April 7, 2016
What Tinder Can Teach Brands About Social Advertising
You wouldn’t chat up your boss about last night’s raging party, and boring a date with the intricacies of high finance would be out of the question. The same etiquette of social appropriateness applies to social marketing and advertising, where opportunities to engage—or alienate—your audience abound. If, like any savvy digital marketer, you’re targeting customers across their preferred channels, devices, and platforms, you may stand to learn two valuable lessons from none other than hookup-hub Tinder about how best to pique their interest and earn their trust, using the right platforms with the right messages at the right time.
1. Know Your Audience and Environment
Sure, you know your audience. You’ve done the work: segmented, collected data, created personas. But “Social Worker Susan” probably projects a very different version of herself to family and colleagues on Facebook than she does to friends on Snapchat and potential love interests on Tinder: from cardigans and glasses to silly, painted faces to leopard crop tops and vermillion lipstick, profiles and attitudes shift across platforms—and so should your presentation of your brand.
Tinder’s Marketing Manager, Kyle Miller, recently underscored the importance of understanding how your audience navigates a specific environment at this year’s Digital Summit LA: Tinder users are looking for excitement, adventure, and new experiences and people. Therefore, brands advertising on Tinder should attract, titillate—even shock—users better than the best profiles.
When you create your next ad, think about your audience’s mindset on that platform. As Laura Wilson, Director of Digital Engagement and Social Media at Georgetown University, revealed at Digital Summit LA, Facebook users post aspirational versions of their lives—marathons, travel, babies—while users embrace Snapchat because the impermanence of their images and videos allows them to be less self-presentational, to have fun.
2. Add Value Online and Offline
The brands that stand out from the clutter of social ads and content are often the ones who truly bring value to the relationship with their customers. Whether it’s a hilarious video, a tutorial on how to grill the best steak, or an identifiable brand story, your customers will appreciate you more when they’re cracking up their coworkers, impressing their friends, or finally finding a feeling of belonging in a little corner of the vast web. Be the reason your customers feel like better versions of themselves. Give them experiences that will make your brand unforgettable.
Tall order, right? It doesn’t have to be. Scale your marketing to your resources: maybe a video isn’t in the budget now, but perhaps a contest or giveaway is. Whatever the scope of the campaign, strive to inform, intrigue, and entertain your audience.
Where There’s an Audience, There’s an Opportunity
Sixty-five percent of the adult population in the U.S. is on social media, and there are 1.6 billion active mobile social accounts globally.12 These statistics are hard to ignore. Brands taking notice of them and acting should remember Tinder’s advice to advertisers: know your audience’s mindset on the platform they’re using, and align your marketing message to it. And, as Digital Summit LA Keynote Speaker, Author and MarketingProfs Chief Content Officer Anne Handley recommends, place your brand in the context of your customers’ lives and make sure your messaging is bigger, braver, and bolder than your competitors’.
[1] http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/10/08/social-networking-usage-2005-2015/
[2] http://socialpilot.co/blog/125-amazing-social-media-statistics-know-2016/
