An Ultimate Guide to Telegram Marketing

What is Telegram marketing?

Telegram is a messaging app that lets people send messages, photos, videos, and files to others. Telegram is one of the biggest apps of its kind – according to Statista, it’s the third-most downloaded messenger app in the world, with 800 million users globally. Meanwhile,  founder Pavel Durov claims it’s expected to “hit one billion active monthly users within the year.” 

Telegram is fast and secure, allowing users to create large group chats or channels. This makes it useful for both business and personal comms. You can also use bots, automated messages and ads on Telegram, making it a useful tool for customer service and marketing.

Many creators and businesses on Telegram channels and groups share updates, offer exclusive content, and engage with followers, building communities around their brands. This can include sending messages, running campaigns or sharing promotions, with Telegram making it easier with functionalities like ability to create large groups and automate things. 

Earlier this year, Telegram launched Telegram Business, allowing accounts to access features such as opening hours, location, quick replies, automated messages, custom start page and chatbot support.

The benefits of using Telegram marketing for your business

Telegram works well for businesses that benefit from direct communication, such as e-commerce, digital products, and education. If you want to build closer relationships with your audience and need a platform that allows for fast, direct, and flexible communication, Telegram marketing might be right for you. 

Reach a large audience

Since Telegram has a huge number of users, the app offers a variety of features specifically designed to help users effectively reach large audiences. They include groups, channels and bots among others. We’ll dive into each of these tools later on in the article.  

Telegram also allows users to forward messages, allowing your content to spread organically. 

Build customer relationships

You can build and deepen relationships with potential customers with the use of Telegram marketing as it offers direct, real-time communication through channels and groups. You can share valuable content, respond to customer inquiries, and engage in discussions, creating a more personal and interactive experience.

Promote products and services

Once you’ve figured out how to reach out to your audience on Telegram, you can promote your products or services to them. For example, you could run promotions on your groups or channels, while bots can help you and your customers streamline purchasing. 

Another way to promote your products or services is to collaborate with influencers on Telegram – there are influencer channels for almost any niche.

Deliver customer support

Groups and channels are also a great way to deliver customer support to your clients. 

Unable to be online 24/7? Just use a bot to automate responses to common inquiries.

Monitor performance

Curious about the performance of your Telegram marketing campaigns? The app offers in-built tracking of different metrics. They include subscriber growth, message views, engagement rates, and link clicks. You can also track performance via third-party tools.

How Telegram marketing works

Let’s delve into Telegram’s tools that may be leveraged for marketing, in detail.

Telegram channels

Creating a public channel is one of the simplest ways to reach a large audience because it allows an unlimited number of people to subscribe to your updates. They’re a one-way communication tool, meaning only the channel admin can broadcast messages to subscribers. 

Telegram channels are perfect for sharing updates, announcements, promotions, or exclusive content with a large audience. They can be public or private, and channel admins can decide whether to allow comments or reactions on their updates. 

Here’s an example of a channel on Telegram. This particular channel, which unofficially reshares news updates by news agency Reuters, doesn’t allow comments or reactions. Note that you can see the total number of people who viewed a particular update in the lower-right corner of the message.

Telegram groups

Group chats are another way to reach a lot of people via Telegram. However, unlike channels, they’re a two-way communication tool. This means that all members can send messages and communicate in the group, not just the admin. 

Groups can host up to 200,000 members, making them ideal for building communities around your brand or product. 

Groups on Telegram are great for fostering engagement, providing customer support, and encouraging collaboration or feedback from your audience.

Telegram bots

Telegram bots are automated programs that can interact with users or perform tasks within the Telegram app. Bots are especially useful for businesses because they’re very customizable and can handle a variety of tasks. 

Here’s a little breakdown of how they may be useful to you:

• Customer support. Bots can handle common customer queries for you. They include frequently asked questions, troubleshooting or helping your potential customers navigate your services. This means that your audience will be able to access customer support 24/7. 

• User interaction. You can also automate your bot to interact with your users via polls, quizzes, surveys, or even games, allowing you to playfully deepen your relationship with your audience.

• Personalized comms. Bots can also send personalized messages to your audience based on their preferences or behaviors. This also includes product recommendations. Bots that handle personalized responses are powered by AI which makes them capable of handling more complex interactions. Curious to learn more? Check out our list of best AI tools for your business. 

• Handling payment. Accepting payments on Telegram? We have good news for you – bots can handle transactions like that. This means that users can purchase your products from you without leaving the app.

• Subscriptions and alerts. Bots can also send notifications or updates to customers who signed up for them. They include product releases, news, or special promotions.

Telegram ads

Ads are a relatively new feature on Telegram. They automatically appear in channels which have over 1,000 subscribers, and they look like a short message with a link to a website or channel. 

Ads can be targeted based on users’ interests, language, or channels they follow, they’re quite cost-effective (you pay per every 1,000 impressions), and are non-intrusive for those who see them.

How to develop a marketing strategy for Telegram

Now you know about all the main marketing features on Telegram. Let’s discuss how you can get started with Telegram marketing and use them to your advantage.

1. Identify your target audience on Telegram

First of all, determine who your target audience is on Telegram. If many members of your target audience are active on the app, it could be a great platform to connect with them and grow your reach! Consider the following:

• Define your audience. Who are your ideal customers? What are their demographics, interests, and behaviors? Consider factors like age, gender, location, and preferences.
• Consider existing data. If you’re already using social media for marketing, use the insights you gathered from that for Telegram. For example, insights from other social media tools like Instagram can help you understand your audience’s preferences, behaviors, and demographics, which can guide your content strategy on Telegram. Think about the kind of content your audience engages with the most on other platforms.
• Analyze your competitors. Consider Telegram channels or groups run by your competitors. How do they attract their audience? How do they interact with them? These questions can help you gain valuable insight.

2. Set marketing goals and KPIs

As with all kinds of marketing, employing clear marketing strategies and tracking key metrics when launching your Telegram campaign is crucial.

Start by outlining why your business needs to market itself on Telegram and setting specific targets. Examples might include growing your channel subscribers by 20% over three months or increasing engagement by 15%. You don’t have to set too many of these targets as you’re starting, but you do need at least one. 

Secondly, create a list of Telegram channels or groups in your niche and see what they’re doing in terms of marketing efforts. Subscribe to a few of them, and see what works for you as a subscriber. 

Here are a few key performance indicators to consider: 

• Subscriber growth. Track how many new users join your channel or group over a specific period.
• Engagement rates. Monitor metrics like views, forwards, likes, and comments.
• Click-through rate (CTR). Measure how many users are clicking on links you share to drive traffic to external sites. Unfortunately, this feature is unavailable via Telegram’s own analytical tools – thankfully, there are third-party applications that can help you out with CTRs.

3. Decide whether channels or groups are right for you

You already know what the difference between channels and groups is – groups are a more interactive, two-way tool, whereas channels are perfect for announcements. But did you know that it’s not an either/or situation? 

If both are important to you, you could create both a group and a channel. You could create a channel and link a discussion group to it. Once you post an announcement in your channel, it’ll automatically appear in the linked group too.

4. Develop branded stickers and bots

As a user of Telegram, you’re allowed to create up to 20 bots per account. We’ve already discussed a few types of bots in detail. So, as you consider launching one (or several!), you first need to think about why you need it – are you going to accept payments? Do you want to play online games with your audience? 

You can also use bots to create stickers. If you use Telegram for personal communications, you’ll know what we mean – they’re small illustrations that users can send in chats as an expressive form of communication, like emojis but with more customization and variety.

Developing branded stickers for Telegram is an excellent way to enhance your brand’s identity and engage your audience in a fun, visual way. Aside from being a powerful tool for interaction between users, stickers could also enhance the recognition of your brand. Besides, if your stickers are popular, they could go viral, bringing more engagement to your channel or group. 

5. Produce engaging content

To make sure that your content is engaging to your audience, you need to know their preferences! Which is not unique to Telegram marketing, of course. 

Share valuable, relevant information such as updates, tips, promotions, or exclusive offers that resonate with your target demographic. 

Encourage participation and increase engagement with the use of quizzes and polls. Telegram’s built-in poll feature is perfect for engaging users in a fun and interactive way. Here’s what a quiz on Telegram looks like (featuring a custom sticker!):

Another good way to grab users’ attention is to use photos, videos and other kinds of multimedia content. 

Consider running exclusive giveaways, flash sales or contests for your subscribers. This will drive interactions and make them feel special, as well as attract potential customers who may be keen to participate in future giveaways.

6. Promote your channels and groups

The easiest way of promoting your Telegram channel or group is by sharing links everywhere. This includes your website, social media pages, email newsletters, and any other channels you use to connect with your subscribers. 

On Telegram itself, you can collaborate with other groups and channels in similar niches. This mutual promotion can expose your channel to a broader audience and bring in new members. 

If your budget allows it, consider running ads on Telegram itself (something we’ve mentioned already), or other platforms including Google or Facebook.

7. Interact with followers

When marketing on Telegram, interacting with followers is key to building strong relationships and maintaining engagement. Make sure you’re answering their questions as soon as possible, and set up a bot to handle customer service inquiries when you’re unavailable. 

There are several ways you could boost engagement from your followers – we’ve already covered polls and quizzes, but you could also encourage discussions in groups by sharing interesting topics or industry news, or asking them open-ended questions. 

Lastly, holding a live Q&A session could encourage real-time interaction, giving your audience a chance to engage directly with you and giving your brand more of a personal touch.

8. Track performance with analytics

As we’ve mentioned earlier, Telegram has an analytical dashboard where you can track the performance of your channel. Here’s what the dashboard for a Telegram channel about films  looks like.

If you need more analytical info than Telegram’s in-built analytics features can provide, there are also various third-party tools such as Combot or TGStat. They offer additional data like detailed user demographics, engagement rates and retention rates, among others.

Finally, there’s a lot of data to be gathered from just interacting with your audience – just check out poll participation, likes, comments, and reactions to gauge follower engagement. These metrics help determine which types of content are resonating most with your audience.

Use this data to adjust your Telegram marketing strategies.

Successful examples of Telegram marketing

Check out these examples of businesses using Telegram to reinforce their brand.

The New York Times

The New York Times is one of the most renowned US newspapers. Its official Telegram channel boasts over 150,000 subscribers. The New York Times charges users subscription fees to read online, so it uses its Telegram channel to provide free snippets of articles, inciting users to click on the link to access the whole article itself.

The Washington Post

Similarly to the New York Times, the Washington Post shares short versions of its articles on Telegram for free, allowing the users to click on the link to access the full story. Almost 60,000 users are subscribed to the Washington Post’s Telegram channel.

Blum

Blum is a hybrid cryptocurrency exchange integrated into Telegram as a mini-app. Backed by Binance, Blum offers a streamlined experience for crypto trading, staking, and farming directly within the Telegram platform. 

Since Blum operates directly through Telegram, it’s no surprise that it also communicates to customers through the app. Over 20 million people follow Blum’s Telegram channel, which often features memes, contests and giveaways.

TED Talks

TED Talks are presentations given at TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conferences, covering a wide range of topics including science, technology, education, design, and culture among other topics. TED’s Telegram channel acts as an add-on to its YouTube channel and features links to its most popular videos.

Friends Factory

Friends Factory is a popular Telegram-based game where players engage in building and managing factories within a virtual world. The creators of the app mainly use its Telegram channel to announce the latest developments to their 4-million audience, while also running contests and giveaways. 

Final thoughts

We hope we’ve inspired you to launch your own Telegram channel, and that you now have enough understanding of how to use Telegram for marketing to get started. Here’s a quick summary:

• Marketing on Telegram entails promoting products, engaging with audiences, and building brand communities through direct, personalized communication.
• The main tools for Telegram marketing are channels, groups, bots, and ads.
• Telegram marketing allows you to reach a large audience, build customer relationships, deliver customer support and monitor the performance of your campaign.
• To get started, identify your target audience, set KPIs, launch a few bots and create unique stickers, promote your channel, and interact with your followers.