I’ve talked often about seasonality with regards to online dating – there’s a clear peak demand for online dating from 27th December onwards.
Throughout most of the year, online dating needs to be actively “sold” as a concept, then a particular brand needs to be sold to the consumer. However, if people have a higher disposition to search for a partner then it’s much easier to sell a particular brand to them.
A good indicator of propensity to buy is to look at what people are searching for and when. For example, using Google Insights you can search for when people are looking for “dating” sites:
http://www.google.com/insights/search/#content=1&cat=299&geo=GB&q=dating&date=1%2F2007+25m&cmpt=q
This clearly shows a peak in January 2008 and January 2009 compared to the rest of the year.
In January 2008 you can see an increase in searches of around 50% compared to early December and a similar pattern is repeated in January 2009.
It’s unusual for us to advise partners to focus their marketing spend on the short-term (generally we recommend a slow but steady increase in marketing spend through the course of the year) but with consumers far more motivated to pay for a dating service as part of a New Years resolution it makes sense to increase your marketing spend in January by 50%-100% above your normal spend.
We’ll be putting our money where our mouth is – increasing spend for our own-brand sites such as:
http://www.singles365.com/
http://www.datingagency.com/
http://www.justsingles.com/
Looking forward to a fantastic January 2010!!
Posted by Dr Q on December 31, 2009 at 10:37 am
God damn cyber-pimp!