Many dentists are still on the fence about whether they should incorporate mobile marketing use into their dental website marketing strategy.

Adobe has released the results to its Adobe Mobile Survey, where more than 1,000 mobile users offered insights into what mobile devices they use, how they interact with websites and applications, and what they want most out of their mobile experiences.

Adobe reports that in 2011, smartphone adoption reached 38% in the United States and is projected to grow to 48% by the end of 2012.

Here are some key findings from Adobe’s mobile survey –

• Facebook is the dominant social network accessed by mobile (85%), followed by Twitter (35%), and then Google+ (21%). The most popular activity is to read status updates (85%). However, consumers are also using their mobile devices to view Facebook fan pages of their favorite brands. Adobe advises that businesses should have mobile-optimized experiences for offers that are launched from their Facebook fan pages. This is most important for brands that target younger demographics, with 91% of the young age group and 87% of the middle age group accessing social networks via mobile devices.

• A majority of the respondents (56%) access their social networks on a daily basis, with 20% reporting that they visit these sites on a weekly basis. Given the frequency of mobile visits to social sites, the ability to use dashboards to measure and optimize traffic that result from these visits is gaining in strategic importance.

• Consumers report that a majority of online advertisers are providing mobile-optimized experiences when they click through ads on both mobile websites (73%) and mobile apps (77%), suggesting that optimization of mobile ad content appears to be prevalent.

• The opportunity for location-based personalization is represented by the rise in adoption of consumer “check-in” services. Almost a third of respondents have checked in via a location service on their mobile device, with Facebook being the most popular service, followed by Foursquare and Yelp. In addition, 48% of those who checked in received an incentive.

• Apple tablets (iPads) are the most popular with young (27%) and middle age (31%) groups. However, the Kindle Fire is the leader among seniors (22%). A majority of tablet owners (56%) share their device with other family members.

As more and more of the general population begin using mobile for their primary Internet access, dentists will have to take into consideration what kind of experience they are offering the mobile market that tend to be impatient when a dental website is not optimized for their use.

Dentists may think that adapting to the mobile market isn’t important, but how many of them couldn’t imagine using a cell phone as their primary phone over a traditional home just a few short years ago? Or that lugging around a laptop seems so 1990?

Mobile is here to stay and dentists would be smart to adapt their dental marketing to this technology.

Embracing technology doesn’t change the type of dentist you are, it allows a very busy public to find out more about your dental practice before they walk into your waiting room. Haven’t you ever seen a business do something online where you thought, “I’d like to work with them!” It’s no different for the general public.

When you make the ability for future dental patient to easily find out more about you, it leaves a strong and lasting first impression. You will seem like a dentist who is “on top of things.”

If you don’t believe me, ask yourself what you would think of a salesperson and made an appointment to see you who doesn’t have a website for you to check out. A few short years ago it may not have seemed like such a big deal, but today you would not trust what he had to say.

How is your dental patient any different?

To view the Adobe Report see mobile survey white paper.

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