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White Paper Digital
White Paper Digital
White Paper Digital
IN RUSSIA 2016
by Vadim Tylik
Are you involved in digital marketing? Do you have the task of promoting a web project in Russia? Are you an entrepreneur or a digital marketing specialist familiar with a particular local market, but not sufficiently familiar with Russian digital marketing? This White
Paper has been written specifically for foreign marketing specialists and entrepreneurs who
want to expand their sphere of influence, to bring online projects to the Russian-speaking
market and acquire new customers.
Today, I am aware of the fact that more and more foreign online stores are adapting
their workflows for Russian customers. They translate content into Russian and advertise in
the Russian Internet. Why is this happening? Firstly, Russians have money and they love to
buy! A second reason is psychological and lies deep inside the Russian soul. Its all about the
mentality of Russians. As it happens, Russians prefer to buy abroad more than at home, they
do not trust local brands. This situation is unpleasant for the Russian economy, but is good
for foreign companies, as foreign businesses get high profits from sales to Russian customers.
Russian consumer psychology can be formulated in a common saying: No man is a prophet
in his own country.
Despite all the prospects that foreign companies see in the Russian market, there are
a number of barriers that hinder a successful business process. Not all foreign online stores
and online projects are becoming popular in Russia. What is the reason for that? Lack of
knowledge regarding the peculiarities of web promotion, as well as marketing opportunities.
As a rule, the only promoting tool foreign marketing experts use is Google AdWords. This
tool is certainly effective, but not very popular in Russia, because Google covers only 33% of
all the Russian search market. This means that by confining yourself to only using the advertising opportunities of Google, you are losing 67% of the search market!
This White Paper is not only devoted to search marketing, you will also find a complete description of the market and all the digital marketing tools that can be applied to your
business in Russia. Or you probably only want to know how Google AdWords works in Russia? If that`s it, you can stop reading this article, but if you still want to seize the Russian
market a hundred percent, this White Paper will give you the knowledge to make a successful
digital marketing campaign in Russia.
0,8
0,4 %
Others
6,4 %
41,9 %
50,2 %
Facebook is a social network popular worldwide. Initially Facebook users from Rus-
sia were generally people with a higher education, speaking good English. Many of them are
businessmen and top managers at various levels. Today the audience of Russians in Facebook is 24.5 million.
Moi Mir@Mail.ru (My World) is a social network of the largest Russian Internet
company Mail.ru. Followers of service - 25.2 million per month (according to TNS November
2014).
Instagram is becoming more and more popular. The Russian audience of this resource
is 10.6 million people, which is nearly five times as many as in March 2015. This social network takes the second place according to the number of active writers (the first place takes
VKontakte).
Short Message Service Twitter is not the most popular social network in Russia. The
Russian audience of this social network as of November 2015 was only 7.4 million users.
Below is a list of top 20 most popular sites on the Russian Internet according to audience choice. This data is presented by the research agency TNS Gallup Media.
12-64 years
www.facebook.com
www.my.mail.ru
21,7 mil.
16,6 mil.
users
percent of Russian
popularity 14,3%
www.ok.ru
31,5 mil.
users
percent of Russian
popularity 20,8%
users
percent of Russian
popularity 11,0%
www.vk.com
46,6 mil.
www.instagram.com
users
percent of Russian
popularity 30,7%
12,3 mil.
users
percent of Russian
popularity 8,1%
GENDER
77,1%
69,1%
58,2% 56,3%
58%
41,8%
43,7%
42%
22,9%
30,9%
AGE
32,3%
Age 18-24
9,3%
0%
Age 12-17
Age 55-64
6,1%
Age 18-24
24%
Age 12-17
35,3%
16,8%
Age 25-34
Age 45-54
2,1%
32,1%
Age 55-64
Age 25-34
2,4%
Age 45-54
6,7%
7,1%
6,5%
32,6%
9,1%
Age 12-17
Age 35-44
Age 12-17
Age 35-44
Age 18-24
8,5%
Age 18-24
17,3%
20,9%
Age 55-64
Age 55-64
23,9%
Age 25-34
26,6%
Age 25-34
18,5%
15,9%
Age 45-54
Age 45-54
20,7%
25,4%
Age 35-44
Age 35-44
ACTIVITY OF AUDIENCE
number of visits
per user
number of pages
viewed
9,7
39,2
37,1 millions
20,3
31,2
64,3 millions
7,6
7,3
1,1 millions
December 2015
The average times per day
in thousands of hours
Name of
project
27750
52470
22634
50228
22173
Vk.com
46961
13931
43973
13390
Odnoklassniki.ru | Youtube
43564
11804
Youtube.com | Odnoklassniki.ru
31728
4329
Facebook.com | Wikipedia.org
30212
4203
Wikipedia.org | Avito.ru
23737
3766
Avito.ru | Facebook.com
22444
3692
Aliexpress.com
21793
3232
Rambler | LiveJournal.com
14872
2698
Gismeteo.ru | Kinopoisk.ru
14798
1981
Fotostrana.ru | Rambler
13999
1777
LiveJournal.com | Liveinternet.ru
13246
1729
Rbc.ru | Gismeteo.ru
13118
1684
Instagram.com | Rbc
12885
1669
Kinogo.net | Mts.ru
12309
1422
Twitter.com | Ria.ru
12027
1366
Kinopoisk.ru | Instagram.com
11979
1262
11930
Freelancers
Many freelancers who consider themselves SEO-specialists in Russia continue to work with outdated tools: trading
links, stuffing texts with keywords until they become completely unreadable.
Copywriting market in Russia is very much obstructed
by non-professionals. At least half of them are professionally
unsuitable. Using the incompetence in advertising of managers
of small and medium-sized businesses, copywriting in Russia is a way of making a living for students, women on maternity leave and lots of other people who not only have zero idea
about advertising and marketing, but who also dont even try to get this sort of knowledge.
They easily get positive reviews from uninformed customers; improve their positions in the
catalogs of freelance marketplaces buying rating for money. Therefore we do not recommend seeking a specialist only according to his rating, which is highly likely to be hyped-up.
It is ideal to have a native speaker familiar with advertising at hand. They will give you useful tips or will make a choice for you.
If you still intend to seek a specialist based on his reputation, choose those who have
experience of working with reputable brands.
Agencies
Agency services are likely to cost you more than hiring
freelancers, but agencies have a few more factors that allow
you to estimate their credibility and effectiveness. An agency is
also useful when you need to withstand competitors constantly
investing time and money into improving their content.
In this case, firstly the agency will give you the advantage
of an integrated approach to solving your problems. Secondly,
it will give you a large amount of good texts, which are not
likely to have been obtained from the freelancers - especially
given the problem of their search described above.
Yandex.Direct
Contextual advertising on Yandex is necessary if you want
to push forward in the Russian Internet. The services of this
company mostly replicate the services of Google, but Yandex
works with the consumer market much more thoroughly. More
often than not it is with Yandex that consumers search for sellers of goods and services. Even those who use Google as their
main tool for finding useful information or news, use Yandex
when it comes to shopping. Also site owners prefer to place ads on Yandex, as the company
provides the most convenient payment terms.
Google AdWords
You probably already know this operator. Compared to
Yandex.Direct it is not very popular in Russia. The price per
click is significantly higher. The payment system is inconvenient for owners of advertising platforms, so Google avoids
hosting contextual advertising. However, when carrying integrated campaigns Google AdWords is not _ avoided. In search
advertising Google has access to a secure, educated audience
that is ready to buy expensive and high-quality goods.
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Begun
Begun is an operator of contextual advertising, created by
Rambler. At one point it was one of the largest Russian Internet companies, but eventually it lost ground. By June 2013 Begun was almost dying. Outdated technology and low requirements for partner sites (attendance of two people per day) did
not add any popularity. In addition, professionals from online
advertising suspected their partners of click fraud of contextual advertising by bots - the platform, apparently, did not allow the operator to monitor the
actions of fraudsters. In June 2013 the operator presented a new platform that meets modern
standards - Begun Smart.
Begun is the only Russian operator reseller. That is, it not only sells advertising on
partner sites, but also sells search and contextual advertising from Yandex and Google. If
you have a need to order all in a single package, perhaps partly sacrificing the efficiency of
campaigns, you can use this solution.
Media-contextual advertising
Banner ads are demonstrated to a target audience. Unlike sales-oriented contextual
advertising, this also works for the companys image, and increases brand awareness. Below
we describe the major media-contextual solutions in the Russian market.
Yandex.Bayan
This banner network uses the numerous advertising services of Yandex, which are very popular in Russia (many of
them have become completely irreplaceable) and encompasses
a variety of target audiences. Advertisers choose thematic sites
to show their banners.
Unlike contextual advertising, which is aimed at the use of the
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theme of the resource where it is located, context-media advertising from Yandex is focused
on the queries that the user enters in the search box. For example, if you are looking for winter shoes, you will see banners of the stores that sell them.
The advertiser does not pay per click, but per demonstration of advertising. Yandex
provides discounts to partner agencies.
Mail.ru Group
This is one of the largest companies of Runet, which owns
the popular Russian mail service Mail.ru, social networks My
World and Odnoklassniki, as well as several thematic portals.
Advertisement is _ targeted according to demographic (gender and age) and geographical
parameters, as well as _ fields of interest. Partners of Mail Group enjoy various discounts.
Begun
Rambler owns a number of popular internet projects,
also placing advertising on large sites that do not belong to it.
There is also a partner program that allows you to advertise
on small portals. Of the well-known sites where Begun places
advertisement there are several that are worth mentioning.
They are Afisha.ru, a portal with announcements of cultural
events; Livejournal.ru - the largest blogging platform of Runet;
websites Price.ru (compares prices from online stores) and Ferra.ru (reviews of home appliances).
Begun claims to cover an audience of over 15 million users per day and more than 40 million per month. Advertisement is _ targeted geographically, as well as according to interests.
Partner agencies enjoy discounts from Begun.
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Social networks
The main thing you need to know about social networks in Russia is that even if their
functionality is the same, the audience is not homogeneous. VK is not very different from
Facebook, but these networks have a different audience, and even the same people there will
behave differently.
VK
This mostly Russian-oriented social network can be your main
instrument. It has the largest number of users. Since more than 60%
of people are under the age of 25 years, VK is considered to be a youth
network. The older generation, though, often creates accounts for audio
and video (almost completely unmoderated, and therefore containing a
high proportion of pirated movies and music), and does not communicate through the site that much.
When working with a group of brands, SMM-editors often adopot a casual tone, and
appeal to the audience as you (disrespectful form of address in Russian, appropriate among
family members, friends, and young people). Content is usually catchy, viral, with game elements.
In this social network, you will not find the usual tool of Facebook, which is advertising in the news feed of users. This social network is willing to advertise in communities using
their own exchange advertising, which makes it easier to search for a group and buy advertising in them.
You create a promotional post; select the community that is suitable for the subject
according to the number of readers and the price of the post (assigned by the moderator of
the group) and pass your post for moderation. At the same time the system will lock a certain
amount of money on your account equal to the price of the ordered advertising. After this the
group moderator expresses his willingness or refusal to publish your post, and the reserved
amount is deducted or debited from the account. After this the post will appear in the news
feed. Moreover, you can preset the time of publication, or the period of time the post is to be
published for.
The rest of the promotional opportunities of VK are very similar to Facebook: placing
targeted banner advertising, special offers in games, and creating your own brand advertising
applications.
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Facebook
Facebook is also used by Russians, although significantly
less than VK. The Russian audience for this network is older
than that for VK, usually has a high level of education, and
likes meaningful communication. In communities people
usually appeal to each other respectfully as You, and try
to make the posts more informative and useful, rather than
entertaining.
Instagram
In October 2015 official ads became available on Russian segment of Istagram. Such ads pop up on the newsfeed, thus attracting
consumers attention. In Russia there are no existing competitive analogies up to this point. Today, the number of Istagram users in Russia
keeps on growing after it hit 12 million. This network is mostly popular
in Moscow (nearly 3 mln users) and Saint Petersburg (500 thousand users). 70% of the audience are women.
Official advertising on Istagram has flexible settings. You can select the display time
and sort your audience by location, gender, age, and interests. Business advertising would be
the most promising when its tied to a specific city (stores, cafes, studios), goods and services
for women (beauty studios, jewelry), or cell phone apps and accessories. You need to remember that advertising in Istagram can also cause a negative effect, since users dont like seeing
ads in their newsfeed. So, do your best to make your ads either useful or just funny. You can
manage your Istagram ads through an ad account on Facebook or though authorized resellers in runet and CIS countries, such as Aitarget.
E-mail marketing
The largest number of myths is concentrated in the field
of email marketing. First, many see e-mail marketing as spam email. And, secondly, the idea of e-mail marketing itself in Russia
and, for example, in the United States is quite different. For instance, if the US has a huge amount of e-mail-brokers who offer a
database of e-mail addresses according to certain characteristics:
interests, work position, income, gender, and age, you won`t
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find this in Russia. And if someone offers you such a service in Russia, then you should think
about the quality of this service.
Speaking of e-mail marketing, I mean the following: people expressed a will to sign
up for your newsletter, which means agreed to be sent letters from you. In Russia there is a
huge amount of spam, so recipients of e-mails they didn`t subscribe for have no enthusiasm
for letters from unknown addresses. Most of these messages are sent to spam without being
read. However, there is a way to reach the desired audience via e-mail.
If you do not own an e-mail database of a Russian-speaking audience, but you want to
do e-mail marketing, in this case, you will need to reach those who have access to the desired
audience. Russian internet agencies that are engaged in e-mail marketing create their own
Internet projects. For example, a site dedicated to cooking, where users can get thousands
of free recipes, working at the behest of an agency. An advertiser comes to an agency with
the request that he is interested in access to an audience of women, aged 25+, with children, and the agency shall carry an e-mail campaign of the brand jointly with the cooking
website. Thus, it becomes a legalized e-mail newsletter, which does not contradict - Russian
legislation and is accepted normally by internet users.
B2B e-mail campaigns are more difficult to carry, but, it is possible. Therefore, it is important to find an agency that has connections with the sites or resources, owning the necessary databases.
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approve layouts and paying video producers, then await the issue, and worry about the errors
and miscalculations of staff or invited marketing specialists.
Besides, leads allow the specifying of the task at most through the use of certain constraints. You can choose a specific product that needs to be promoted, the most interesting
region for business, the social status of the consumer and even the cost of the lead - in general, any parameter, allowing you to select the best consumer out of a huge audience.
Most often, the CPA agency enables customers to set the monthly amount of leads that
they can actually handle.
Where do leads come from? Today, there are four general directions of lead generation: contextual advertising, cold calls - implemented with the help of call-centers, the conversion of organic traffic of successful online projects with a high level of attendance into
leads, as well as affiliate marketing.
Influencer Marketing
Influencer Marketing is going to remain an effective way of brand promotion in 2016.
This promotion channel can prove effective on any platform: personal website, live journal
and other blogs, youtube, periscope, social networks, such as VK, Facebook, Istagram. It is
extremely important for your opinion leader to engage with his audience. The main ways
to promote the product through the opinion leader include direct recommendation, casual
mentioning of the brand in a positive context without imposing, and testing the product.
Many brands in Russia are currently using influencers for promotion.
How do you choose the influencer? Its better if this is a person whose spheres of
interest
naturally include the product being promoted. For example, a blogger writing
about tourism can advise his readers the equipment of a certain brand. In the same way, its
better to promote online games on the game channel. Its very important that your audience
is laid-back. Your influencer must be either a professional in a certain sphere or a celebrity
whose life interests many ordinary people.
Its important to make sure that the main audience of
your leader does not involve people with well-developed
critical thinking. Otherwise, this promotion attempt
can turn into a negative experience both for you and
your blogger. So, it is preferable to choose an agent who
would talk to his audience about simple things, such as
entertainment, good food, his tastes and plans, and so on. In a blog with mainly analytical
materials, you will instantly face a negative reaction from the audience, as soon as they are
given any advice.
Besides, it is worth remembering that you cant just promote any product or service
through opinion leaders. It should look like a simple recommendation from a friend. For
instance, in most blogs itd be hard to offer the readers a specific mix for construction or a
certain type of tyres, though it might still be possible on some specialized YouTube channels. Influencer Marketing is perfect for promoting products and services related to health
and entertainment, for this is exactly what can be advised in an informal conversation with a
friend: things like clothes, cosmetics, trips, restaurants and cafes, goods for kids, etc.
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Blogging
Russia has two major blogging platforms: LiveJournal for texts and YouTube for videos. YouTube is the
number one video hosting site in the world, and Russia
is no exception. LiveJournal owes its popularity to a
glorious past. It was the first social platform that Russians began to explore. Many used it as a social network,
until the much more convenient and technologically
advanced Vkontakte and Facebook appeared. However,
these networks are poorly adapted to posting big texts, text search and arrangement. Also
blogs on LiveJournal are popular because old-timers that became popular many years ago
did not want to leave them. And there is significantly less trouble with the platform than with
your own website on a separate domain.
Blogging and video blogging in Russia is very different. If video bloggers, as with
other countries, mostly work with their own themes, bloggers on LiveJournal stand out not
for their knowledge of a particular narrow topic, but writing skills, personal charisma, intelligence, the ability to create viral posts, and excite the readers. In other words, if YouTube
has the advantage of revealing certain topics and meeting interests, LiveJournal is an area
almost entirely owned by individuals endowed with charm. In both cases, of course, there are
some exceptions.
Themed blogs can be found in the segment stand alone. This is because of the fact
that bloggers earn by placing ads, and until relatively recently, LiveJournal did not provide
such an opportunity.
YouTube
To find bloggers who can present your product or service,
its best to use the search on YouTube. Enter the name of the
topic you want in the search box and select the filter Channels. Next, the use options Sort by rating and Number of
Views they will help you find the most popular bloggers
working with the topic you are interested in.
Also, websites analyzing lookup statistics can also be helpful,
for example, Topchannel.ru or Whatstat.ru, where information is presented more clearly
than in video sharing.
LiveJournal
LiveJournal has its own rating based on views of blogs, number of comments and reposts. It is quite objective. Ratings
of Russian-language blogs can be found at Livejournal.com/
ratings/users?country=cyr. This value, referred to as social
capital is used for web ranking. The calculation algorithm is
kept secret in order to avoid ratings being artificially inflated
by bloggers.
Besides individuals, thematic communities, which are collective blogs, are a force. They can
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be a good tool in promoting your business, but require a certain delicacy when working with
them. Any member of the community can create a post in it by default, but moderators often
impose restrictions, such as some criteria according to which the post is considered worthy of
the community. In conjunction with the pre-moderation and limited access to writing posts
it is quite a serious barrier for publication. Therefore, working with communities requires a
thorough understanding of the principles of their operation.
If you want to create an advertising post in the community, first contact the moderator and
ask for permission to do it, and second, try to make sure that the post is not just advertising.
Blogs entertain people and help them to learn new things; make sure that these functions are
performed by your post.
Instagram
Istagram is currently being used by numerous brands to promote
their products and services. For several reasons, Instagram network
proves to be quite convenient for Influencer Marketing. The lions share
of a post is taken by pictures, and the audience of popular bloggers and
celebrities is pretty laid-back. Besides, Istagram is mostly a female social
network. Its essential that your opinion leader does not simply share pictures of the product,
but adds his positive remarks as well.
Its very good if the blogger uses home pictures instead of professional shots in front
of the logo banner. Here are some typical examples of advertising posts in Instagram: celebrity recommends a cosmetic/clothes brand, popular blogger shares about promotion at a
specific place, influencer mom recommends a cool developing game for toddlers.
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Unfortunately, today, during this period of political and economic difficulties, business has more obstacles. This is a good reason
to use the experience of the global financial
crisis of 2008 and apply it to online advertising,
which demonstrated its effectiveness back then.
According to the agency Mindshare Interaction, during the crisis the Internet advertising market in Russia increased by 55%. Cheap
advertising contact, precise targeting, specific
tools for advertising campaign tracking and
managing made online advertising an ideal tool
in times of crisis, when it was important to get the most out of the money invested in sales
promotion.
Today, digital marketing techniques allow you to get in touch with Russian consumers
worldwide. My experience in promotion of international brands on the Russian market indicates that businessmen today are not just interested in the Russian market; they are interested in the whole Russian-speaking audience, living in CIS countries, Europe and America.
As of 2014 the Russian-speaking market as a whole covered more than 270 million people
according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia.
The crisis and political woes will pass we`ve been through it many times before. So
use the crisis as an opportunity to get a piece of the pie from the Russian market, while your
competitors behave passively, trying not to take risks.
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