About 54.67% of all website traffic is generated via mobile phones. That’s how deeply entrenched mobile phones are in our culture. Owing to this phenomenon, mobile marketing is on the rise, and the trend doesn’t seem to plateau anytime soon. Mobile phones open a totally different dimension to the way marketing is done. What once was considered a platform barely worthy of accessing work emails now holds equal, if not more, computational power than modern-day computer systems.
As a dentist, you certainly know the capabilities of a modern-day mobile phone. However, only a few experienced dentists know how to utilize mobile phones for dental marketing. In our blog today, we will dissect the question, “What is mobile marketing?” and understand the methods you can refer to upscale your dental marketing efforts.
Understanding what is mobile marketing
Mobile marketing, as the name suggests, refers to marketing that happens through channels associated with mobile phones. Basically, mobile phones are vessels that house different browsers and applications. Reaching out to users browsing through these applications via ads, messages, and other content is the primary objective of a typical mobile marketing strategy.
As a dentist, you might already have a dental website showcasing your talented crew, the equipment, and the patients you’ve helped. But honestly, as crucial as that front is for your practice, it alone isn’t enough to get you more patients.
And this is where mobile marketing comes into play. One of the major reasons why mobile marketing is so famous among newly evolving businesses is because they understand the device’s usage pattern. Mobile phones and tablets are most used during the early morning hours of 7 am – 10 am and the evening hours of 8 pm – 12 am.
Mobile phones are handy devices that provide on-the-go information and do almost everything just as good as their PC counterparts. Close to 61% of customers are highly likely to make a purchase from a website that is mobile-optimized, another reason to focus on mobile marketing efforts.
Dissecting some of the best mobile marketing ideas of 2024
The modern-day business landscape calls for out-of-the-box thinking for all marketing endeavors. Hence, businesses spend a lot of time and resources on dissecting and learning new and creative mobile marketing techniques. Here, we’ll discuss some of the best mobile marketing ideas that’ll help grow your dental practice online:
Mobile optimization for websites
Websites are accessed across every digital device, from tablets to PCs and mobile phones. Everyone gains access to and browses the internet for different purposes. However, as mentioned in the very beginning, many people prefer visiting a website via their mobile phones rather than PCs or other devices because mobile phones are handier.
Websites need to be optimized to run better on mobile phones. Why? Because a website created specifically for PC viewing will be a little distorted when viewed on a mobile phone. The location of key options and features may be scattered throughout the layout, making it difficult for the users to navigate. Furthermore, PC-based website designs contain heavier media elements per page, making them slower in loading times.
This, coupled with the mobility aspect, makes mobile optimization for websites essential for all businesses, including your dental practice’s website. Here’s how you can optimize your layout for a better mobile viewing experience:
- Change the layout to a vertical viewing one.
- Break down big chunks of content into pointers where necessary.
- Use media elements such as videos and GIFs to represent ideas better.
- Keep the file size for images and other creatives under 150Kbs.
Utilize UGC for mobile marketing
User Generated Content, or UGC is on the rise these days, with more and more businesses seeing its potential. UGC usually involves giving your viewers a general template or an idea and letting them create further content for different channels. These days businesses utilize UGC for mobile phone viewers more than their PC counterparts.
That’s because of popular social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, and YouTube. Instagram has a massive userbase of around two billion active monthly users worldwide, most of which operate the application via their mobile phones. The short but crisp video format available on such platforms is highly sought after by users. This is one of the major reasons why your dental practice could utilize UGC on mobile phones to reach out to as many potential patients as possible.
UGC gives you a complete picture of the state of your own practice and its impact on people’s lives. From patient reviews to referrals and offers, your practice can reach out to more people via social media applications than conventional emails in some cases, making the process even more necessary for your dental practice’s growth.
Geofence areas of interest
For obvious reasons you’ll be dealing with nearby patients first, followed by those who live a little far from your practice. However, another way of enticing potential patients through mobile marketing to your practice is through geofencing. Geofencing is a location trapping technique that involves the usage of GPS signals.
As the name implies, the technology basically surrounds a particular region of interest on the map and detects mobile phone signals within the said boundary. It isn’t invasive and doesn’t violate your piracy. In fact, geofencing is very frequently used by brands that want to cater to an audience that lives beyond the state boundaries.
Say you have a rich pool of patients who need services that your practice can offer but don’t know about it at all. In such cases, you first assess the area of interest and then geofence it to detect the number of active devices. Once detected, you can run PPC campaigns for that particular region. This way, you’ll have more patients, and they’ll get the help they need. You can also utilize Google Maps to promote your business. Since Google Maps is frequently used on mobile devices, the geofencing technique is a viable option to try out.
SMSs don’t die
Close to 23 billion text messages are sent across the globe each year via mobile phones. The age-old Short Message Service or SMS is a tried and tested channel, still utilized by people and even businesses frequently. While the world might now seem to be moving towards messaging applications such as WhatsApp and Messenger, SMSs are still kicking around and hold about the same value that they once used to.
Your lead generation professionals will surely guarantee to get as many contact numbers as possible from third-party sources. Don’t be scared as your contact number reaches in the hands of advertisers all the time via third-party channels that sell the data to said advertisers.
Now, the way to use these numbers for SMSs is the tricky part as you don’t want to be spammy with the number of messages being sent. The best way to utilize this is to create a calendar, highlighting the day, date, and time for sending and following up on messages. Its just like email marketing but with even shorter messages and a lot of links.
Once again, do ensure that you’re not spamming the end users with a gazillion messages per day as it will lead them to either block or list your contact under their spam section.
Voice searches are on the rise
Another important aspect of mobile marketing is the ability to search for things through voice. Users these days are using a blend of typing and voice search methods to get the best results. More than 50% of people worldwide use voice search on a daily basis.
There’s a high chance that your practice might be more popular among adults than other age groups. A lot of adults don’t know how to look up different practices on the internet via different browsers and applications. Typing search queries can be a laborious task for many, and certain terms might be a little too difficult to type rather than say.
This is also one of the major reasons why voice searches are on the rise these days. More and more devices and even browsers include provisions for voice searches. Voice searches also let people chain up to a lot of words. The average voice search prompt contains close to 29 words.
But how do you utilize voice search for your practice’s visibility? Well, it’s easier than you think. One of the best and simplest ways to appear before your competitors on a voice search is by optimizing your content for common voice search phrases within your domain. Furthermore, you can optimize Google My Business (GMB) and other channels.
To sum it up
Mobile phones have become a crucial part of everyone’s lives. These devices go above and beyond to fetch the information you need in the smallest window possible. Mobile marketing has come a long way and is surely going to evolve with time, opening more horizons for businesses to spread their influence. However, as a dentist, you might have to wait a bit for the next best thing to happen, as service-related industries often get the latest technologies after everyone else has implemented them. But, through a deep understanding of the subject matter and the ways to utilize different tools, you can always leverage mobile marketing to boost your dental practice’s reach.
