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Some weeks ago I began an arduous journey. I had reluctantly concluded that my life was in a suitably depressing state to warrant a foray into online dating.
I’d like to share my experience in the context of ‘research findings’ – a context I can happily use to assuage my shame and justify to myself that I’ve written this during work hours. To complete the charade, I’ve titled it to help you justify to yourself reading what I have to say about this insidious experience. So with both of us off the meat hook, feel free to read on.
I have attempted to adhere to some basic privacy guidelines, but you should know that, whilst no animals were thankfully involved, plenty of feelings were hurt in the making of this blog post. Now, let’s get started.
As I inferred, it’s a meat market. Whatever way you look at it, when you choose to publish your profile on a dating website, you are putting yourself in life’s shop window for the world to judge you in the cowardly safety of their own home… or, more likely, their elderly parents’ home! To give this article some structure and meaning I’ve adopted one of marketing’s most elementary frameworks: Product – Price – Place – Promotion.
Product (also known as “you”)
1. Take time to understand what you are really selling
Just as every marketer takes time to understand the way something works before they try and sell it, you need to understand yourself before you set up your profile. For a lot of people like me, this can be a bit tricky. Who am I? What am I looking for? I hadn’t asked a lot of these fundamental questions since my pimply, adolescent youth. Better to take some time to think these things through than attempt it on the fly during registration. As I later found out, “Gainfully employed masturbator seeks career break” didn’t exactly swell my inbox. And, although that seemed funny to me, an un-filtered sense of humour wasn’t what I was really selling. What I was really selling was a less spikey version of down to earth, ironic honesty. ‘Outrageous’ isn’t really me, so I just needed to tone it down. And that leads me to the next point.
2. Don’t just say it…. BE it
I found a lot of people claiming to have a good sense of humour, but they weren’t showing it. Equally, there were plenty complaining about only ever meeting boring people. When I read their profiles, I understood why. They sounded boring themselves. Online, like attracts like. The right transactions happen naturally if the truth is allowed to show itself.
Price
3. Value your product appropriately
OK, I didn’t actually end up paying for introductions or indeed, selling my own body. But you’ll pay the price if you don't consider the exchange of value you want and how you want it to work. Believe me, it is obvious when you sound desperate, bored, depressed, fussy or negative - obvious to everyone apart from you, perhaps. So collaborate to produce the right value proposition.
4. Invest time wisely
The real currency involved in online dating is time. How you spend ‘time’ is important: establishing your profile, creating your settings, conducting searches, answering emails. For women with facial features roughly in alignment, it is not unusual to receive 500 inbound contacts from men in the first week. For men that look like me, this number tends to be closer to 5. Even at the lower end of this spectrum, that’s a lot of headspace unless you’re prepared to make some worryingly quick judgments. Generally speaking therefore, most women don’t need to go shopping, they get home delivery without even ordering. For men, it tends to be the opposite. The best way to learn how these transactions take place, their conventions and rituals, is to participate. Over time, you’ll learn to sharpen your focus but here are some quick tips to work with from day one:
- Qualify prospects as much as you can: a surprising number of men don’t read a woman’s profile.
- Stick to your plan: don’t look for something that isn’t there just because you’d like it to be.
- Understand how functionality can help you save time: some sites will prevent an email being sent to you if the sender doesn’t meet your exact requirements. This saves you dealing with unqualified enquiries.
Place
5. Niche may not always be best
My qualitative research was conducted on the mainstream Australian sites: match, rsvp and plentyoffish. Whilst they differ in a number of ways, they do seem to set themselves apart in terms of the quality of their functionality and user compared to the more niche competitors. The tail in this category is not only long but rather shabby. Niche sites have grown around communities split by religious faith, ethnicity, sexuality and appearance. Compare the controversial www.beautifulpeople.com with www.theuglybugball.net and you quickly see that there is a marketplace for everyone. But, the niche and free sites rely on display advertising dollars, suffer with poor usability and uncommitted users. The more respectable sites are not without problems however. I regularly encountered fake accounts on match.com which belonged to escort services. These were generally identifiable from the profile picture and their search for men aged 18 – 99! Of course, these issues damage brand equity and enforce the need for thorough first hand media research.
Promotion
6. Understand your actual first impression
In many cases, the first impression is created by your username not your photo or anything in your profile. This provides a great opportunity to capture interest. After much deliberation, I plumped for ‘UrBumLooksFineInThat’ as a sort of faux-sardonic indictment on a familiar male social dilema...have I mentioned I sometimes over-analyse?
7. Be prepared for immediate trading
As soon as your profile is live, you should expect the action to start, especially if you’re female. There is no ‘soft launch’ option and you need to be prepared for a confronting experience that includes rejection, rudeness and alarming directness! Be prepared for a range of mindsets and keep your expectations in check. Here are my tips on survival:
- Use a new, dedicated, anonymous email address to keep things separate from friends and work.
- Develop and stick to your policy on responding. Don’t bother replying with platitudes, it’s likely to backfire or snowball.
8. Keep control of the things you can control
Many people choose to keep their photos private. They can then decide who is granted access to them. This level of functionality isn’t always apparent to people at first. First-hand experience allows you to exploit the functionality.
9. Unresponsive is cool
Most importantly, it’s never good to rush your replies to emails from admirers. I realised that by receiving emails on my mobile and replying promptly in the way I do to other emails, it gave the impression I was some kind of desperate stalker who was permanently logged-in. Obviously, this is a long way from being accurate…. well….. quite a long way. But regardless, unlike other online situations, responsiveness has a detrimental impact on sales.
Let me know what you think of these similarities and differences. I’m all ears (but don’t let my unique physical attributes stop you asking me out if you think we'd get along!)
