Digital People Group (DPL) is promoting TOKYO-CITY. Initially, the restaurant approached the agency with a request to advertise its Telegram channel to gain subscribers. However, the goals expanded: attracting subscribers, increasing app installations, boosting website traffic, and recruiting staff. The comprehensive brand promotion is discussed by Anastasia Vasilyeva, the targeted advertising specialist at Digital People Group (DPL).
The TOKYO-CITY restaurant approached the eLama agency in September 2023. The client had no prior experience with Telegram promotion, but it’s important to note that promoting this type of content (delivery, fast food, and food) was prohibited until the fall of 2023.
Initial setup at the time of launch:
- Goal: Develop the Telegram channel to increase the number of subscribers.
- Planned KPI for cost per lead: 100 rubles per subscription. Although the client didn’t specify this target, based on experience with other projects, we aimed to stay within this budget.
- Target audience: Essentially, anyone who occasionally orders food and groceries for home delivery.
- Target region: St. Petersburg, as specified by the client.
In the months following the initial work on the Telegram community, the goals expanded. The client informed us of the need to:
- Increase orders on the website
- Increase app installations
- Recruit line staff (chefs, waiters, and delivery drivers) for the restaurants
- Buy impressions from two competitors
We then began running ads to achieve these goals. Here’s how we worked and what results we achieved.
Step 1. Selecting targeting and promotion channels
In Telegram Ads, there are two targeting groups: Target Users and Target Channels. We chose both:
- Target Users: Geotargeting + Interests.
- Target Channels: A pool of channels, which included:
- Regional St. Petersburg channels on restaurant life in the city
- News channels in St. Petersburg
- Competitor channels in the food delivery and restaurant sectors
- Channels with discounts and promo codes for food orders
- Channels of large retailers selling ready-made food (this group was later disabled, as it didn’t yield results).
We selected channels in two ways:
- Using the TGStat service
- Through search in Telegram itself.
We recommend not neglecting manual channel searches, even if you’re satisfied with the channels selected using the service. In our case, simple topic-based searches provided many relevant platforms.
Additionally, we created separate ad campaigns targeting two major competitors. In this case, the client was particularly interested in purchasing impressions from these channels to work on branding.
Step 2. Creating Ads
Here are the main requirements from Telegram for channels used in promotion. These are related to the number of subscribers, the type of channel, and the quality of content.
Telegram Ads Promotion Rules:
There are other important requirements and restrictions for Telegram Ads that need to be considered when creating ad copy. The following are not allowed:
- Imperative mood: Ads should not contain words like “order now,” “subscribe,” or “buy now.”
- Caps Lock.
- More than one emoji.
- More than one exclamation mark: Sometimes even a single exclamation mark can cause an ad to fail moderation.
- More than 160 characters (except for custom emoji code characters).
In our project, we used custom emojis, which, according to Telegram, should help increase the CTR. However, custom emojis also automatically increase the CPM by 20%.
Creating emojis: Emojis are created by the client in a special Telegram bot. Afterward, they are converted into a code and added to the ads. For more detailed information on the process, you can refer to the guide.
Along with custom emojis, we tested ads with the channel’s logo — a feature that was introduced in 2023. According to Telegram, this should also help increase the CTR.
Additionally, in the app promotion campaigns, we used promo codes, which changed every month, along with the ongoing promotion in the app.
Promotion results
Goal — Increase website traffic: In two months, we achieved a conversion rate of 0.13% for the website and 0.18% for the app (which is considered good, given these are results from impressions).
Goal — Increase app installations: From October to December, we gained 622 app installations.
Goal — Recruitment: The campaign also focused on attracting staff, though the specific results for this goal weren’t mentioned in the provided data.
Conclusions
After four months of brand promotion, we can draw five conclusions about the tools and advertising launch in the food delivery niche through Telegram Ads:
Relatively high CPM in the food delivery niche: Since promotion in this niche was previously prohibited by the platform’s rules, competition among major market players is quite high.
Weak results with custom emojis and channel logo ads: According to Telegram, these new features should increase CTR, but our test showed that the same ads with custom emojis had nearly identical performance (the CTR varied by just a few hundredths of a percent). This doesn’t mean that testing them in another context won’t yield results, but in our case, it didn’t. The result of testing the channel logo ad also didn’t impress us.
Using promo codes in app promotion campaigns provides a clearer and more transparent view of orders: Data from AppMetrica isn’t always displayed or pulled correctly, so promo codes helped us track orders more effectively.
Daily monitoring in a Google Sheet gave us a better understanding of what was happening with the ads: This proved more effective than relying on new metrics that appeared in the Telegram Ads dashboard. Therefore, for reliable analytics, it was crucial for us to use promo codes.
Attracting staff through Telegram Ads turned out to be cheaper than through other channels: The client shared this insight with us, even though attracting staff wasn’t initially one of our set goals.
Finally, there’s one more important takeaway: we identified one effective audience — competitor food delivery subscribers. Therefore, in our case, the promotional offers needed to be constantly adjusted and updated.