Online communities and aggregators
Don't forget about online communities and aggregators! These can be a great source of traffic for your website and generate sign-ups. Consider joining popular dating forums, meetup groups, and other online dating sites related to your niche.
You might notice the articles in top Google search results with lists like "Best dating apps in 2023" or "Top dating websites for serious relationships". Depending on your niche and keywords, you may pick the most relevant lists and reach out to the authors with the request to be added to the article. Please, note that it most likely may not be for free, so be ready to pay a fee. The amount depends on the website and its traffic.
You may even want to consider starting an affiliate program by promoting another company's product or service, and when a customer purchases from your link, you get paid. You can use an affiliate program.
- Reddit is a great source for promotion, but you should always remember that Redditors love to hate marketing and don't appreciate intrusive ads or posts. Join conversations with your target group and tell them about your dating project. Don't be too pushy and promotional. Instead, ask for honest feedback and be helpful.
- Quora is another platform to reach a wider audience. Once you've signed up, join relevant questions and give helpful answers. Include a link back to your website in answer to promote your project.
- Discord also shouldn't be neglected if your audience is within the gaming niche. Discord is basically an online chatroom. It used to be popular among gamers
PPC
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is another great way to promote your dating website. Popular PPC platforms include Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and other contextual networks. With PPC, you pay a certain amount every time someone clicks on an ad for your website. This is great for targeting potential customers who are interested in your niche. Here are some examples of the pay-per-click ad that you consider for dating website promotion:
- Google Ads - Google Ads allows you to create various formats and promote ads on Google's search engine results page (SERP). You can target people based on their location, keywords they are searching for, device type, and more. Google Ads is a highly competitive advertising tool, but you can still make it work with the right targeting and keyword research.
- Facebook Ads - With Facebook Ads, you can promote your website or product directly to users who already match the criteria of your target audience. You can promote your website in the news feed, in-stream videos, and other placements on Facebook and Instagram. Yes, correct. If you want to start a campaign on Instagram, you have to do it through the Facebook Business Manager anyway. This is great for targeting people based on their interests and demographics.
- Display ads - These are usually banner-type images that promote your website on other websites and apps. You can choose to run these ads on various display networks, but the most popular one is Google's Display Network (GDN). You can set it up through Google Ad Manager too. The advantages of display ads are that you can promote your website to more people than with search campaigns and target them based on their browsing behavior.
For example, you can promote your dating service to people who have already visited a couple of dating websites or are interested in dating in general. It calls Contextual Targeting - when Google matches ads with relevant websites from the Display Network based on the theme, keywords, general topics, visitor's recent browsing history and etc. If you want to show the ad to the person who've visited your website already, you need to set up Retargeting.
Target the right audience
Geo-targeting is a great way to promote your dating website in specific areas. You can use Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and other contextual networks to promote your site in geographic areas that are relevant to you. You can also target ads based on the user's location, so they will be served ads tailored to their area. Geo-targeting can be a great way to reach potential customers who may not have found your website through other methods. Additionally, it allows you to keep costs down by only targeting specific locations where your services would be most successful. In addition, make sure that you track the results of any geo-targeted campaigns so that you can adjust your strategy as needed.
You can also use geo-targeting for email campaigns and other promotional activities such as giveaways or contests. This allows you to customize campaigns according to a specific region or city and ensure that you are reaching the right people. For example, if you're targeting users in a specific city, consider offering discounts or special offers that are only valid for people living in that area. Geo-targeting is a great way to promote your dating website in an effective and efficient way.
Social media strategies to attract the right traffic
Social media here, social media there...We've been hearing about its importance for ten years now. However, sometimes business owners don't get the main idea of social platforms: you need to be social and engaging. There is no point in having an Instagram account if you are not going to keep it active. Posting just to post is also not going to make any difference as long as you are sharing "boring" stock images with couples and relationships.
The first thing that you need to do is choose the right social platforms based on the following criteria: 1) popularity among your audience 2) your resources, and ability to create engaging content for it on a daily basis. Sometimes it's better not to be present at all rather than have an almost empty account with 100 followers and the last post dated three years ago. If you started a project a while ago, sometimes users just want to check your social media to understand if you are still active. If your project is still alive, but it's not obvious according to your online presence, you need to change your social media strategy immediately.
To choose the right platform, you need to know the major statistics of each platform.
- If you target young Gen Z women, TikTok could be the right platform. According to TikTok's statistics, in 2022, they reached 4.48 billion users, and a quarter of them use the platform on a daily basis.
- Instagram is a kingdom for Millenials, as 25-34 is the largest age group (70% of the users are younger than 34). And gender-wise, there are more females than males - 55.6% and 44.4%, accordingly. Speaking of content, if you want to grow organically, you need to invest your time in money in video content, as Instagram is more generous with a new audience to short-video content in reels.
- Twitter is your social media if your dating site concept implies any explicit adult content and targets a male audience (around 56.4%). The issue with Elon Musk's new baby is that among 450 million monthly active users, only 237.8 million are monetizable. What DAU (monetizable daily users) means is the number of users who can see ads or pay a subscription. 237.8 million is a relatively small number compared to other social media platforms. Another issue is the high number of bots and spam. However, you can still try it out with the right targeting and eye-catching post.
- Facebook is one of the biggest platforms when it comes to its user base of 2.9 billion.
Reaching Out to the Influencers
Reaching out to influencers can be a great way to promote your dating website. Look for influential people in your niche who have a large following and reach out to them about potentially collaborating. For example, you could offer them an affiliate commission for any new sign-ups or promote their content on your website. Additionally, consider running sponsored campaigns with influencers in order to reach even more potential customers.
Reaching out to influencers can be a great way to promote your dating website. However, if you really want to make it work and not just throw your money, there are some recommendations you need to follow.
- Start by researching the right team of brand ambassadors.
- Their audience = your audience. No matter how viral your influencer is, you may get nothing from your collaboration as you target different groups. If you want to target a young female audience for a casual dating website, try to reach out to those influencers who tend to live and embody this lifestyle. Start by creating a list of influencers in each platform that you think might be a potential match for you.
- It's all about a good influencer-brand match. You are definitely interested in finding a person who will genuinely love your brand and encourage the followers to try it.
- Followers are no longer the most relevant metric. In fact, the engagement and reach statistics are more reliable as sometimes, even non-followers engage with the content. At the same time, followers may not even see the post in their overflooded feed.
- You also want to see a smooth integration of the brand into the influencer's content, as no one wants to check out a company that is obviously promoted without any truly personal recommendation.
2. Set up your goals and make a presentation of your company.
Communication and a precise explanation of your marketing goals will be very helpful for influencers to come up with great ideas. Start by introducing your brand and your concept and
put up some KPIs that will make sense regarding your marketing goals. Are you looking for more downloads, website traffic increases, or premium sign-ups? With discount codes that influencers can promote in their post, you can encourage viewers to take instant action and track the progress of your collaboration.
3. Identify the best social media platforms for collaboration with influencers
Only by keeping your target audience in mind you can decide the best social media channel for influencer collaboration. All platforms have their pros and cons, so let's have an overview of each of them.
Which influencers should you consider for collaboration?
First of all, it's all about your budget. The more subscribers you have, the more influencers will ask you to pay. But as I've mentioned before, what you need to consider is how this person's channel will match your brand. To raise awareness about your dating app or website, try to reach out to YouTubers whose content is about:
- Relationships, relationship advice, male-female dynamic and etc. You can ask them to review your app or run an experiment like "My experience with "the app's name". It can be lifestyle young adults, bloggers, psychologists, or love gurus.
- Entertaining content around dating topics. Guys who create entertaining social experiments and funny videos.
- Dating industry, technologies, and startups. Opinion leaders or digital magazines that create dating apps comparison videos or simply tell about new technologies.
- Masculinity/Feminity podcasts. The positive side of being featured in a podcast is the length of the video, which is directly increasing the number of times your project can be featured. It's also a deep conversation format where participants share their honest opinion on the subject and, thus, build trust with the viewers.
Instagram
Regarding demographics, Instagram is a social platform for mainly Gen Zs and Millenials, with a slight drift towards females. The app became famous for its image content in the past, but now it demonstrates a clear shift to short videos. It's fair to say that Instagram has many types of content that can be created and sponsored. You can run well-targeted ad campaigns such as Sponsored Stories, Reels, and Posts.
There are plenty of options for various budgets. However, promoting something as complex as a dating site through influencers can be difficult with only image content.
The best strategy for promoting your app on Instagram is to work with multiple micro-blog influencers simultaneously. You don't have to pay thousands of dollars for one story of a blogger with one million subscribers, who is hard to believe that is using your app.
Pros
- The best platform for working with micro-influencers.
- Ideal for raising brand awareness.
- Low costs for sponsored content.
- Flexible for different budgets. Depending on the type of post you are asking influencers to create, the price range can vary.
Cons
- Highly Competitive
- Less time to "hook" a user
Example of Collaboration
One of the best case studies I could find is the influencer marketing campaign of the dating app Tantan. It's an Indian dating app that position itself as a tool for finding a genuine connection in real life. The company's goal was to raise awareness and increase the number of verified female profiles before St.Valentine's.
Tantan established the collaboration with 40 influencers, both male and female, on Instagram in TikTok. Female influencers made creative short videos showcasing the app's main features and attached #VDayOnTantan and #MyManOnTantan hashtags while guys were using #YourManOnTantan.
30 Instagram and 10 TikTok influencers were posting about the app on a regular basis and got a 2.5 million overall reach across platforms, plus the organic content that were created organically in various platforms to support the trend.
TikTok
TikTok is the fastest-growing social media platform, with 1 billion active users monthly. Despite the popular opinion that TikTok is the app for teens, only 32.5% are 10-19-year-olds. According to the location you target, the numbers can vary. The main difference from Instagram is that Tiktok is a more entertaining platform for watching funny and interesting videos.
Pros
- Fewer expectations from the video quality. TikTok videos can look unprofessional and yet, still become a trend.
- Easier to go viral. If you have an idea for a viral trend that can promote your app, you may try your luck on TikTok. But remember: keep it simple and entertaining.
- If you compare Instagram Reels and TikTok, the second one still has more engagement. You can utilize both of them together simultaneously for better results.
Source: Digital Information World
Cons
- Fewer content options. No pictures posts and carousels with many images.
- Hard to catch the attention of the viewers for complex subjects and even harder to convert them to direct conventions.
Example of Collaboration with Influencers on TikTok:
To raise brand awareness, Hinge collaborated with several TikTok influencers using #hingepartner hashtag, which has received 119.1M views total since 2022. Without any call-to-actions like "Hey, download this amazing app", creators shared their experiences, opinion, and funny stories with the app. The company raised its number of downloads and decreased the cost per registration significantly.
YouTube
Let's start with brief statistics. As the second most popular website on the planet after Google, YouTube attracts 1.7 billion unique users monthly. By November 2022, an astonishing 90% of all page views came from mobile and smartphone users globally. Desktop users were only 10.5% of the global traffic for the examined period. Unlike TikTok and Instagram, males are almost 54% of the YouTube population.
Pros
- Video on YouTubecan guarantees you a lasting impact, as once it is posted, the content keeps on giving organic views. Once it is created, it stays forever and only gains views.
- Compared to other social media, YouTube still has more desktop views than other platforms. It means that if you need to boost your website traffic, YouTube can be a good channel to invest in.
- Long-lasting video content gives you more time to introduce your dating project and, in the end, receive qualitative organic traffic.
Cons
- Long video content usually takes more time to produce, and considering all its pros, YouTube influencers tend to charge more than any other.
- If you consider a paid collaboration where an influencer will promise you a positive review and a link in the description, most likely, this video won't get as many views as you expect. I've reviewed around 30 videos about dating apps on YouTube, and the majority were brutally honest, not always positive, and usually didn't include a link in the description (which only adds more trust to the video). So if you are asking a YouTuber to review your app, be ready for honest feedback.
Examples of Collaboration
Here's the guy who is trying a Hily dating app and trying its features. The video has mainly positive comments and received more than 18k views.
As/Is is a YouTube channel for women that features topics like beauty, fashion, style, body positivity, women’s experiences, and lifestyle. They've created a video where different people try the League - a paid dating app for elite and successful people where you have to be accepted to sign up. In this video, they are asking the League's CEO about how the app work and how to be accepted. The participants are testing the advice and, in the end, waiting for the results: have they got in or not? A spoiler: 1 of 4 made it. Could you guess who?
Twitter
Unlike Instagram and TikTok, Twitter is a platform where people discuss global events,
share the latest news, and follow world leaders for their statements and reactions. However, the number of so-called "heavy twitters" - users who check Twitter 6-7 times and post 3-4 times per week - has been declining since the pandemic began. In other words, 10% of users generate 90% of the content.
Opinion leaders can generate great engagement and brand awareness, as well as some website traffic. But what's more exciting is that discussions on Twitter can actually generate your domain ranking (DA) and improve your SEO ranking.
This platform is dominated by a male audience (61%) and can boast that 1/3 of the users are college-educated, with an annual income $75k, according to SproutSocial.
Another important factor that might be helpful for you as a dating entrepreneur is that Twitter's guidelines allow the usage of explicit material. So in case you are working with webcam models as your brand ambassadors, Twitter is a heaven platform for you.
Pros
- High levels of engagement
- Least competitive and expensive when it comes to paid promotions
Cons
- Spam accounts and bots
- Characters Limitations
- The possible number of negative comments
Example of influencer collaboration on Twitter
A risky but award-winning Twitter campaign from Grindr (one of the most popular queer dating apps) reached millions of people after they decided to raise awareness about dating discrimination. They promoted the campaign through influential representatives from the most targeted communities and let them speak about their experiences too.
In partnership with @Grindr I’m taking a stand against sexual racism and the many forms of discrimination lingering within our community. It’s time to do better. #KindrGrindr #TheVixen (Link to full video in bio) #ad pic.twitter.com/FAK5CpPUNq
— The Vixen (@TheVixensworld) September 18, 2018
Facebook
Facebook remains one of the most used social media worldwide. Unlike any other social media platform, it's very popular among 35-44 age group. FB allows a brand to express itself in many ways by posting images, embedded links, long-read texts, stories, and short videos. As users can easily navigate from Facebook to your website, this social media is also useful for generating traffic and conversions to your dating site.
Pros
- The best platform to target 35+ audience
- The most popular social media on the planet
- Perfect for different marketing campaign goals: brand awareness, traffic and conversions increase, customer retention, and others.
Cons
- The majority of mega influencers prefer other platforms
- Hard to Track the influencer campaign results
- Promoting a dating app on Facebook might be complicated as you can face multiple restrictions. You can read the full guideline here.
Example of influencer collaboration on Facebook
Match.com is one of the pioneer dating websites where 81% of users are 30+ years old, that's why Facebook was the right platform to distribute the video. They collaborated with the popular comedian actress Rebel Wilson in a podcast format and then shared it on their social media.
#matchxrebel Babies! More babies in your feed. 🙄We get it. But if you're maaaaybeee thinking about babies, well not now, but one day, Match is #1 in babies made. Check out more episodes at www.letsmakelove.com #Letsmakelovepod #matchxrebel #Match
Posted by
Match on Tuesday, August 27, 2019
User Generated Content
Encouraging user-generated content on your dating website is a great way to promote it. Ask customers to submit reviews and ratings of your services, share stories about their experiences, or post pictures from their dates. Allowing users to interact with each other on your site can create an online community where people feel more engaged and likely to recommend your website to their friends and family. Additionally, it encourages potential customers to join as they will feel more connected to the community.
Unconsciously or consciously, people are highly influenced by society; their behavior, in many cases, is motivated by the desire to be socially accepted. People, especially young, love to keep up with trends and try something that is gaining popularity. That's how you can leverage that by encouraging users to post content on social media and refer to your business.
As I've said before, you can start by reaching out to the influencers and micro-bloggers who can start a buzz about a "new dating app." It can be Reels or TikToks explaining and showing a unique feature or advice-sharing content. To motivate users to spread the word about your dating app, offer them perks or discounts for memberships and credits.
One of the successful examples of a user-generated content strategy is the dating app Meete. The app concept is simple: men pay for every message they send to the girls, and the girls get a cut for each message they receive. After some time, they can cash out real money. Basically, Meete achieved a successful win-win situation for both sides by rewarding men with female attention and women with cash. The app gained popularity among young women on TikTok who started using Meete as a "side hustle" to earn easy money.
PR Strategy
Public relations (PR) campaigns can also help promote your dating website. Try reaching out to digital lifestyle, business, niche magazines, bloggers, and other media sources popular among your target group and offer them free trials or exclusive offers. You can also promote your website through press releases, interviews, and other PR activities.
PR can help you earn natural links and increase the trust level of your website in the eye of search engines.
Email marketing
Email marketing is an effective way to promote your dating website and attract new users. Create content that is relevant to your target audience and send it out in email blasts on a regular basis. Additionally, consider using automation tools such as MailChimp or ConstantContact in order to easily keep track of who has received the emails and measure the success of your campaigns. Additionally, consider using email to promote special offers or discounts, which can be a great way to draw in new users.
Best strategies to promote dating site
Using multiple promotional methods is the best way to promote a dating website. Take advantage of SEO, PPC, PR campaigns, social media marketing, email campaigns, and more. Additionally, consider geo-targeting ads to target potential customers who live in specific areas. Also make sure that you collect user feedback so you can continually improve the experience on your website.
How to track your results
Once you have launched a promotional campaign for your dating website, it's important to track the results so you know what is working and what isn't. Tools such as Google Analytics can help you track how much traffic your website is getting, where it's coming from, and how long users are staying on each page. This information can be used to tweak your campaigns in order to make them more effective.
Conclusion
Promoting your dating website can be challenging, but with the right strategies, it doesn't have to be difficult. Take advantage of SEO, PPC, PR campaigns, social media marketing, email campaigns, geo-targeting ads, and more to promote your site effectively. Additionally, make sure that you track the results of any promotional activities, so you can adjust your strategy as needed for maximum success. With these tips, you'll be able to promote your dating website with ease. Good luck!
