Why Your Veterinary Marketing Strategies Need to be Mobile-Focused
Dr. Samantha Vitale is residency trained in neurology and cofounder of Cloud Animal Health, an online marketplace where primary care veterinarians can connect with specialists that offer virtual consults and other custom services.
In this day and age, mobile engagement goes hand in hand with the patient experience. And while as a veterinary practitioner, your patients can’t really use mobile devices, their caretakers are definitely demanding more from you when it comes to mobile technology.
Digitally savvy pet parents now have an expectation for the ease in which they can connect with veterinarians. From researching symptoms and locating a practitioner, to booking appointments online, the digital era has completely revolutionized the communication preferences of pet parents.
One recent research conducted by Accenture shows that nearly 54% of health consumers prefer using smartphones over other communication channels to interact with their care providers.
Having a mobile presence can help veterinary care providers gain advantage over their counterparts, especially in a time when pet parents have all the resources to manage their animal’s health at their disposal.
In this piece, we will be exploring a few reasons why your veterinary practice’s marketing strategies need to be mobile-focused and how you can do just that.
1. Mobile Marketing can Provide Greater Exposure to your Practice
Mobile marketing is nothing but the art of marketing your business in a way that it appeals to smartphone users.
When done right, this marketing technique can provide your existing consumers or potential clients using smartphones with personalized, time- and location-sensitive information so that your chances of getting noticed drastically increase.
Now, although mobile marketing has been around for quite some time, the practice of veterinary, or rather even the healthcare industry at large, has been lagging behind in leveraging this state-of-the-art marketing channel.
Ideally, you should already have some sort of mobile marketing strategy in place for your practice in order for you to be able to tap into the critical consumer segment of tech-savvy pet parents. This is especially true since more users are now spending larger amounts of time engaged with mobile devices than ever before.
There’s a great variety of mobile marketing strategies to experiment with. The kind that works best for your veterinary practice will depend on your specialty, budget and the specific user group you want to target.
Some of the most commonly sought-after mobile marketing strategies include:
- App-Based Mobile Marketing
- In-Game Mobile Marketing
- Location-Based Mobile Marketing
- Mobile Search Ads
- Mobile Image Ads
- SMS Marketing
Mobile is here to stay. Therefore, leveraging mobile marketing is now more important for any veterinary practice targeting growth than it ever has been.
Not only will it get your practice the exposure it deserves, it will also give you an upper hand when it comes to catering to the tech-savvy patients and directly contribute towards increasing the bottom-line of your practice.
2. Mobile-Enabled Communication Channels are Gaining a lot of Popularity Among Care Seekers
Another important reason your veterinary clinic’s marketing strategies need to be mobile-focused is because mobile communication channels are better than others available in the market today when it comes to engaging consumers.
Creating the ideal marketing strategy isn’t so much about the patient experience alone. It is more about the clients’ entire journey with your practice- from the moment they discover your practice or it’s initial touch point, to when they seek consultation for the first time, to how you keep them engaged in a way that they choose you over your industry counterparts every time.
As a veterinary practitioner, you need to take a more holistic approach to patient experience.
Mobile-enabled communication channels such as apps can greatly help you on this front. In fact, a well thought- over and carefully- designed mobile application can make all the difference for your practice since they have been gaining a lot of popularity among care seekers within all healthcare niches.
Getting a mobile app developed for your practice can greatly fuel your marketing efforts since these apps encompass the plethora of important features required to attract pet parents. Some of these features include:
- Self-appointment scheduling
- Telehealth access
- Integrated medical history easily accessible to vets and pet parents at any given time
- Picture and video sharing features
- Push notifications and in-app reminders for better treatment adherence,
- Dedicated cloud servers to keep data on the app more secure
- Wearable integration to monitor pet vitals and comprehend underlying problems
Marketing your mobile app is going to be equally easy since the veterinary industry is infamous for being slow when it comes to embracing innovation. Therefore, it is a given that not a lot of your counterparts in the industry have leveraged this modern tech solution at present. This can get you an added advantage over them.
Other modes of mobile-enabled marketing channels you can leverage for your veterinary practice include social media platforms, telehealth mobile apps, content marketing solutions, etc.
All in all, mobile marketing is truly all about consistency and patience. The more consistent you are in your efforts, the higher results it will yield for your practice.
It is also important to remember that your end-users i.e. the pet parents, always need to be at the crux of all your marketing operations. When you design a strategy bearing them in mind, it has minimal chances of going wrong.
To sum it all up: experiment with different channels, figure out what works best for you, and stick to it; educate yourself on what are the latest happenings within your industry and what your counterparts are doing to attract customers; and strategize keeping your consumers in mind.
