Telegram Marketing for Online Business Promotion: How Messenger App can Bring You Money

Internet marketing is not always about SERP. But it is always about searching for new marketing channels and effective tools for online business promotion. Social networks are currently attracting more and more active users, so there is no surprise that almost every campaign has its corporate account on the Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram.

But due to the enormous number of sponsored ads, posts, promotional campaigns and questionnaires that all aim to increase brand awareness and drive traffic to their websites, the competitive struggle is pretty tough. This makes newcomers seek for alternative channels to reach their target audience. A lot of them find such opportunities at messengers that are growing even faster than social networks did in the past. Telegram is nowadays one of the most rapidly developing newcomers that has already gained its position in the leaders’ list.

In this post, I would like to talk about Telegram marketing: an all new marketing trend that is only developing, but has already proved its efficiency. This messenger is designed to make it easier to communicate with your target audience, share content, launch promotional campaigns and it is not yet overloaded with your competitors. All of that makes it worth talking about.

Identifying benefits

Nowadays, a lot of local businesses are using messengers to contact their clients, accept orders and answer to various questions, comment and complaints. One of the most important benefits of such communication tool is that it does not require a separate specialist to work with it: bots do everything quickly and with no extra efforts.

Bots can not only provide users with information on the particular queries: they send videos, images, documents, receive and transfer payments, process your contact information for the most useful answers, etc.

The opportunities provided by the app are really wide, and companies that work with Telegram are able to propose their customers many benefits. The key advantages proposed by Telegram are:

• Concierge services;
• Online ordering;
• Real-time support;
• Individual assistance;
• Customer feedback processing;
• Team communication and coordination;
• Up-to-date information;
• Product promotion;
• Additional traffic to the site;
• Increasing brand awareness;
• Non-stop client support;
• Additional channel for payment processing.

Moreover, in case you want to use Telegram channel as a source of information about your brand and its produced services, this messenger take functions of many other tools:

• Newsletter;
• Event marketing channel;
• Operative service and support;
• Feedback collector;
• Discount channel;
• Informal chat with customers on a topic connected with the product;
• Channel for sharing news about the product: updates, reputable awards, etc.

Setting up the action plan

First of all, you have to know that no advertising is and will be displayed on Telegram. This is the official policy of its creators that has already attracted a huge amount of fans that immediately switched to Telegram from all other messengers. This gives you an active audience that is aware of the newest online trends and is tied of the old-fashioned disturbing ad. These are clients that have already refused to purchase from your competitors that use sponsored ads and you can attract them with some imagination and non-standard solutions.

Create a channel

The very best option for companies is to start a corporate channel. It will give you the ability to make messages that will be shared with all subscribers. You can easily reach large audiences with unlimited number of posts. Only administrator can rule the channel. In case you think you might need help – add additional administrators chosen from your team.

In case you do not want anyone else to post in a channel ( a lot of channels work just like that), you can close this opportunity to anyone except the administrator. When you make posts, they will be authored by channel’s name, not yours.

When properly managed, your channel might become a perfect source of special offers and promos to share with customers. When you make a new post in a channel ,they will receive a notification directly to their mobile phone. This makes it easier to reach people and inform them faster than through any other channel.

Public vs private channel

When creating a channel, you can either make it public or private. The main difference between them is that to enter a private channel, users have to receive a permission from the administrator. This gives you the ability to choose whom you would like to see in it. In case you plan to post some special offers and updates that will be available only for a limited number of loyal customers or newbies, it is a perfect solution for your issue.

However, the inability to get acquainted with the type of information posted in a channel and public channels might be too serious for some users that won’t be strong enough to go further. This is not a decisive amount of users, but some people lack patience for such things, so keep that in your mind.

Telegram bot

This step requires some programming skills or a specialists that has such experience, but in the end you will be satisfied with optimization within the channel and advantages you have when compared to the other channels. Telegram bot will enrich your channel with expanded opportunities for receiving information, solving various issues, etc.

Telegram chatbot has a series of unique options, such as:

• Teaching;
• Playing games;
• Searching on the web;
• Reminding;
• Connecting with other users;
• Integrating with other services;
• Broadcasting;
• Scheduling;
• Passing commands to the net.

Therefore, by implementing such bots to your channel, you highly reduce the possibility of any human mistakes taking place and reduce the necessity of hiring extra managers, marketers, or assistants. A lot of channels already have such bots, so you can see how they work and elaborate your version based on personal impressions.

Telegram has made process of creating a bot as simple and easy as possible. With detailed instructions that follow you at each step, you will proceed through all stages in Telegram interface. To start working on your Telegram bot, add Chatfuel bot and follow all instructions. If you have programming skills, you can go directly to developers’ page and get deeper into the process.

Alternatively, SendPulse lets you build your own Telegram chatbot for free with no coding skills required.

Telegram stickers

One more way to personalize your channel and make it more interesting and catchy for different types of users is creating your branded collection of Telegram stickers. This is a non-standard, although quite popular way to add some fun to the channel and it also increases brand awareness. Once your subscribers add a new stickers block to their profile, they can share it through personal messaging or use them in other channels.

This potion is a perfect change to strengthen their Telegram marketing campaign for designers, artists or just active people that are interested in developing their channel. Stickers here are really attractive and popular, so users will appreciate their implementation. In addition to that, the set of custom stickers can be created within several minutes if you know what you want to do and already have some prepared materials.

Depending on the targets you follow, your set of stickers can be used as a separate project or to be an element of your Telegram marketing campaign (new products promotion, contest, telling about new brand tendencies, enriching topical posts, etc).

To create a stickers set, add @Stickers account and Telegram bot will help you with detailed instructions for all project steps. To see how it can be done and what it looks like after implementation, check out other sticker sets created by other users.

If you decide to work on creating stickers, keep in mind the following guidelines:

1. Images for stickers have to be at least 512px on at least one side.
2. Images cannot fall under any copyright.
3. Recommended format is PNG.
4. Images have to be with white framing and shadow.
5. Images can be uploaded with desktop or mobile version of the app.

In case you will have any questions regarding the process of stickers creation, remember to ask them – Telegram bot is there to save your time and efforts on choosing inappropriate images, creating stickers that you do not need, processing pictures that don't look good, etc.

And something more

When we talk about new marketing campaigns that aim to increase sales or improve brand awareness, give higher traffic to the website or improve client support, we understand that all advantages have to be highlighted and observed. Telegram also has something else to give you.

First of all, it does not require memory space to save data on your device. It is 100% cloud-based and therefore almost no data are kept on your phone or desktop computer unless you want to download them. It makes telegram more long-living as a lot of users delete the app when it starts taking too much memory.

Moreover, Telegram is not owned by any global conglomerate and its present policy says that it “can’t be sold”. Therefore, users can be sure that no big market players like Facebook will control it and reshape its design, functionality or policy in accordance with their needs. Telegram is a non-profit project and its main aim is to give people access to the most useful messaging service, not to use the app to earn money on ads, paid advanced options or service packages.

What represents a special interest for online stores is the option of direct money transfer that started in Brazil, but has now gone broader than that. Together with the high safety level and complicated system of saving all data, telegram wins this money game. App has a special bot – MoneyTalk – that allows users to transfer money. Telegram team is so confident about this option that they have offered $ 200 000 to those who can crack it.

The final part

Telegram will celebrate its fourth birthday this year – not a long, but still an impressive way to go for a messenger app. It has gained its first popularity in Brazil, now spreading to the rest of the world. The leading positions within the market are reasoned by unbeatable safety policy, no ads usage, free of charge policy, useful design, etc. All of that makes Telegram an excellent channel for developing your online business presence, increasing brand awareness, customer loyalty, traffic rates and sales. Just create an account, start a new channel and share content with the audience: this messenger is perfect for launching various contests, answering questions, presenting new products, sharing new about the brand and purchasing.

The app design is as user friendly as possible, so you won’t have any problems when working with it. Even if you do not have and experience in design or programming, you still have all chances to create a channel with advanced options that will propose more than your competitors and attract new customers from all over the world. Either you are a marketing specialist or a business owner – Telegram is a new door to open, and I am sure you will find a bunch of opportunities for online business development.