The dating industry is massive. It will keep growing because people are getting busier, which leaves less time for looking for partners. With so much on our plates, wasting time on unsuccessful dating strategies isn’t something most people are ready to do nowadays.
And that’s good for people in your position because it means that as long as you deliver on what you promise, you can’t run out of business. There are always more new people seeking partners.
Of course, they don’t all want the same types of relationships. And everyone is different. That means the first step for everyone to build a dating platform or dating coaching business should be…
You’re there to serve a specific group of people. Those who want to make everyone happy usually make no one happy. So we suggest that you focus on a smaller group of people. The size of your target audience can warry, though…
There are many dating coaches for men or women. But not many for both. There are many dating sites for this or that type of dating. And you’ll notice that they scale easier than sites that want to serve everyone. Yes, the scaling potential is smaller, and a site that helps men get casual hookups will never grow to 100,000,000 users, even though it’s the best on the market. But the owners don’t even want that because they know that chasing big numbers would drop their quality, and singles seeking hookups would replace their platform with a site where there’s less competition and results come sooner.
In one episode of Mad Man, they say that: “Jews buy from Jews.” It may seem a bit silly when taken out of context, but that’s basically marketing in a nutshell. What Draper wanted to say: “People buy from people like them because they can relate to them, so it’s easier to trust them.”
So, if you’re a girl who wants to teach women how to find marriage material, you’ll have a hard time getting clients if you’re 45 and a 3-time divorcee. Or if you’re single.
The same goes for men.
With slight differences because men react to status. They don’t necessarily have to relate to you, but their future self MUST relate to you. You can’t be a millionaire trying to teach broke guys how to get hookups with models and expect them to believe that you’re in the same position. That’s why many male coaches (not only in dating) communicate stuff like: “I was like you until…”
All they’re doing is showing their audience they know how it feels to be them, but they also know how to get where they desire to be.
You need to constantly be in front of your audience's face. And to do that, you use social media, go on podcasts, pay for interviews… Do whatever it takes to make it impossible for your audience to forget you.
But be careful not to focus too much on yourself. Use as much social proof as possible. UGC (user-generated content) has been killing it for the last few years. Why? Because your audience is more likely to relate to other people who are exactly like them than to you.
Avoiding dating platforms as a dating coach might be clever if you position yourself correctly. But in general, it’s not recommended. So many male and female dating coaches share tips and tricks for getting dates online.
Find a way to be different from your competitor, but not so much that you reinvent the wheel. For example, if they give 100 icebreakers, you give 6. It will make you look more efficient.
This is the point where marketing stops and delivering on what you promised starts. No matter if you’re a coach or you’re building a hookup site. If your audience doesn’t get what they want, they’ll move on.
We’d go that far to say that if you have to choose between delivering and marketing yourself, invest 90% of your energy into delivering results and 10% into marketing. In the end, there’s no better marketing than overdelivering.
As soon as you start building a business, have a vision of it in the future. If you’re a dating coach, you want to eventually act as a supply chain for dates. Your audience should be able to enter your environment and follow simple steps toward their goals. Don’t build everything around a business model that can’t cooperate with other members of your industry.