Do you think that everyone ended up on Instagram? This is not true. 90% of our projects are promoted by VKontakte, because this social network is still the most visited in Russia. More than 35 million people visit VK every day: meet, communicate, sell and buy. Consider how an entrepreneur can tame the blue beast of VKontakte and squeeze the maximum out of business.
Opportunities of the social network VKontakte
The mechanics of the work seem simple: you need to understand who the target audience of the service or product is and convince users to subscribe. And then insulate potential customers before buying. But where to lead your business audience? You can create a public, group or event. Let’s consider how they differ and for what situations they are useful.
Public
A public page that posts content on a specific topic is a public page. A public page, in fact, can be compared to a news channel or newspaper… After all, subscribers cannot influence the content: post posts on the wall, upload photos, audio and video. Public is useful for publishing news on behalf of a brand or popular person. If you want a sea of user-generated content and an ocean of interest discussions, create a group.
Group
A group can be closed, private, or completely open, as opposed to a public page. In groups, you can allow any user to publish content, and posts will be seen by all people… You can’t do that in public. Only administrators can publish posts on behalf of the community, with the signature of the author. If you, for example, own a small eco-shop and decide to create a community for communication with potential customers in the feed, choose this format.
Event
Perfect for events, concerts, conferences and other offline events. When setting up an event, remember that the functionality of this community is the same as that of an open group:
– There may be an open wall.
– Users can upload photos to albums themselves.
– Subscribers can create discussions.
If you don’t want to give so much freedom to your readers, we recommend setting up restrictions and turning on the foul language filter.
Public or group?
If you are a large company and it is important for you post content on your own behalf – it’s better to create a public… And if you the community is important – it’s better to create a group… For example, the Ikea brand prioritizes communication with its customers. The community is important for the brand, so they created a group and opened a wall for everyone:
Community Advertising Opportunities
Before starting the promotion, you need to design the community and fill it with quality content. The VKontakte advertising account has all the important settings for launching an advertising campaign.
The targeting scientist can choose age, gender, interests of the target audience, as well as groupsin which potential customers are. To get a good result from targeted ads, you need to test all ad formats and scale the most successful.
VK has many ad formats, you just need to test and choose the most effective ones for yourself. Alternatively, you can only show your ad to those who live near the gym (if you need to promote your fitness club). It is best to write the address, metro or residential complex on the banner so that people will see something familiar to themselves.
But finding the target audience is a difficult task. It all starts simply: the targeting scientist must identify competitors’ audiences and run ads for their subscribers. But the audience of competitors sooner or later “burns out”. And the constant testing of other settings and audiences begins in conjunction with analytics of the results.
In the “Workshop of Health” project, it is a network of clinics where spine diseases are treated; we found an audience thanks to the category of interests. Social networks collect information about what we are interested in. They filter users by interests, for example, if you are subscribed to self-care and beauty publics, your account will be categorized as “beauty”. In this project, we crossed the audience of those interested in the topic of health with those who were in publics for the treatment of osteochondrosis, in the communities of clinics.
In other words, the targeting analyst finds publics with a similar target audience, filters these users by the “health addiction” indicator, and shows your ad to the most active subscribers of the communities… And these are just the most obvious advertising opportunities. Each time, targetologists come up with new ways to find audiences, so today it is impossible to count them.
Selling goods and services through the VKontakte group: key features
Using the block “Products” each community can create an informative and up-to-date directory. From it, you can immediately transfer subscribers to a store or a manager who will close them for a purchase.
In the application, you need to fill in the information about your product:
– Store currency.
– Delivery region.
– Description of the store.
– Contact for communication.
– Product comments.
– The cost of each product.
Selling services: features
Selling a service is always more difficult than selling a product. The main thing for selling services on social networks is to make it easier for the client to purchase and create an association with quality, honesty and good results. Content does this job well. Your content needs to focus on reputation and sales posts to build trust and create value in the eyes of the customer.
Community Content Marketing
If ads bring people into your community, posts help keep them there and keep them warm. Also, high-quality content will help you make a choice in your favor if a person was looking for a service and found a group that convinced him. All publications must be unique, interesting and informative. When creating a strategy, it is important to identify the pains of the target audience and cover them with posts. This is how a kind of tandem will turn out: advertising leads, and the text convinces… It is important to correctly design the goods so that subscribers can get all the additional information about the product or service.
Vkontakte applications
The collection of orders and analytics tools help in ordering and greatly simplify the purchase. For example, in the application “Questionnaires” a potential client can give primary information about himself in a couple of seconds.
And send them for further processing by managers. Community admins will see how many people have completed the survey and what are the most popular responses from customers. Thanks to the answers in statistics, you can draw conclusions about the target audience.
But VK widgets can be used for more than just generating leads. If it is important for you to immediately set the person up in a friendly way, try connecting a personalized welcome widget… A big plus of the application: it does not look like a call to buy “head-on”, but, on the contrary, improves the atmosphere in the community.
And if you have a lot of reviews that you can’t help but share – customize a dedicated widget with them… It will have a positive effect on the company’s reputation and help potential clients make a decision sooner.
VK Pay
Helps a potential client make a decision and quickly process a payment. The innovation allows you to pay for all services and goods without leaving the social network spaceand it is very convenient. Do not worry that the site will crash and the user will not be able to place an order.
Let’s summarize
1) Every business that has a target audience on VKontakte can promote there.
2) On the social network, you can sell goods and services using applications without transferring potential customers to other sites. And this is good, because the user will make out the payment in his usual environment and will not get lost during the redirection.
3) VKontakte has many opportunities for advertising in communities. The target audience can find the right audience and tune in to it.
4) Don’t smother potential customers with selling posts. When developing your content strategy, think about the interests and pains of your target audience. And also how your product can help solve customer problems.
Do you want to know about all the possibilities of social networks? On the website of the Tesla Target SMM agency, you can find out more about promotion with examples of their projects.
We wish you success in promoting your business!