By Matthew Pitt

WINDSOR, UK – According to Google data, in 2012 Australia saw a 21-percent year-over-year growth in dating search queries. If you’re looking to move into a lucrative casual-dating market outside the U.S., Australia is the place to invest.

Of the top eight most popular online dating sites in Australia, half are targeted to casual dating. In November, we suggested how entrepreneurs could break into the market. Now it’s time to learn about how to build and expand your business to help it remain profitable.

Aussie authenticity

With the Australian dating market largely dominated by a number of long-standing players operating generic sites, an investment in niche dating, whether stand-alone or as an extension of a wider brand, could really help to grow your user base and extend reach.

Aussies are all about authenticity. They want to know their brand is tailored to them and isn’t just a carbon copy of a site wishing to extend its brand across territories. If your site looks just like any other run-of-the-mill casual dating site, users will bounce instantly.

It’s essential to tailor your content to Australian users individually. That means you need continuity across copy and imagery. Be wary of over-using slang, however. Whilst Aussies frequently may drop slang into speech, written tone tends to be much more formal.

To extend your efforts to highlight brand authenticity even further, consider creating individually localised sites. Despite its size, Australia is sparsely populated and highly urbanized: More than 70 percent of the country’s 22.8 million people live in the 10 largest cities. With a landmass only a little smaller than the U.S., that tells us people in Sydney aren’t going to travel to Melbourne to hook up. Location-based sites will help you connect users who are more likely to convert into members, thus increasing profitability. Consider localising advertising campaigns, too.

An affluent market

Australia is an affluent market. Salaries are higher than in many other regions; therefore, so are price points. Additionally, the mobile scene is strong. Australia leads in multi-device adoption: non-desktop devices consistently garner a 48-percent share of dating search queries from Australia. What’s more, 60 percent of Australians own a smartphone, with a higher proportion of women taking ownership than anywhere else in the world. With female user engagement a high priority, mobile compatibility is a ready-made advantage to making a site successful.

In 2012, Australian mobile traffic grew 491 percent faster than desktop traffic on the WhiteLabelDating.com platform alone, indicating that if your casual-dating business doesn’t place an emphasis on mobile traffic, you’re likely to be left behind.

The opportunities to create and maintain a profitable dating business in Australia are second-to-none, if you know where to invest. With the market growing so quickly, what are you waiting for?

Matthew Pitt is Operations Director at WhiteLabelDating.com, where he is responsible for international strategy; currently, he’s leading the company’s expansion into Australia and the U.S. Pitt has more than 15 years of digital experience and has worked extensively in the dating industry.

Launched in 2003, award-winning WhiteLabelDating provides the software, membership database, customer care, infrastructure and ‘out-of-the-box’ dating solution for more than 10,000 dating sites worldwide. Webmasters, affiliates and publishers provide the brand, design and marketing, and WhiteLabelDating takes care of the rest.