In early April, Telegram released another update with new features for businesses. Each user now has the opportunity to create their own business account and connect a chatbot to it, and channel owners can now receive 50% of the advertising revenue.
Join
According to the Tochka Advertising service, over the past year the number of advertisers on Telegram grew by 80%. Spending per user on advertising on the site increased year over year. From March 2023 to March 2024 they amounted to 547 thousand rubles.
RB.RU asked market participants and analysts who will have the greatest demand for the new business features on Telegram and which segments will benefit more than others.
Some experts agree that the new functionality will be useful mainly for small and medium-sized businesses. Others believe that the additional capabilities of the site will be in demand among both small businesses and large players with high turnover.
Who won
According to Evgeniy Perov, product director of the corporate messenger Compass, the most relevant new capabilities of Telegram will be, first of all, for the B2C segment, especially for the business sector.
Alexander Logoshenko, marketer of the BirdsBuild B2B marketplace, separately highlights the benefits for offline stores.
“It is the physical stores that operate offline that will receive the maximum benefit. If a person needs a product, he will look for the store’s Telegram account, clarify the information directly or find out the details in the bot, and in the description he will immediately see the location and opening hours of the point of sale,” explains the expert. .
According to business consultant, PRoud.365 communications and public relations expert Evgenia Istomina, the new functionality will help account owners involved in traffic arbitration. Welcome messages, quick replies, and chat tags to duplicate some functions of the CRM system will improve the efficiency of the sales funnel.
The founder of the marketing and branding agency Elena Melnik Studio, Elena Melnik, in turn highlights the importance of updating for the HoReCa, retail and beauty sectors. Furthermore, we are talking about specific benefits for medium-sized companies.
The ability to add a welcome message will be especially useful for business owners or brand leaders who are developing their media presence. This greeting can be customized depending on the target audience, says Sofia Troshina, head of Webit’s reputation management team.
Conversion
The general director of the MiXBS service, Nina Konyusheva, also talks about the advantages of the new functionality mainly for B2C. However, according to Konyusheva, automating business processes through new capabilities will increase conversion more with the same resources than help reduce costs.
Evgeniy Petrov from Compass notes that the site’s business functions will help solve one of the main points. Now companies have to redirect Telegram traffic to third-party sites.
“If you attach a Telegram Web App to a business account, for example, with a product catalog, this will help brands convert traffic into sales right now without leaving the application,” explains the expert.
This approach reduces the number of intermediate steps along the user funnel, thereby increasing conversion. In this way it is possible to reduce the cost of attracting customers, says Petrov.
Automation
Almost all of the experts surveyed mentioned the possibility of connecting a chatbot to the channel as one of the main advantages.
According to Ilya Varlakhov, general director of the VI-media advertising agency, setting scripts in a chatbot effectively influences business development, accelerating processes and simplifying the work of employees. Quick responses, which can now be prepared in advance, also increase customer trust and loyalty, says the expert.
“Even though there are no messages in the chat yet, the customer sees that the company is completely ready to interact, welcomes him and a menu of buttons makes the task easier and saves time not only for customers, but also for the company. own company”, — explains Varlakhov.
The instant money transfer service Avosend said that they pay special attention to Telegram, since the most active audience is concentrated on the site. They note that a particularly useful feature was the ability to set an automatic response.
“Many companies have strengthened their presence on Telegram and chatbots are often used to respond to mass services (for example, grocery delivery). In fact, Telegram launched a simplified analogue of a chatbot with the ability to send automatic responses and ready-made templates,” says Alla Kurdenkova, marketing director at Avosend, adding that the solution will greatly simplify the work of small businesses.
Content producer and author of Telegram’s “Economism” channel, Alexey Krichevsky, also aims for a reduction in channel administration costs by configuring all basic responses in the chatbot.
Alexander Logoshenko also agrees with this conclusion, who emphasizes that thanks to the new options, channel owners will not have to spend money on creating and supporting chatbots.
company image
Marketing agency Demis Group believes that features such as setting up a link and creating a chat to communicate with the account owner, connecting a bot, setting up a greeting, and the ability to directly add a company address will not improve promotion results. . However, these options affect the image of the organization and increase customer confidence.
“I would rather order a service or buy a product from a company that answers questions as quickly as possible than from one that rarely answers,” explains Marina Vetrova, head of content management at the SMM division of the Demis Group.
PR specialist Yulia Matsukatova also notes that accounts with opening hours, addresses and links to stores look professional and are more reliable.
Author:
Natalia Gormaleva
Source: RB
I am a professional journalist and content creator with extensive experience writing for news websites. I currently work as an author at Gadget Onus, where I specialize in covering hot news topics. My written pieces have been published on some of the biggest media outlets around the world, including The Guardian and BBC News.
