Getting Them to Swipe Right: 7 Secrets That Online Dating Has Taught Me About Marketing

After recently ending a twenty-year relationship, I am finding myself navigating a brand new landscape – the overwhelming, often murky terrain of online dating. The last time I was in the dating pool, Relax from Frankie Goes to Hollywood was playing at the clubs. (Google it, young whippersnappers; Relax was legendary in the club scene a million years ago.) My marketplace of choice: Bumble. If you are unfamiliar with it, Bumble is a simple profile-matching app very similar to Tinder where one swipes right on a candidate worthy of pursuing. If two people swipe right on each other, a match is made. (I prefer Bumble over Tinder, as Bumble affords women the luxury of initiating the first move.)

Dating apps like Bumble and Tinder can teach us a lot about effective marketing. What makes our buyers swipe right with us in a sea of other options? No matter what product or service we are marketing, we can learn a lot about how to connect with our customers by deconstructing some vital best practices of these immensely popular applications:

1. Don’t Dodge the Limelight

Be clear to your customers what you offer, and be unapologetic about it. Boldly declare who you are and what you can provide. A confused mind doesn’t buy…or swipe right. There’s nothing that will make me swipe left faster than random pictures of the Eiffel Tower or Ninja, one’s trusty labradoodle sitting in front of the canoe.