6 Reasons Why Tinder Should Be Treated As Another Social Media App

Hot In Social Media
5 min readJun 14, 2017

How can a dating app be used to promote your business, you might ask? But wasn’t similar questions asked when Twitter appeared on our radar? Or when Snapchat stormed the lives of our younger generation? Every popular social media platform is finding its place in business marketing nowadays. Everything depends on your needs, creativity, and point of view.

Let’s walk through the six reasons of why Tinder should be treated as another social media app.

6 Reasons Why Tinder Should Be Treated As Another Social Media App

1. Tinder has all the main features of a social media platform

Yes, Tinder is not just another mobile application. It is a social network. Like in any other social networks, you create a profile, you connect with others and share various information and visuals. The purpose of Tinder is to find and engage with other people that share similar interests and are located in the same region as you are.

One of its main features, the swiping right/left action, has already become a trademark of Tinder and is spreading around the world very fast being mentioned in many TV shows and even movies. Something like Facebook Likes or Twitter hashtags once were.

2. Tinder has more than 50 million active users

The research has shown that this social media app is already counting more than 50 million active users. On average every person checks his account 11 times per day and spends approximately 90 minutes a day in total using the platform. And over 80% of these users are aged between 16 and 34. As you see, the platform is growing very quickly, and if your targeted audience falls in this age range, then you should definitely consider including Tinder into your marketing campaign.

3. You can filter users by three main demographic segments

What is great about Tinder is that you can choose what kind of audience you would like to reach. You can filter people by age, gender, and location. Also, when you use filtering by location, you can choose an extra radius around that place of how long you want the search to expand. This is especially a great option for local business because you have the ability to reach a potential audience exactly in your region.

4. It is not only for finding your love anymore

Yes, you read it right. Not everyone is looking for a date on Tinder. One of the research showed that 42% of all Tinder users are already in a relationship. You might think that all of them are cheaters and only looking for a one-night stand, but it is not. Some of them probably are, but not everyone. Even Sean Rad, the co-founder of Tinder, is using the app from time to time even though he is not single. As he explains it is just a form of spending free time to see if any friends are using the app or simply have a conversation with random people. Another reason why Sean Rad is using Tinder is to gather information from users of what they think about Tinder. He simply just hooks up with random users, has a little conversation and asks their opinion. And there are many people who use the application in that way. As Sean Rad formulated, Tinder is not so much a dating app anymore as it is a “social discovery app.” And, the group meeting function introduced not so long ago proves just that.

5. Tinder is for one-on-one conversations

You have probably heard many times marketers talking about how important a one-on-one conversation with your customers might be to your business. Tinder could be a perfect tool for this kind of strategy because the whole application is designed for one-on-one conversations. You are shown a picture of a random person. If you would like to start a conversation with him/her, you just swipe the picture to the right. If no, then swipe left and look for another picture. If both, you and the person on the other side of a screen swipe to the right, then you have a match and can start a conversation. As you will see in the examples below, some brands have adapted this feature to their marketing campaigns very creatively.

6. Tinder has its own advertising platform

It is not a public platform yet, but you can contact Tinder’s ad sales department and negotiate the terms of launching a marketing campaign on this platform. Some of the well-known brands have already used advertising on Tinder and come up with some interesting ideas. Here are a couple examples what kind of advertising campaigns were launched.

Ex Machina

During the SXSW festival, every male person that was using Tinder matched a beautiful 25 years old girl named Ava. After having a little chat, very soon attendees realized that Ava was just a robot whose profile was created to promote the film Ex Machina. Maybe the campaign might have looked a little bit creepy, but it definitely raised the buzz around this movie.

Another great example of Tinder marketing was a Swipe Right Night event created for basketball fans by The Atlanta Hawks during one of the games. All single spectators interested in meeting other singles were encouraged to use Tinder and swipe right to win access to special “Love Lounges” filled with other singles. Accompanied with Twitter marketing and other types of promotion it was quite an event that night that really spread through the internet.

The examples above are from big brands that can afford to spend money on big marketing campaigns. But what about small businesses that do not have large budgets for advertising on a quite controversial social media platforms. Well… One of the greatest examples is Mick Ristevski who uses Tinder to promote his electrical company. He created his personal profile on Tinder and put a short description with his contact information and what service he offers. This kind of promotion cost nothing, and all he needed was to spend some time on Tinder and find some potential customers. And there are many like Mick.

As you can see, Tinder has all the features any social media platform should have. Just do not forget that all your efforts should be focused on having a warm conversation with a potential customer. Forget about cold selling because it does not work in an environment like this. You have to make every customer feel special. Always listen. Always ask questions and… always engage.

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