Social Networks: Effective And Budget
From social networks since 2019, we still have two traffic channels: Telegram and Instagram (owned by Meta: the company is recognized as extremist and banned in the Russian Federation). These are the main marketing tools for the community, especially on a small budget.
Instagram (owned by Meta: the company is recognized as extremist and banned in the Russian Federation) has been used for marketing since March 2020, when Dasha Pugina joined the team – she took care of this account, began to buy ads on it, and from here the first external leads came.
Here is a great tool – Reels. We started making them in cuts from my podcasts, due to which we got additional subscribers and increased the reach of the audience that knows about us by 3-4 times. At the same time, despite the similar format (short video), TikTok videos did not show the same results. Cuts work poorly there, and the ideas of our SMM specialists could not be fully implemented. We have temporarily put this channel aside.
And now they switched entirely to Telegram.
Since November 2019, we have been organically developing the Khegai Network channel. The only time Natasha Babaeva mentioned him was in her channel – she had 7,000 subscribers. And from March 2020, when they began to be more actively engaged in marketing, they gradually bought advertising with the help of Zhenya Kovalenko, the Lemon for Tea channel owner. At first, they tried it themselves, but our price for attracting a subscriber turned out to be 80-100 rubles, while for Zhenya, it was 30-40 rubles due to the specifics of the posts.
Posts that appear on other channels to attract yours must meet two criteria :
- catch the eye;
- carry some meaning.
They may differ in style and even content from what is in your channel. For example, Zhenya makes texts for the community with the message “earning in dollars is not a bonus, but a necessity” and an appeal to “join the community to get rid of the next crisis with a slight fright.” For me, this is a dirty call-to-action, but it works in Telegram. And most importantly, to attract attention, a person will read 1-2 posts on the channel and decide whether it suits him or not. Thanks to this, the track grew from 3,000 to 10,000 subscribers.
Two difficult moments in Telegram for us:
- It isn’t easy to calculate the traffic from the channel—many direct transitions to the site, not from links, but in some other obscure way. Therefore, the exact efficiency of this channel is not known.
- We haven’t picked up a scheme on how to build a funnel for a cold audience. When people read the conditional two posts, it is unclear how to sell them. Presumably, here as with contextual advertising. You need to talk in detail, slowly about you, about the product, how everything works, and why it is interesting, helpful, and valuable.
In recent months, we have been experimenting with a simulator – this is a separate chat where we invite an audience from the Telegram channel and Instagram (owned by Meta:
The company is recognized as extremist and banned in the Russian Federation); we introduce Heg.ai participants and hold networking breakfasts. That is, we somehow try to warm up very cold subscribers. At the same time, we understand how this or that new subscriber suits us.
With a warm audience, the funnel has already been worked out:
- The user visits the site and leaves a request.
- He gets an appointment for an interview with the manager.
- The team sends reminders and some materials to him on Telegram.
- He passes the interview and, if he likes everything, enters.
Previously, after a person left a request, we sent messages later like “Thought? Are you entering?” It worked when the membership cost 10 thousand rubles, and it was already inefficient at the price of 40 thousand rubles. Due to the intermediate point, we increased conversions: on average, they are at the level of 10-15%, and with good promotions, they reach up to 25%.
Social networks also work through direct contact. During the pandemic, I opened Facebook (owned by Meta: the company was recognized as extremist and banned in the Russian Federation) and wrote to 800 friends that I wanted to call them. About 30% agreed, and 40-50 people eventually joined the community. And it was not a direct sale with the call “come in, buy!” – I just talked to those I knew about the project, and they introduced me to someone if there were requests.
We are working on a similar scheme through LinkedIn: we write to my friends, invite them to a networking breakfast, and offer to call the manager.
If you don’t understand where to get the first audience, this is a good option:
- Go to your contacts.
- If there are no contacts (for example, you are in another country), look for interesting people on social networks and write private messages.
- Meet, invite for coffee, and chat.
This is how I gathered meetups for 30-40 people in San Francisco.
Also Read: 10 Steps To Do Video Marketing On Instagram
