Telegram Marketing: How to Use to Increase a Brand Awareness

The year 2022 showed that Ukrainian Telegram channels can gather hundreds of thousands of subscribers and the messenger itself is convenient for communication. Actually, many people make money with Telegram. At the same time, businesses often do not dare to use this network or have difficulties with its usage. Our friends from Looqme talked about Telegram marketing as a business trend, and why brands have time to start their communication and find their audiences here.

Announcing a new Telegram features on June 19, 2022, the team shared the analytics as well. As it was noted, during the year 22 Telegram became one of the Top 5 most often downloaded mobile applications worldwide and has more than 700 million active users every month. The team of the product indicated that such growth happens exclusively thanks to personal recommendations and Telegram has never paid for advertisements.

Pic.: Durov’s Channel

A great example of active Telegram audience growth is the official channel of the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi. A month before the start of a full-scale war in Ukraine the President’s telegram channel had 51,700 subscribers.

Source: backlinko (material for January 25, 2022)

As of October 2022, more than a million people have already subscribed to the messages from the Head of State.

Screenshot of the Telegram channel Zelenskiy / Official (October, 2022)

Undoubtedly, the push for such rapid growth was a full-scare invasion: people wanted to receive operational and verified information.

Facebook, Twitter or Instagram recommendations are presented in the tape-form, so it is easy to miss something important or to see one new from different sources several times. Telegram does not have a recommendation tape and channels with groups look like chats for users, as well as in the example with the President..

Own Telegram channels have become popular among opinion leaders. As the impetus for this, there were other social networks (mostly Instagram), which can shadow-ban, block and delete pages of their users. Telegram has a more loyal attitude to the content in comparison with other social networks.

A messenger is an effective tool for e-commerce as well. For example, the Ukrainian clothing, footwear and accessories brand THE LACE runs its channel in magazine form about lifestyle and fashion. Stylists select looks from the brand items, publish outfits for inspiration, film backstage, collaborate with influencers, make collections, talk about the fashion history and do ruffles. Comments are also available on the channel, so readers share their impressions under the posts. The team also uses a bot for feedback.

Screenshot of the Telegram channel THE LACE

Telegram gives an opportunity to create dialogs, group chats, channels and bots. All these communication formats can be used by brands as well.

Dialogues

More official questions should be discussed in an e-mail. However, to quickly clarify the details of, for example, flowers, coats or garden tools orders, you can contact the client via Telegram.

The client can read messages in Telegram at a convenient for him time. However, the most valuable thing about using dialogues is the growth of trust to the brand. Thanks to proper and personal communication, clients feel that the company is attentive to them and ready to use the time for satisfying the personal needs of customers. Such an approach increases loyalty to the brand.

This tool should be used for sales communication and product feedback.

Group chats

If the brand managed to form a circle of like-minded people around it, a group chat can be created for them. Your audience can discuss common issues there, and the brand organizer can act as a moderator. People from your audience in a such group chat can be your product testers, a source of feedback and reasonable criticism.

Also read in Collaborator's blog about the best Telegram channels for learning English and how to buy cheap backlinks that work. ➡️

Channels

The Telegram channel of the brand allows telling news about the company. It can be different formats of news: for someone – it can be main changes, which influence the use of the company products, and for others – the posting of all products and sales via Telegram. In addition, channels provide an opportunity to open comments for users and establish communication with them in this way.

However, the Telegram channel of the brand does not necessarily have to be related to sales. Expert channels, which are not directly dedicated to company products, increase brand awareness and trust.

The Company should choose one public tool: either a group chat or a channel. They are similar in their essence, because in both cases the messages are shared with a wide audience with an opportunity of discussion. However, the basis of a group chat is the community, but it is a brand in a case of channel. You have to understand why you need a public tool in Telegram before making a choice.

Chatbot

It is the opportunity to provide customers with informational support 24/7, simplification, and boost of their communication with the brand. Bots simultaneously reach a lot of users and save time for company employees.

In addition to answering basic questions, you can program a chatbot to conduct sales: so that the user could choose products and make a purchase directly in the interface. If it is hard for the user to decide on an order, the bot can offer to take a test and find out which product fits him/her. It is not so hard to program the bot for such functions as it may seem at first glance. There is a free open platform to help.

An example of using chatbot by company Idealist Coffee Co.

A chatbot is a flexible tool that you can customize for your needs. For example, the product by LOOQME MyNews Bot sends users fast notifications about mentions in the media. Customers can choose keywords for tracking and add details for the most relevant results: select countries, stop words, links, and limitations. All these functions are available 24/7 and you should not wait for a response from the support team. Three keywords can be tracked for free.

These are only a few examples of using bots in business. The form depends on tasks, which are planned to be solved with the help of the bot. Anyways and first of all, it saves employees’ time in solving typical customer questions, but only if a personal analysis of the situation is not required.

Choosing the communication via Telegram (dialog/chat/channel/bot), you should remember: your message will be situated among your personal messages from your mother, wife, or manicurist. What is your content valuable to the reader?

The same as other social networks, Telegram has paid and free promotion methods.

Free methods

The channel administrator can add people from his/her contacts to the subscribers. However, users can complain about you, so do not add strangers without their agreement.

Tell about the Telegram channel on your pages on other social networks. Add the link to the site and the design of your letter.

If your CEO or department director is a public person, ask him/her to tell about your channel on social networks and mention you in speeches.

Mutual PR with channels that have a related audience. For example, if your company is engaged in the manufacture of lamps, and the channel is about illumination, then the related audience can be found in channels for interior designers. During the mutual PR, you have to tell about the benefits of another channel and that one tells why is it worth subscribing to yours. You exchange your audiences in this way.

Selections of Telegram channels can also be a part of mutual PR. In this case, your channel about illumination will be next to the resource about kitchen furniture production, legal issues solutions during renovation and construction, and the channel with ready-made design projects.  

The second option of selection is media selection. Tell about yourself in Telegram or media, indicating that you would like to enter the selection of Telegram channels. However, you have to understand that sometimes such placement has paid basis.

Paid methods

Pay for advertising in Telegram channels or other social networks. The audience of the page or a blogger you will pay for post have to be potential interested in your content. You can buy advertising in Telegram cheaply and safely through special advertising exchanges.

Targeted advertisement in social media.

Media material, which tells about your production or shows your expertness and refers to the Telegram channel.

Before using paid or free advertisement, you need prepare your channel: design and fill it with content. After all, it is important not only to attract subscribers, but also to retain them with interesting content.

Most often, the effectiveness of Telegram ads is measured by the growth of subscribers, coverage, reactions, and comments. Both for brands and public persons it is important to monitor mentions and their quality. This data helps to control and build the brand reputation.

More about the indicators, which should be paid special attention to:

1. The tonality of mentions. News spread very fast. Especially the negative ones. You have to monitor the tonality of mentions about the brand to avoid a crisis situation, to react in time or to use positive stories as your advantage.
2. Quality of sites. You have to analyze the indicator in the reputation context of the Telegram channels that publish information about you.
3. The role in mention. There are the main and episodic roles in mentions. Analyze your roles and the roles of your competitors and work to get more posts in main role.
4. Share of Voice. SoV (%) = total number of publications / number of publications about the company. Share of voice can be used to compare mentions in targeted and non-targeted media, national and regional ones, in main or episodic role, etc. SoV is easily adjusted to communication priorities, so it is often used for KPIs.

In addition to the analytics provided by Telegram itself, there are services with wider functionality. For example, the Ukrainian monitoring and communication analytics platform LOOQME Hub collects and structures mentions of the brand and competitors in the media and social networks, including Telegram. Also, the platform automatically creates clear dashboards that update in real-time.

Telegram is one more marketing tool for promoting a product, showing expertness and building brand trust. The popularity of messenger is growing in the world, so for brands it is an opportunity to be in comfortable area for customers. Nowadays there are a lot of free niches and formats here, so learn about the possibilities of Telegram marketing for your business as well.