About the Client

Sdelayem is a content marketing agency. The team manages blogs, creates content for media outlets, and runs advertising campaigns on Yandex PromoPages.

The Challenge

Attract new followers to the agency’s Telegram channel and VK community. This involved setting up ad campaigns on VK and Telegram Ads, as well as exploring new platforms and channels for promotion.

Discussed Ideas and Targeting Hypotheses

Before launching the ads, I had two calls with Ilya Eremin, a content marketer at Sdelayem. During the first call, we discussed the main goal: attracting new followers to the agency’s Telegram channel and VK community. We talked about the campaigns they had run before, the ads they had used, and the audiences they had targeted. I took notes and then spent some time digging into their statistics and ad account on my own.

A week later, I had another call with Ilya. I put together a short presentation with my findings and ideas. I exported the community’s statistics, analyzed the most popular communities among its followers, and looked at what the audience liked and shared.

Based on this research, I came up with several targeting hypotheses and identified the audiences we should focus on. I also suggested additional audience segments we could target to scale our campaigns. These included, for example, MILFs and stremyagi — people who are always looking to learn, grow, and improve their skills.

Launched a Test Campaign on VK

I launched ads encouraging people to follow the agency’s VK community, targeting three main audience segments. For each segment, I wrote three ad copy variations and prepared three visuals. I also ran ads promoting lead magnets: a free book on copywriting and an email course on writing. And, with low expectations, I set up a campaign to promote a course sale.

Surprisingly, the free offers performed poorly. Hardly anyone clicked on the lead magnets. I tweaked the ads a couple of times, but it didn’t help — the cost per subscriber reached 668 rubles. Selling courses directly didn’t work out either, as expected: only one person from VK ended up making a purchase.

I identified the best-performing visuals, ad copy, and audiences, then combined them into three or four promising ad setups that we could use in future campaigns.

Moved to a New VK Page and Launched Ads

In the winter of 2022, Pasha Molyanov and Lyosha Rozhkov decided to split the agency. Lyosha kept the VK page and Telegram channel, while Pasha retained the Sdelayem brand and all its URLs. This meant we had to rebuild our audience from scratch.

The easiest way to attract followers was to reach out to people who had already followed Sdelayem. I launched ads targeting followers of the old VK page, excluding anyone who had already joined the new one. Within a week, we gained 201 followers at just 6.91 rubles each ($0.10 in Jan 2023). Another 800 people joined after seeing posts about the agency split. We were off to a good start.

At the same time, we ran a short campaign to attract a completely new audience, targeting entrepreneurs and digital professionals. This brought in another 780 followers at 19.47 rubles each ($0.28 in Jan 2023).

Detailed ad performance statistics: the ads generated a total of 1,671 visits to our VK page

Launched Ads for the Telegram Channel

I told Ilya Eremin about my experience promoting my own Telegram channel through VK ads. We decided to try the same approach for the agency. I put together a simple ad with text and a visual, collected and analyzed audience data, and made a list of VK communities we could target to attract new followers. After fine-tuning a few settings, I launched the campaign.

New followers started coming to the agency’s Telegram channel almost immediately. Each follower cost between 30 and 50 rubles, compared to 80–100 rubles through paid placements in other Telegram channels. Quite a difference.

I used this simple ad creative in the campaign, and it worked really well Text in the post: Copywriter, we write for you! On our blog, we share tips from our own experience: how to write and edit better, communicate with clients, and improve your skills. We keep things practical and focus on useful content. Every tip is backed by examples, case studies, and research. Follow us if that sounds interesting:

Tried Advertising on Yandex

Pasha Molyanov suggested an approach his colleague was using to promote a Telegram channel through the Yandex Advertising Network (YAN). I admitted I'd never run ads on YAN before, but we decided to take a chance and give it a try.

The cost per click ended up being around 600 rubles. That was enough for us to call it quits on the experiment.

Launched Ads on Telegram Ads

Telegram Ads introduced a new option that allowed advertisers to get started with a budget of €3,000 or more. We jumped at the chance to explore the new platform almost immediately. The problem was that we had to learn everything through trial and error — there were virtually no case studies or guides available yet.

The Telegram Ads interface turned out to be a nightmare to work with. To check campaign performance, I had to open every single ad individually. Setting up campaigns was also incredibly time-consuming — it took almost five times longer than on VK.

There were only two ways to check statistics in Telegram Ads: through individual charts for each ad or by exporting a CSV file, as shown in the screenshot. Either way, I had to calculate all the metrics myself

Campaign performance was all over the place. At first, we were getting followers for 50–60 rubles each, which was great — our goal was to keep the cost below 100 rubles. But after a while, something went wrong, and the cost per follower suddenly jumped to 200 rubles.

When the cost reached twice our target, Ilya and I booked a consultation with a Telegram Ads specialist. Surprisingly, he told us we were doing everything right. The problem was that our target cost was simply unrealistic and would be extremely difficult to achieve.

After the consultation, we managed to bring the cost per follower down to around 100 rubles. But managing nearly 40 campaigns on my own was too much, especially when I had to export statistics for each one manually. To scale the results, we handed over Telegram Ads management to an advertising agency.

The Ads Are Still Working

A few months after we finished working together, Ilya Eremin shared a post on his Telegram channel. It turned out he had revived one of my old VK ad campaigns, and it was still delivering great results. According to Ilya, the campaign was bringing in new Telegram followers at just 37.6 rubles each, while also attracting followers to the VK page at 43.5 rubles per follower. A year and a half later, I spoke with another ads specialist who told me that my campaign was somehow "magical" — the ads were still bringing in new followers at a low cost using the same settings I had originally set up.