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Inside
The Online Dating Industry
by Joe Tracy,
publisher of Online Dating Magazine
Online
Dating Branding BrillianceWelcome
to the second installment of “Inside the Industry,” a weekly column
that takes a closer look at the business of online
dating.
It's All About Branding
One of the most vital components to running a successful
business is how you brand that business. Branding is
an art that, if ignored, can be the downfall of your
company or service due to the inability of people to
identify with you.
The
last few weeks have been a rare time where we get
a clear view of great branding from one major online
dating service and not so great branding from another.
Before getting into details, though, it’s first
important to understand a little bit about branding.
Branding
is about a person’s overall experience
with your company every time they hear your company
name or associate with your company. A person’s
overall impression of your service is a testament to
whether you’ve done a good job at branding your
service or whether your efforts have fallen flatter
than Paris Hilton’s stomach.
Branding is about knowing what message you want to
deliver and building every aspect of your business
around that message. Perceptions from consumers are the reality of your services because what they think
you are is correct. Just remember, they formed their
perceptions through your branding efforts, whether
intentional or not.
An example of an excellent job a service has done
at branding is eHarmony.com .
They never refer to themselves as an “online dating service” but rather
as a “relationship service”. They want
people to go to eHarmony.com who are serious about relationships
and they have effectively branded themselves that way.
This month, eHarmony.com added
to the brilliance of their branding with three press
releases, all tied around
one theme - marriage:
1) The first press release was about
a one-year
study which showed that, on average, 90 people a day
(who met on eHarmony) get married.
2) A second press release
was on a study
showing that eHarmony couples who marry are “happier” than
other married couples.
3) The third press release was the introduction a new eHarmony.com service
to help married couples with their relationship.
This type of branding is priceless. eHarmony.com has effectively
positioned itself as the leading service for people
who are marriage-minded. Very smart.
Unfortunately,
eHarmony.com isn’t
perfect when it comes to branding. The top two services
Online Dating Magazine receives
the most complaints about, when it comes to customer
service, are eHarmony.com and True.
Because customer service is an important part of
branding, eHarmony.com is
far from perfecting its routine. But eHarmony.com still
outranks all other services in painting a clear branding
message through
all of its communication mediums. And this will only
help
them build their empire.
Unfortunately, this month also brought about a branding
snafu for online dating service PerfectMatch.
Until now, PerfectMatch had
done a decent job of creating a message of it being
an online dating service open to all dating ages.
The service has a brilliant marketing team who secured
deals to feature PerfectMatch in
movies like "Must Love Dogs". The service
is being featured in even more movies this year.
But PerfectMatch hit
a branding snafu late last month when they put out
a press release all about the increase
and migration of people over the age of 50 doing online
dating. They then provided tips to seniors. Via this
press release,
PerfectMatch has confused its
users as to who the target audience is. From reading
the release, you get the idea that PerfectMatch is
going after an older group. For younger members, this
type of publicity sends a mixed message. It’s
not bad to address the 50+ market (after all it is
one of the leading growing marketplaces of online daters),
but you must do so without alienating any other consumers
that are a part of who you are. Now if PerfectMatch is
changing its whole branding to become a Baby Boomer
/ Senior dating site, then this whole example is void.
As you can see, they’ve done a good job of confusing
me too.
Define your branding message and make sure it is conveyed
in every bit of communication you put out, no matter
how big or how little. Always emphasize and build upon
your message to achieve successful branding.
From Branding to Databases
As promised in
last week's column, today will be my
first in a series of tips to gain new users. In every
column,
I’ll
include a tip and when they are all put together,
you’ll
see powerful results.
Tip #1: Offer a Lifetime Membership
Be prepared to lose a lot of money for up to a year
or so when you start a new online dating service. Your
most
important
goal should be to build your user database. People
do not want to sign up with a service that only has
10, 100, 1000, or 10,000 members. They want to know
that in their city they’ll have lots of people
to select from. So when you open your service, open
it
with a
free lifetime membership for the first 1,000 – 10,000
people that sign up. Consider these the pioneers of
your project that are helping you build it. Their reward
is that they get to forever use the service for free.
Your reward is that you build your userbase.
Don’t offer wimpy “charter” subscriptions
like True did
when it opened as TrueBeginnings.com. They advertised
a free charter membership and set the expiration
dates of everyone who signed up to the year 2059. I
know, because I was one of them. Then a year later
they “expired” all those memberships and
claimed that if anyone wanted to continue their charter
"lifetime" membership, they’d have
to pay $99. It was very deceitful, dishonest, and a
slap in
the
face of those who initially joined their service to
help build the userbase.
One
thing I like is the approach that a new service called
PickMeQuick is
taking. This new online dating service is offering
5,000 free lifetime memberships. And in the top right-hand
corner of their page, they publicize how many are left
to grab. Although unrelated, another thing I like about
PickMeQuick is
their approach. The developers know that people will
read a profile most likely based on the picture. So
their whole dating service is designed around your
photo. If you don’t have a photo you can’t
participate because your photo is the central aspect
of how their service is designed. (Note: Several months
after this column was originally published, PickMeQuick
- like 99.9% of other new online online dating services
- shut its doors. As a result, we have removed the
links to the site that originally appeared in this
paragraph).
Lifetime
memberships alone won’t build your
online dating service. That’s why in every Inside
the Online Dating Industry column I’ll offer
a new tip and as you apply them all together, you’ll
create a powerful medium to help you succeed.
Good luck in all your endeavors. I look forward to
our time together next week.
Joe
Tracy is
publisher of Online Dating Magazine and is often quoted
by the media in relation to online dating topics. His Inside
the Online Dating Industry column is published monthly.
> Perfectmatch.com - The best approach to find the one.
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