Real estate agency promotion in Telegram Ads and seeding

Growing a regional channel from 100 subscribers to 1,500 in a few months.

Launching a regional business in Telegram

In Telegram, unlike social networks such as VK or Facebook, you cannot limit ad impressions by geography. For example, in VK you can set a radius and show ads only to users whose IP matches that area.

So we worked only with channels that collect users from our target city. There is always a risk of outside cities, but we minimized it. The downsides are a limited number of usable channels, sometimes high placement prices, and many target channels that do not sell ads.

Below is how we handled each issue and closed the gaps.

How we found regional channels

We used these methods:

1) Search inside Telegram by keywords. This gives a small list.
2) Telemetr.me. With it we found dozens of target channels and checked them for inflated metrics and activity.
3) Telega.in. We contacted some channels there because they had no admin contacts in the description. This service is limited because the list is small. For our city there were a bit more than 10 options, and 3 to 4 of them were chats where placement performance is much lower.

One incident

Once we placed an ad via telega.in in a news channel. The owner forgot to add links to the post, or removed them. Reaching them via the service was difficult. After about seven hours the links were added, but most impressions were already delivered. We did not get a refund or a second free placement. So be very careful when you publish through telega.in.

Telemetr.me

We do most of the channel search there. It is also the most effective for channel checks.

For example, this type of channel stats is close to ideal. Growth is smooth, with no sharp spikes. There are no periods of sharp churn either. Sharp churn often appears when a channel is inflated and bots start leaving.

I also analyze where the channel has advertised before: what ads were used, how often the channel runs ads in other channels, and so on.

Sometimes there is growth but no placements, which raises questions.

In this case we see placements only on specific regional channels, so it is unlikely to attract many irrelevant users from other regions.

When advertising works, the client channel shows smooth, confident upward growth visible on the chart.

Again, placements are on specific regional channels, so we expect few irrelevant users from other cities.

Launching Telegram Ads

We registered and started in Telegram Ads during a promotion when you could launch with a budget from 10,000 rubles.

With such a budget it is hard to run parallel tests or experiments. Ideally you need to launch in a way that is immediately effective.

Tasks

• Reach the audience we could not reach before.
• Reach a wide audience at a low cost.
• Receive steady, affordable subscribers every day.

Telegram Ads specifics

Unlike other ad platforms, Telegram does not allow a daily budget. There is no optimization and no click cost. We see only impressions, subscribers, and spent amount. This creates constraints and extra work for the media buyer.

First, you cannot set a daily budget and wait several days. Every morning I add a small amount to selected campaigns to see how they deliver today. Some days a previously successful campaign performs poorly. If the amount spends and subscribers arrive, I keep feeding the campaign. I do this for each campaign separately. Some clients have dozens of campaigns.

Second, because there are no optimizations, we manually work with CPM. When launching the first campaigns we run tests to find the CPM that gives the needed reach without overpaying. For example, at 20 euros CPM you might reach 99 percent of a channel audience. At 10 euros CPM you might still reach 99 percent. At 7 euros CPM you might reach around 80 percent. If 80 percent is enough, there is no reason to overpay by 1.5 to 3 times.

We tested several ad creatives and quickly found one with strong response.

For targeting we selected channels that are expensive for direct placement or do not sell ads at all, but they are still local to Yekaterinburg.

We also found that with a minimal CPM of 2 euros per 1,000 impressions delivery is stable and consistent.

This suggests competition in Telegram Ads is low or absent at the regional level.

Overall subscriber growth looks unstable because the client could not always refill the ad account quickly.

Running ads to specific posts

Besides sending ads to the channel, we also tested ads that lead to specific messages. The drawback is higher subscription cost. But by sending a person to the exact post we can get a lead immediately, which reduces cost per lead.

Pros of Telegram Ads

• Clean payments with full closing documents.
• Ads can show on any open channel. No admin approval is required.
• The ad stays visible in the channel and is not missed by the audience.
• Low cost impressions. On most large channels a bid of 2 euros per 1,000 impressions is enough.
• Low competition due to the high entry check.
• Clear and accessible statistics.

What is the difference between seeding and official ads?

First, stability of results. Seeding is not stable. We achieved a minimum subscriber cost around 20 to 23 rubles in seeding, while in Telegram Ads it was about 0.6 euros. But that low cost in seeding happened only 5 to 7 times over the entire promotion. With official ads similar results could appear every three days.

Seeding allows you to reach the audience with any post length. It can be two lines or thirty, with images and video. Telegram Ads is only a few lines without photos or video.

Telegram Ads is best when your product has an expensive audience, for example business owners or finance. Placements in those channels can cost more than 5 rubles per impression, which is very expensive.

Seeding is useful with small budgets up to 100,000 rubles per month due to the high entry threshold of Telegram Ads, and when your product might not pass moderation.

Also, complex products are harder to promote via Telegram Ads because it is hard to explain them in a few lines.

Conclusion and results

Combining Telegram Ads and seeding produced the following stats in the channel. The spikes reflect ad buys in other channels. Unsubscribes occur but not many, which signals good content engagement.

From August to December we attracted almost 1,500 subscribers. This is a strong result for a regional channel in 2022 and for a service needed only at specific moments, such as real estate search and purchase.