Promoting a dating app?

lastusername

A few months back my business partner and I acquired a dating app. We are looking to get a bit of buzz going around the app and we would see college students as the ideal market for obvious reasons - they are likely to share it, talk about it and show it to their friends and fellow students.

Both Tinder and Snapchat started out on college campuses, and after a slow start for the latter, both obviously went huge. We are not expecting the same (although it'd be nice), but our numbers are very low at the minute since we haven't had any kind of real exposure yet (we have around 300 monthly active members, around 20 daily active members and 5-10+ new signups per day).

Anyway, my question is does anyone have any recommendations for companies that carry out campus promotions? I'd be thinking DCU, UCD, Trinity and DIT, or even just one or two of those to start.

All advice welcome otherwise.

As for the app itself, it has previously been featured by Apple in the App Store, had features in the Huffington Post and elsewhere. We believe people want the app and like it, and that we just need to get in front of more people who will go on to share it and talk about it. If that doesn't happen we are reliant on paid advertising, which may not be profitable in terms of scaling up a userbase.

Axwell

Why not start with a simple google search - couple of companies there to contact and get rates from - you are going to have to pay for advertising no matter way you look at it which you seem to be adverse to.

You haven't mentioned anything apart from you acquired the app, so have you actually done any advertising at all? There are a couple of really obvious things you could be doing especially with the timer of year and a new intake of students around the country but you haven't mentioned anything and at this stage have probably missed the boat to be honest.

What ideas have you come up with to promote this within the colleges?

What have you done to promote it so far?

lastusername

Axwell wrote: »

Why not start with a simple google search - couple of companies there to contact and get rates from - you are going to have to pay for advertising no matter way you look at it which you seem to be adverse to.

You haven't mentioned anything apart from you acquired the app, so have you actually done any advertising at all? There are a couple of really obvious things you could be doing especially with the timer of year and a new intake of students around the country but you haven't mentioned anything and at this stage have probably missed the boat to be honest.

What ideas have you come up with to promote this within the colleges?

What have you done to promote it so far?

Thanks Axwell, happy to share more details but I wanted the first post to be fairly concise.

We acquired the app from a company of young developers and designers who didn't have any marketing experience and so we bought if feeling we could add something in that sense.

I wouldn't say we've missed the boat considering it's not even the first week of college yet That said, we want to get moving, hence this post. I had a look on Google alright but only saw one company and their website doesn't look too active. I'll look into it further though.

As for what we've done so far, this is very much a side project and time is limited, but we are currently running an App Store campaign which has gotten us a few installs this week, but very few and our budget is limited too. So that is why we are looking for something that might bring us more of a viral impact or buzz (even on a small scale).

We've also done a bit of PR - we had a write up on a supposedly large dating advice site, but that has brought in next to no traffic. We are going to do more PR though, and will be submitting our pitch to a paid PR distribution service.

It's a unique concept but won't be for everyone - but we need to get in front of enough people to know if it's going to fly.

Axwell

So first off college may not have started but all the work preparing stuff has in most cases. You have an influx of freshers starting college but the prep work in terms of freshers week is well under way if not already done. Any of the colleges that have welcome packs for students with freebies etc will be already organised, printed, stuff gathered and sponsors decided..so from that sense I think you will find you probably have missed the boat. There may be some opportunities but its probably something you should have been contacting them about over a month ago.


If your target market is young college people then why waste money on app store advertising at the minute. Every college in Ireland has a new batch of first years starting right now. All of which are going to have a freshers week with loads of events and activities. You could be contacting the colleges and looking to sponsor an event or partner up with venues they are having them in. I'm not sure there is even a need to waste money going to a PR company when you can contact the student unions marketing person directly and see what options there are. That's just focusing on the new students in first year alone.


When you say its a unique concept is there something niche or different about it? If its not for everyone is it a case that it only appeals to people of a certain demographic? If it is then that also determines how you market it and the approach may be different. Hard to know what advice to give without knowing all the details. Whats the name of the app?

lastusername

Axwell wrote: »

So first off college may not have started but all the work preparing stuff has in most cases. You have an influx of freshers starting college but the prep work in terms of freshers week is well under way if not already done. Any of the colleges that have welcome packs for students with freebies etc will be already organised, printed, stuff gathered and sponsors decided..so from that sense I think you will find you probably have missed the boat. There may be some opportunities but its probably something you should have been contacting them about over a month ago.


If your target market is young college people then why waste money on app store advertising at the minute. Every college in Ireland has a new batch of first years starting right now. All of which are going to have a freshers week with loads of events and activities. You could be contacting the colleges and looking to sponsor an event or partner up with venues they are having them in. I'm not sure there is even a need to waste money going to a PR company when you can contact the student unions marketing person directly and see what options there are. That's just focusing on the new students in first year alone.


When you say its a unique concept is there something niche or different about it? If its not for everyone is it a case that it only appeals to people of a certain demographic? If it is then that also determines how you market it and the approach may be different. Hard to know what advice to give without knowing all the details. Whats the name of the app?

It's a voice dating app where each person's picture starts out blurred, and becomes clearer as the conversation progresses. You record a quick voice greeting and you can swipe through other people's greetings and send them a voice message.

So it puts the focus back onto personality a lot more, and voice is very powerful as we know. And then it doesn't take long to start to see what someone looks like too.

As for the campus promotions, I'd be thinking of more something like a couple of stands and some merchandise as opposed to being part of welcome packs which I'd doubt would be a runner anyway as such.

I'd be going for the on-campus presence where students would pass by and download it out of curiosity after seeing the brand / logo.

Axwell

Well its certainly a unique and different approach. Dating apps are usually used for two purposes, people who actually want to date and find a serious relationship and those that want to get laid. Swiping and listening to someones voice with no idea what they look like sounds like a lot of effort for a potential disappointment. First impressions count and people go off looks and what they are attracted to on these apps, personality is secondary.

Personally I cant imagine either person wanting to start talking over a few voice messages and get to the point where they see the persons image and then have the awkwardness of saying they arent into them based on their looks. But as you said its not for everyone and there may be a percentage that prefer to talk first and then reveal their picture.

If you already have 300 users have you done research in to their data to see what demographic they are to confirm that students are the kind of users you should be after? Or done some focus groups and asked people to see if there is a certain age group that might be more inclined to use it vs the other ones out there?

Generation Y seem to look like they are all over the student/campus PR so maybe contact them and see what they can do for you.

jimmii

It's kind of like dating in the dark the app! Certainly different but as Axwell says might mean just delaying the disappointment. Have you done any sort of focus groups? A personality driven dating app doesn't seem to be a natural fit for students I wouldn't have thought. Once the novelty had worn off notice they'd stick with it. Is there a setting where you can make the picture display quicker or is it fixed for everyone?

lastusername

Axwell wrote: »

Well its certainly a unique and different approach. Dating apps are usually used for two purposes, people who actually want to date and find a serious relationship and those that want to get laid. Swiping and listening to someones voice with no idea what they look like sounds like a lot of effort for a potential disappointment. First impressions count and people go off looks and what they are attracted to on these apps, personality is secondary.

Personally I cant imagine either person wanting to start talking over a few voice messages and get to the point where they see the persons image and then have the awkwardness of saying they arent into them based on their looks. But as you said its not for everyone and there may be a percentage that prefer to talk first and then reveal their picture.

If you already have 300 users have you done research in to their data to see what demographic they are to confirm that students are the kind of users you should be after? Or done some focus groups and asked people to see if there is a certain age group that might be more inclined to use it vs the other ones out there?

Generation Y seem to look like they are all over the student/campus PR so maybe contact them and see what they can do for you.

As a previous big user of dating apps myself, I would say that most daters will try most if not all new apps that come along, just out of curiosity if nothing else.

Like you say, there may be some who don't want to wait to see what someone looks like and they may also not fancy the voice aspect (recording themselves), but then they aren't in our target market anyway I guess!

We haven't done any focus groups (yet anyway), but interestingly it seems that we have more 20-somethings than any other group. We have people in their late teens right up to their 40s, but I do see quite a few 20-somethings. 30-somethings would be the next largest group.

I think this makes sense as with a novel concept like this, it may be the case that the younger and more of a 'digital native' you are, the more likely you are to naturally embrace and try out new concepts.

So a college audience could be a great fit. If it's not just your usual Tinder-like model, then they will be more likely to say 'oh did you try out that new app?!'

We actually have over 2k users total on the app, but a lot of these will have come via a site that drove a lot of traffic for the founding team years back and which would have involved a lot of people who downloaded just to have a look (as in they love trying new apps, whatever they may be).

Right now though, as mentioned we have a consistent 300 monthly active users and around 20 daily actives. Some days we see very high engagement with the app. For example, just checking this morning, our stats show the time in app per user on Thursday was 13:01 minutes.

It won't always be that high (Aug 28 was 5:24 minutes), but it does show that people do spend time on it when they are active as users.

If this trend continued, and our user base scaled up 10x, we'd be looking at around 3k users and 200-300 daily actives possibly, which to me sounds like we'd really have something at that stage.

lastusername

jimmii wrote: »

It's kind of like dating in the dark the app! Certainly different but as Axwell says might mean just delaying the disappointment. Have you done any sort of focus groups? A personality driven dating app doesn't seem to be a natural fit for students I wouldn't have thought. Once the novelty had worn off notice they'd stick with it. Is there a setting where you can make the picture display quicker or is it fixed for everyone?

Yeah we are cautious about saying it's personality-driven actually, as we don't want people to think it's exclusively for those who aren't oil paintings!

It's more putting the emphasis back on personality, but it really doesn't take long to tell what someone looks like - 2-3 messages tops really, and then the full picture is revealed after 5 messages.

And yes, good point! As it happens that is one of the paid features we'd hope to introduce later on, after we've grown our user base - the ability to see what someone looks like more quickly.

When it comes to dating apps, as I said above singletons will try anything that looks interesting and doesn't conflict with their values (a lot of people will avoid Tinder as it has a rep as a hook-up app, for example), and so I believe it's about getting our app in front of lots of new people.

Thereafter, as with any dating app, many will drop off, but what we are seeing is that around 7-10% of those active in a given month also visit the app every day. So DAU is around 7-10% of MAU: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daily_active_users

I am actually not sure if those numbers are 'good' or not, but they seem pretty alright to me.

Axwell

So I had a look on the app store and came across two apps. I imagine yours is one of them, the concerning thing is they are both a copy of the other from looking at the description images. So right away the idea isnt novel anymore.

You will always have people copy ideas so being first to market and having a unique usp is important but assuming yours is the first one I came across you should have concerns about the other one and if they have a marketing budget or a wider reach to make theres a success ahead of yours. I didnt downlod them or go into much research as its not my concern.

Also just to mention from looking at the screenshots, the persons image is only slightly blurred. You can still get a good idea what the person looks like before they are fully revealed so it might help you to highlight that or make it sound less like you cant see the person pretty much till the reveal which could cause the concerns i raised above about the awkwardness after the reveal.

lastusername

Axwell wrote: »

So I had a look on the app store and came across two apps. I imagine yours is one of them, the concerning thing is they are both a copy of the other from looking at the description images. So right away the idea isnt novel anymore.

You will always have people copy ideas so being first to market and having a unique usp is important but assuming yours is the first one I came across you should have concerns about the other one and if they have a marketing budget or a wider reach to make theres a success ahead of yours. I didnt downlod them or go into much research as its not my concern.

Also just to mention from looking at the screenshots, the persons image is only slightly blurred. You can still get a good idea what the person looks like before they are fully revealed so it might help you to highlight that or make it sound less like you cant see the person pretty much till the reveal which could cause the concerns i raised above about the awkwardness after the reveal.

Yep I had a look before and did see some that were similar, but sounds like you've found one that is very similar - mind PMing me the two you spotted?

I'm concerned about competition though outside of someone copying the app of course. There will always be competition and it's not about the idea, it's about the execution and of course your budget, marketing approach, and so on.

We can't control what other apps do, only what we do and how we tackle things.

On the stats I mentioned: DAU, MAU - what are your thoughts on those numbers? Obviously they are very small right now, but I think if we can scale up to 5x and 10x over the coming months, we could be in a good position starting off 2019 and maybe even attract seed investment. And of course Christmas and the New Year is primetime for online dating!

Great point on the messaging too - will include that in the app store descriptions and elsewhere. Thanks.

irishforeigner

I know this thread is old but i came here looking for suggestions on decent dating apps that are free and worthy of trying i will give it them go, I am curious how did you app do? Do you mind updating us?