With a UK lockdown starting on Thursday (5th Nov 2020) we wanted to remind our partners that it’s not all bad! As a result of the previous lockdown, our partners saw an +11% increase in new same-day subscriptions across their UK mainstream brands. In this blog we’ll provide insight into popular search queries, as well as share the top ten lockdown dating related search terms which have seen search frequency increase by +5000% this year.
What another lockdown will mean for White Label Dating’s partners
This isn’t new – we’ve been here before. Throughout the first lockdown of 2020 that started in March, our partners experienced some extremely healthy upgrade rates and generated high returns. This enabled them to continue supporting society, in light of the current pandemic. Our partners are getting ready for round two!
Here’s a reminder of what happened during the last lockdown
Back in April, at the peak of lockdown, people turned to the internet and found a new-norm for connecting with friends, family and dates online. Our UK mainstream niche alone saw an +11% uplift in the number of new same-day subscriptions in the 30 day period following the start of lockdown (March 16th), versus the 30 day period previous. Same-day subscriptions are the result of members upgrading their free memberships to paid subscriptions on the same day that they join a dating site.
Don’t just take our word for it – here’s what Google Trends is showing
In April, we analysed the popularity of online dating versus offline dating related search queries using Google Trends. We demonstrated that there was a huge uplift in online dating related search terms since the beginning of the year, with offline dating related search terms contrarily showing a large decline.
We have continued to explore what people are searching for in the subsequent months and found that naturally search interest started to plateau, following huge spikes at the end of March and throughout April. Search interest over time (the popularity of a given search term, out of 100) for offline dating related searches plateaued at an all time low and these aren’t expected to recover any time soon.
2020 – Interest over time results ‘speed dating’ vs ‘online date’ in the UK (web search)
If users’ search behaviour remains the same, we can expect that from Thursday onwards (when the UK lockdown comes into play) we will see another spike in web search that is focused on online dating and meeting people online. We will, of course, continue to monitor search trends and share with you our initial findings in the coming weeks.
How you can start to prepare your campaigns for lockdown
Now is the time, if you haven’t already, to ensure that your marketing campaigns are ready for a surge in available search traffic and that your ads have the best chance of appearing in SERPS, as online dating related search terms become more popular in the coming weeks.
Remember, if you’re creating lockdown specific campaigns, your keywords should be paired with identically themed ads, as well as an appropriate landing page mirroring the message.
Want to go the extra mile?
Why not add some new juicy, but more importantly, useful, content to your blogs and landing pages. We already know that being at home is not impacting members’ desires to chat and find entertainment and connections online through dating sites, just like yours.
We looked at the popularity of web search terms ‘online date ideas’ and ‘lockdown dates’ across the UK. Both of these have seen considerable uplifts since March’s lockdown. We can see that following a steady decline, society started to get back to normal. However, since stricter regulations have been administered, the popularity is once again rising and we expect this will grow further throughout November.
2020 – Interest over time results ‘online date ideas in the UK (web search)
2020 – Interest over time results ‘lockdown dates’ in the UK (web search)
Which search queries should you be considering when creating ads and content?
Using a Google Trends related queries report to see which web search queries have seen the biggest increase in search frequency, we learned that the search query ‘online dating during lockdown’ has seen a ‘breakout’ increase. This means that the frequency at which the search term was searched grew by more than +5000%.
We also looked at closely related themes, such as ‘date ideas’, which is a common content piece for online dating brands. Below we have shared the top ten related queries that have also grown at a ‘breakout’ rate this year. These represent the fastest rising terms when looking at the popularity of search queries and are definitely worth including in your upcoming campaigns and landing page copy.
- Lockdown date ideas
- Date ideas in lockdown
- Lockdown date night ideas
- Virtual date ideas
- Quarantine date ideas
- Covid date ideas
- Date ideas during lockdown
- Indoor date night ideas
- Virtual date night ideas
- Quarantine date night ideas
For more information on anything covered in this blog, please contact our Partner team via [email protected].