How Telegram Ads helps businesses increase subscribers and revenue by millions of rubles

Content marketing on Telegram has long ceased to be just a trend. Today it is a powerful tool that allows you to solve specific business problems.

My name is Vlad Silantiev, I am the founder of an advertising agency in Telegram Ads. In this material, I will share my experience on how to set up advertising and targeting in Telegram to achieve multi-million dollar revenue and how to competently analyze the effectiveness of advertising campaigns. I’ll tell you how to build work for the long term and attract “hot” clients with high returns, despite growing competition.

Client and task

I will show everything in a case study of working with the “Without Borders” visa center, which helps obtain visas to the USA and Europe, and also provides services for obtaining foreign cards. The main sales and promotion channel of the company is Telegram. The scheme of work is simple: users come to the channel through advertising, read the content, sign up for a consultation using the link in the pin and then order a visa.

Before the company contacted us, advertising was targeted based on interests rather than specific channels, which reduced its effectiveness. As a result, the cost of one subscriber was 147 rubles, and ROAS (return on advertising investment, an indicator of advertising effectiveness) was 300%. This turned out to be too expensive, so the company turned to us for optimization. The first goal was to increase the base of active subscribers and reduce the cost of attracting them.

ROAS is calculated as follows: advertising revenue / advertising costs * 100%.

Step 1: Changing the advertising model

Telegram Ads has two main approaches to running ads: interest targeting and placement in specific channels.

When advertising is launched based on interests, Telegram automatically selects channels for display, which often leads to placement on popular channels. Before working with us, the client used exactly this method.

The second approach is manual selection of channels. When you collect a list of quality channels yourself and upload it to your advertising account, advertising is shown only on verified sites. This helps to avoid twisted channels. In our experience, manual selection can reduce the cost of a subscriber by 2-3 times, so we decided to switch to this method.

We selected channels according to the following criteria:

• Topics: travel and emigration;

• Posting frequency: at least once every two days;

• Activity: live audience in the comments;

• No bots or cheating (checked via TgStat).

Our sample included channels of other visa centers, author’s blogs of Russians about life in Europe and the USA, as well as small channels dedicated to countries where the Without Borders visa center helps to obtain visas.

Using TgStat, we found about 2,000 suitable channels. This choice should not only reduce the cost of a subscriber, but also attract a more solvent audience.

Step 2: Testing creatives

We selected 5 different creatives and tested them on 10 similar channels to determine which ones performed best. This allowed us to understand which ones were worth scaling.

We then launched the best creatives across all selected channels to determine which channels were worth investing in for maximum effectiveness. The tests took 160,000 rubles and one week. During the testing period, the cost of one subscriber was 76 rubles, and ROAS reached 401%. Next, our goal was to eliminate ineffective channels and hypotheses to reduce the cost per subscriber and increase ROAS.

Before our work, the client had only one universal creative that was used on all channels. When we switched to placement on specific channels instead of targeting by interests, the cost of a subscriber dropped to 48.7 rubles.

We came up with a hypothesis: we can create niche creatives for each specific country. For example, for a channel about Italy, show creative dedicated exclusively to Italy. This made it possible to reduce the cost of a subscriber in such niche channels by another 5 rubles. The difference may seem insignificant, but on million-dollar budgets it is noticeable.

As a result, we retained only the most effective channels and creatives. At the end of the week of testing, all channels and creatives that brought subscribers at a price above 70 rubles were excluded.

Step 3: Launch an advertising campaign

Thanks to successful testing of channels and creatives, we were able to move on to the next step – increasing the budget. From 270,000 to 475,000 rubles were spent on advertising per month. If you noticed that the cost of a subscriber was growing in some channel, then you optimized the rate. Now I’ll explain how it works for those who are not involved in advertising.

Telegram Ads works on the principle of an auction: whoever offers the highest bid for 1,000 impressions will get the opportunity to display ads. Let's say two visa centers want to be located in a channel about Italy. The first is ready to pay 200 rubles for 1,000 impressions, and the second – 300 rubles. As a result, advertising will be shown for the second visa center, since it offered more. The first one will receive almost no impressions.

However, the second center actually overpays 100 rubles, which increases the cost of the subscriber. To avoid this, we reduced the rate, for example, to 201 rubles. Advertising will still be shown to the second center, but subscribers will become cheaper.

We kept an eye on the rates. If they saw that a subscriber was becoming expensive, they lowered the rate. If this did not help, the channel was turned off. This approach allowed us to get the cheapest subscribers possible.

Result:

Step 4: Adjust the campaign

In December, Telegram Ads rolled out an update that made it possible to track which channels specific subscribers come from. We contacted the sales department of the visa center and found out from which channels the largest number of subscribers who become clients come from.

After that, only these channels remained in the advertising account. The cost of a subscriber began to rise, but along with it, advertising revenue increased.

First results

Brought 24,676 new active subscribers to the channel at an average price of 48.7 rubles. RUB 1,200,296 was spent on advertising, including commissions and VAT, which brought in revenue of RUB 9,350,307. The overall ROAS was 779%. We continue cooperation with the client and plan to increase the advertising budget to 750,000 rubles per month in March.

Six months have passed since the start of work – all this time we not only continued to attract traffic to the channel, but also set new goals: to increase the return on investment and maintain a stable subscriber price within 0.9–1 €. However, since January, the popularity of promotion on Telegram has increased sharply, which has affected both demand and the overall cost of placement.

Competition in Telegram

The growing demand for promotion in Telegram channels led to an increase in the cost of advertising, and at the same time the price of a subscriber began to rise. It has become impossible to maintain the planned price range, as it was six months ago.

This changed our plans, but also pushed us to look for new ways to maximize results in the current environment. We decided to focus on the following strategy:

• Test new channels;

• Optimize creatives;

• Segment creatives and channels;

• Implement automation.

We used all available opportunities to optimize the budget, including new functions of the Telegram advertising account. For example, since January, it has become possible to set budget limits for a campaign and regulate the timing of impressions, which allows you to better evaluate effectiveness within the specified limits. However, in practice, these options turned out to have little impact on the overall result, so we focused on developing creatives.

We tried different approaches: creating creatives with short one-word messages, using emoticons instead of text, as well as traditional options with useful offers that emphasized the key needs of the audience.

A total of 77 new creatives were tested. The most effective of them, which continues to bring in the most clients: “You need a visa – we will help. Let's do it quickly. Visas to Europe, Asia, America.”

Weeding out ineffective channels

At first glance, it might seem that the most logical thing to do was focus on the channels that bring the cheapest subscribers. But our task was not only to save the budget, but also to increase the profit of the visa center, and with it the return on investment in advertising. So we analyzed which channels the subscribers most likely to become buyers come from and focused on them. In such channels, the cost of a subscriber often exceeded 1 €, but their high conversion to purchase compensated for this.

If you look at the average cost of a subscriber in the travel niche according to Elama, it is 2.6 €. We managed to stay within a comfortable price range and significantly increase revenue for the client.

In addition, we continued to work with channels that showed good sales, and at the same time analyzed similar platforms – channels of competitors of visa centers and related niches. To do this, we used a new chatbot, which greatly simplified the collection and analysis of data.

Bot for selecting relevant channels

Collecting and filtering channels is an important but tedious process that has long required automation. Therefore, to simplify this task, we decided to use a self-written bot. He analyzed multiple channels and assessed their suitability for promotion based on travel and visa topics.

To set up the bot, we loaded 4,000 channels into it and set the keywords: “visa”, “tourism”, “travel”. The bot studied the channel description, pinned messages and the first 20 posts.

An important criterion was an active audience. The channels had to be “live”, with recent publications and high subscriber engagement.

The bot scored each channel from 1 to 10 based on these criteria and displayed the results in a table, which also indicated the date of the last post to check relevance.

Testing showed good results: on channels with a bot score above 6, promotion actually gave better results.

Results for six months

To date, we have achieved the following indicators:

• Average cost per subscriber: 1.02 €;

• ROAS: 850%;

• Spent from January to June: 1,626,994 rubles, 16,269.94 €;

• Number of subscribers: 15,896;

• Total revenue: RUB 13,836,619.

Despite the growth in traffic and increased competition on Telegram, thanks to carefully selected channels and creatives, we manage to keep the cost of a subscriber in a comfortable range. In the future, we plan to increase the return on investment and improve the bot to speed up advertising setup and attract even more target audience.