traffic over 12 months.
Importantly, apart from providing the necessary website access, you don’t need to do a thing – DMS does the heavy lifting for you. In the unlikely event that the guarantees are not met, DMS will work for you for free until they are.
More details on the individual components of the system are covered below.
FAQs about the D4W Marketing Component of the System
D4W Marketing is a patient communication tool integrated with Dental4Windows. An extensive range of pre-made templates are available to be sent via email or printed material. SMS sent via D4W is setup and included in your overall patient communication strategy. Communication can be sent manually, or one-off, from your own personalised and customisable online D4W Marketing portal, or automatically directly from Dental4Windows.
The templates cater to both repetitive communication such as recalls, reactivations, welcomes, post-visits, birthday wishes, to seasonal campaigns including, but not limited to, mouthguard and whitening promotions.
If you are currently not communicating regularly with your patients, then D4W Marketing might be a gamechanger for your practice. While it’s hard to quantify the exact return from this revolutionary product, the reality is that most patients are not thinking about your practice more than once or twice a year.
Post implementation, picture this: instead of unreliable, occasional communications with your patients, you can enjoy automated recalls, reactivations, birthday wishes several times a year, and much more. Better still, it’s set and forget!
What result can you expect? The most likely outcomes are:
- better recall rates – James Moss from Katoomba Dental said “take a look at the recall templates because they are really fantastic” – and
- higher case conversions as your practice moves from out of mind to top of mind.
Once you are setup with D4W Marketing, you will be assigned a Campaign Manager who will implement and teach you everything you need to know for your new service to be a success.
Your Campaign Manager will:
- Set automated tasks linked to D4W Marketing templates
- Teach you how to generate patient lists in D4W Queries
- Teach you how to use the D4W Marketing Portal
- Provide advice on effective communication methods and segmentation of your patient database
- Build a 12 month Marketing Plan for you to reference when sending campaigns
The Campaign Manager is included in the D4W Marketing subscription cost. As a user of D4W Marketing, you will also have 24/7 access to training videos and ongoing consultation webinars to inspire your next communication piece. You can also follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn to download useful guides and receive regular tips.
The difference between sending printed mail from Dental4Windows is that you will not need to print and post the letters yourself. D4W Marketing provides that service to you. Once you place the order, your letters will be printed, packaged and posted for you.
Also, templates in D4W Marketing are pre-designed and written by professional designers and marketing specialists. Your practice details, logo preferred colours and themes can all be customised. When sending letters directly from Dental4Windows, you will need to start from scratch with a blank word document.
D4W Marketing focuses on affordability and the ease of customising pieces. To deliver these features, there is no ability to add your own image, however, there is a wide selection of hi-res stock images to choose from.
If you require a template of any kind that is further customed, let us know your requirements and this can be created at an additional cost for your exclusive use.
FAQs about the SEO Component of the System
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a range of activities to boost your presence in search engines such as Google. There are two main components to SEO; onsite SEO and offsite SEO.
The D4W Mega-Marketing System includes both onsite and offsite SEO. Note: SEO does not relate to paid Google ads, formerly known as Google AdWords. These are optional and offered separately.
More and more potential patients are using Google every day to search for specific dental services, and a preferred practice to visit. Studies suggest that more than 86% of all new dental patients have checked out a practice on Google before calling or booking an appointment.
Even word-of-mouth referrals are being impacted by Google. Consumers are increasingly checking the online presence of a practice to get a better assessment of what the practice is like (e.g. Google reviews), regardless of a personal recommendation.
In Australia, Google enjoys a 94% market share for search engines. For this reason, all of our SEO efforts relate to boosting your Google presence.
SEO is about making it easy for Google to ‘see‘ your practice online. For example, there are several things on your website that Google simply cannot ‘see‘ such as images and videos.
Google is not a person checking your website, but a very sophisticated piece of software (governed by a complex ‘algorithm’) to determine which websites should appear highest in the search results.
SEO is about optimising your onsite and offsite SEO so that Google can see your presence more easily and a result, rank you more highly. If Google doesn’t know what your website is about, it won’t rank you highly.
The Google algorithm is not publicly known (this is a key part of Google’s intellectual property) but it is possible to determine what works well in Google by trial and error.
Google’s algorithm changes regularly, which means that constant tweaking is required to maintain a strong presence in Google, as algorithm updates are released. In reality, an effective SEO practitioner holds something like a diploma-level skill. Fortunately, Google offers certification as a ‘Google partner‘ which we hold.
Unlike Google ads, the process of building your SEO does have a residual benefit. With Google ads, once you stop paying, the Google ads disappear immediately, but most aspects of SEO keep benefiting you if SEO ceases.
For example, any onsite optimisation will continue to make your website easier for Google to see which means that you can expect to enjoy higher rankings for some time to come (unless you completely rebuild your website).
Similarly, the SEO process of building ‘backlinks‘ – links to your site from an external site – are a positive marker for Google that your site is of some value (people are less likely to link to a low-quality site).
However, the benefit of SEO is not indefinite. This is because (i) the Google algorithm is constantly changing and (ii) the competitive environment is also changing e.g., new competitors or existing competitors doing SEO.
The short answer is ‘no’. Google ads are clearly marked in search results as ‘Ad’ and are quite separate to SEO. While Google ads do work, consumers recognise them as ads and are less likely to click on them for that reason.
SEO affects the presence of your practice on the Google map, which appears immediately below the ads (if any), and in the ‘organic ‘search results which appears below that. This means that SEO provides a kind of ‘two for the price of one’ benefit, and as noted above, has a definite residual benefit, unlike Google ads.
The D4W Mega-Marketing System offers the following guarantees in relation to SEO performance:
- your practice will appear on the first page of Google within 90 days, or we will work for free until we fix it, plus
- you will achieve a 20% boost in Google traffic over 12 months, or we work for free until we achieve that.
There are many variables that affect the impact of the additional traffic for your practice, such as your website and the skills of your team answering the phone. However, if the only thing you change from your current arrangements is an increase in traffic, then you can expect SEO to generate an increase in inquiries/bookings.
SEO is a longer-term play. If you’re not already on the first page of Google for some keywords, our guarantee means you will get there in 90 days or we’ll work for you for free till we do (we’re very confident of delivering that outcome).
Apart from that, you can expect to see results within about 3 to 6 months, and the boost continues from there. Factors that affect the speed of the implemented changes relate to the number of competitors in your area, and how active they are with SEO.
For an instant result, you can add Google ads to your SEO. When you talk to us, please let us know if you are interested in exploring this additional product.
In our experience, there are many practices we speak to who believe they are getting effective SEO from a web guy/girl or similar, when in fact, the results they are getting are very poor.
As a case in point, all of our SEO products have growth guarantees: there is a 20% boost guarantee in the D4W Mega Marketing System, but upgrades may guarantee a 40% traffic boost, and an 80% traffic boost.
The fact that we can make these guarantees is evidence that the current SEO is nowhere near optimised (if your SEO was really optimised, we wouldn’t be able to improve it). It is rare for us to find a practice’s online presence that we can’t substantially improve.
When you talk to us, we can discuss options for a more substantial boost in your online presence if you are interested.
On Google, search terms are referred to as ‘keywords’. The term keyword is a little misleading as Google defines multiple words in a phrase as a ‘keyword‘. In a dental context, relevant ‘keywords’ are things like ‘[suburb name] dentist‘, ‘dentist near me‘, ‘best dentist in [suburb name]‘ etc.
For your practice to enjoy a good share of search traffic, you need to rank well against multiple keywords. A common misunderstanding is the notion that a practice appears “number 1 in Google“. In reality, all that you can say is that, for a given keyword, your practice appears in first place in Google.
Search traffic to your website and Google My Business listing is an aggregate of multiple keywords. Therefore, a strategy that focuses on multiple keywords is an essential part to building your presence in Google.
Organic traffic is search traffic in Google (and other search engines) that is unpaid. It includes search traffic from the organic listings (the top 10 search results on each page) and listings on the Google map.
Organic traffic does not include anything relating to Google ads (previously known as Google AdWords).