How to increase dating traffic and attract more active users
How to increase dating traffic and attract more active users
The dating vertical is one of the most competitive and at the same time profitable niches in traffic arbitrage. Millions of users search for acquaintances online every day, creating huge demand. However, attracting their attention and, more importantly, making them take the target action is not an easy task. Success here does not depend on luck, but on a systematic approach, a deep understanding of the audience and constant optimization. You can’t just launch an ad and wait for a profit. You need to build a whole strategy that will allow you to receive high-quality traffic to dating and effectively monetize it.
In this article, we will analyze in detail how to organize work with dating offers, which traffic sources show the best results and how to create creatives that really convert. We will go all the way from choosing an affiliate program to scaling successful bundles.
The foundation of a successful campaign: Choosing an offer and analyzing the audience
Before investing a budget in advertising, you need to lay a solid foundation. Any effort to attract traffic will be in vain if you are pouring it into a weak offer or do not understand who exactly you are offering it to. It is at this stage that a large part of future success or failure is laid.
Choosing an affiliate program and offer
Not all dating offers are equally good. Choosing a reliable partner and a converting product is the first step to profitable arbitrage. Pay attention to the following aspects:
Payment model. Several models prevail in dating: CPL (Cost Per Lead) - payment for registration, SOI / DOI (Single / Double Opt-In) - registration with or without email confirmation, and CPS (Cost Per Sale) - payment for purchasing premium status or other paid services on the site. For beginners, it is easier to start with CPL SOI, since the target action is as simple as possible. Experienced arbitrageurs often work on CPS or RevShare, where income in the long term can be higher.
Advertiser reputation. Study the reviews about the affiliate program. It is important that the advertiser does not shave (artificially lower the number of conversions) and pays out rewards on time. The stability and honesty of the partner directly affect your ROI.
Geo and specifics of the offer. Dating traffic depends heavily on the country. In Tier-1 countries (USA, Western Europe), the rates are higher, but the competition is tougher, and users are more demanding. In Tier-2 and Tier-3 countries (Eastern Europe, Latin America, Asia), the rates are lower, but the audience is more loyal and the cost of traffic is lower. Offers are also divided into mainstream dating (serious relationships) and adult dating (meetings for adults). The approaches to promoting these areas are fundamentally different.
Deep analysis of the target audience
Understanding who your end user is is the key to creating effective advertising. The portrait of "men 25-45 years old" is too vague. You need to dig deeper.
Divide the audience into segments. For example, for mainstream dating, these could be: young people 20-28 years old looking for a serious relationship; divorced men 35-50 years old looking for a new partner; women 30-45 years old tired of loneliness. Each of these segments has its own pains, desires and triggers.
What motivates them? Loneliness, the desire to find a soul mate, the desire for social approval, boredom or the search for bright emotions. Your advertising message should hit exactly one of these needs. Audience analysis directly affects what creatives you will create and what targeting settings to use in order to get the most targeted dating traffic.
Key sources of traffic for the dating vertical
Once the offer is selected and the audience is clear, it's time to decide on the traffic source. Several channels perform well in dating, each with its own characteristics. Effective traffic for dating can be obtained from different places, the main thing is to understand the specifics of each of them.
Social networks: More than just likes
Facebook, Instagram, TikTok are a gold mine for an arbitrageur working with dating. They have a huge and active audience with detailed data for targeting.
On Facebook and Instagram, you can accurately target users by age, gender, interests (for example, "relationships", "dating"), marital status ("single", "divorced"). However, moderation here is very strict. Any hint of adult, explicit images or too aggressive calls will lead to a ban on the advertising account. Therefore, arbitrageurs often use pre-landing pages and cloaking methods to bypass moderation.
TikTok is a source of a predominantly young audience. Dating traffic comes from here perfectly, if you use the right approach. Advertising should be native: short videos shot in the style of the platform itself, using popular trends and music. The creative should look like regular user content, and not like direct advertising.
Push-uvedomeniya: Direct contact with the user
Push traffic is notifications that appear on the user's computer or smartphone screen. This format is relatively inexpensive and allows direct communication with the audience. The user has already agreed to receive notifications, which makes them more loyal.
Push notifications work well for dating because they allow you to create intrigue. Headlines like "You've received a new message!" or "Someone nearby wants to meet you" arouse curiosity and motivate you to click. The main thing is not to be too intrusive and carefully test the headlines, icons and texts of notifications. The quality of such traffic may be lower than from social networks, so it is especially important to filter out ineffective sites (create blacklists).
Teaser and native networks
Teaser networks are one of the oldest sources of traffic for arbitrage. They attract users through shocking or intriguing images and headlines. For dating, this is a working tool, especially for offers with a wide audience. Cons — a large number of bots and non-target audience. Working with teaser networks requires constant analysis and creation of blacklists and whitelists.
Native networks offer advertising that fits organically into the site content and looks like part of it (for example, the "We also recommend reading" block). Such dating traffic is usually of higher quality and more expensive than teaser traffic. Users trust native advertising more, which has a positive effect on conversion. This source is great for mainstream offers, where the image of a serious and reliable dating service is important.
Creating converting creatives and pre-landings
The most targeted traffic can be wasted if your creative does not catch the eye, and the pre-landing does not inspire confidence. This stage connects the traffic source and the offer into a single working bundle.
Psychology of creating creatives
Advertising creatives in dating should evoke emotions. People come to dating sites not because life is good; they are driven by loneliness, hope, curiosity or passion. Your task is to press the right emotional point.
Use real photos. Instead of stock models with perfect smiles, use photos of ordinary, attractive people. This creates a sense of authenticity and increases trust. The user should think: “This person could write to me.”
Create a story. The creative should hint at the beginning of an interesting story. For example, an image of a correspondence, where a girl writes an intriguing first message. Or a photo of a couple who is happily smiling, with the text “They met here a week ago.”
Play on curiosity. Use blur elements, notification icons, phrases like “See who liked you” or “Find out who lives 500 meters from you.” These are classic, but still working techniques to direct traffic to dating as effectively as possible.
Avoid overt vulgarity and nudity if you work with mainstream offers via social networks. Moderation will not allow this. It is better to use hints and understatement - this works much more effectively.
The role of pre-landing in increasing conversion
Pre-landing (or "gasket") is an intermediate page between your ad and the offer page. Its main task is to "warm up" the user, increase their trust and motivation to register. Directing traffic for dating directly to the advertiser's landing page is often less effective.
Popular pre-landing formats for dating:
Personal story or blog. A page designed as a personal blog, where the author tells his/her success story: how he/she was lonely, registered on site N and found his/her love. Such stories evoke empathy and trust.
Questionnaire or test. Pre-landing in the form of a short test "Is he/she right for you?" or "What type of partner do you need?" After answering a few questions, the user is asked to register on the site to see the "ideal candidates". This engages the user in the gameplay.
Imitation of the dating site interface. The user is shown a page similar to a personal account, with flashing icons of new messages and likes. To read them, you need to go through a quick registration.
The pre-landing page should stylistically match both the creative and the advertiser's site so that the user does not experience dissonance. This is a must-have tool for those who want to receive stable and profitable dating traffic.
Optimization and scaling of advertising campaigns
Launching an ad is just the beginning. The real work of an arbitrageur is data analysis, optimization and scaling.
Analytics and tracking: What is not measured, does not improve
Using a tracker (for example, Keitaro, Binom) when working with dating is not a recommendation, but a necessity. The tracker allows you to collect all statistics in one place and analyze the effectiveness of the campaign in terms of many parameters:
Traffic source
Advertising campaign
-Creative
Pre-landing
Geo, device, browser, time of day
By analyzing this data, you can see which creatives bring the most clicks (CTR), which pre-landings convert better (CR), and which platforms or audiences bring the cheapest lead (CPL) and the highest profit (ROI). Based on this information, you create blacklists (lists of ineffective platforms that are turned off) and whitelists (lists of the most profitable platforms for which the budget is increased). Without deep analytics, any dating traffic will be blindly merged.
Scaling strategies
When you have found a profitable combination (source + creative + pre-landing + offer), it is time to scale. Simply increasing the daily budget on a successful campaign is not always the best option. This can lead to audience burnout and a drop in ROI.
Proper scaling is a comprehensive approach. There are two main areas:
Vertical scaling. You gradually increase the budget for the most effective advertising campaigns and audiences that have already shown good results. This should be done smoothly so that the advertising network algorithms have time to adapt.
Horizontal scaling. You duplicate a successful combination for new variables. For example, launch it on other, similar geos. Or create similar (look-alike) audiences. Or adapt working creatives to another traffic source. This approach allows you to significantly increase the overall profit volume without overloading a single audience segment. This is how you can turn a small flow into a full-flowing river of high-quality dating traffic.
In conclusion, successful work with the dating vertical is a marathon, not a sprint. There is no magic “money” button here. Profit is the result of meticulous work: deep analysis, constant testing, the ability to work with data and quick adaptation to changing conditions. By understanding user psychology, choosing the right tools and constantly optimizing your campaigns, you can not only drive traffic to dating, but also build a stable and highly profitable business in the world of arbitrage.