Dmitry Kovalev

The article will be useful to those who want to promote goods, services or communities using VKontakte publics, but do not know where to start. After reading, you will learn how to select groups with a target audience and compose posts that help achieve maximum conversion.

Audience Revealing

Before looking for communities, find out who your potential buyer is and make a portrait of him.

Identify Needs. Find out what need your product or service satisfies. It must be the one thing that unites target audience. Polls and forums will help you figure out what customers want.

Learn about interests. Find out about the interests of your audience to determine the topic of the group.

For this task, the Cerebro Target audience search tool is suitable. It allows you to analyze the interests of potential customers of the selected community.

In the "User Analysis" section, insert a link to the group in which, in your opinion, the target audience is a member.

Cerebro will well complement another tool located in the Facebook advertising account - audience_insights. He shows marital status, position, as well as the top favorite sites of your audience. And if you are studying the market in the USA, then in addition to the above, the level of salaries will also be available to you.

Determine gender and age. Firstly, these parameters will help you select groups with the right audience. Second, make the message in your post more personal. The service from Mail.Ru will help to find them out.

Community Selection

After compiling an avatar of the audience representatives, collect as many pages as possible that can be subscribed to potential clients. For this:

1. Use the "Community Search" "VKontakte".

1. Find groups through " Market platform" in personal account.

1. Use third-party tools for working with VK groups, such as Pabler. In order to start the selection, go to the "Publics / profiles" section, subsection - "VKontakte publics".

Community analysis

When you have a decent list of groups on the same subject, check each of them against five criteria.

Presence of target audience

To find out if your potential customers are in the community, check the gender, age and geography of its members. These data can be viewed in the "Statistics" tab.

By gender, age and geo, check the presence of an audience in the group

Member activity

If there are people in the group right age and gender, we check it for involvement. This indicator is denoted by the abbreviation ER (engagement rate) and is calculated using the ratio of actions to coverage.

To understand whether ER is normal in a group, compare it with the indicators of leading communities in this topic.

Bots

You can find out the percentage of bots through the VKontakte application: Search for "dead" members and subscribers". To do this, go to the application, paste the link to the community and click "Scan".

The presence of bots is also shown by Pabler.

Usually there are 10–20% of bots in groups. Anything more is cheating

Another way to check the community for "dead souls" is to look at the outflow of subscribers. To do this, in the statistics of the page, look at the number of unsubscribes. A high spike in the unsubscribe graph is a clear sign of a high number of bots.

Coverage

Reach refers to the number of times a post has been viewed in the news feed or community wall. This metric only counts unique users. Moreover, VKontakte does not count the fast scrolling of the entry in the tape. The person must keep their attention on the text or image. You can also see this indicator in the group statistics.

The normal reach rate is 10-20% of the total number of subscribers. If a million people subscribe to the group, the reach should be 100,000 - 200,000.

Advertising entries

If competitors posted only 1-3 times, most likely their advertising did not bring results. It is worth checking it for professional suitability (read about this in the “Composing a post” block).

If advertising posts of competitors are published regularly, then most likely the group has the audience you need. And to get a piece of it, stand apart from the competition with creatives and unique selling propositions.

Accommodation

Through administrator

To post directly:

1. Find the administrator's contacts on the page. If there are none, write your offer in a message or in a suggestion on the wall.

1. Agree on the price, time and conditions of accommodation. By purchasing a package of accommodations at once, you can agree on a discount. But you should buy more than one advertising space at once only in already verified communities.
2. Choose the time of posting based on the activity of subscribers. If the seats are only available for a low activity period, ask the administrator to reduce the price a little. You can view the activity in the "Pabler" in the "Detailed statistics" tab.

1. Submit your post for approval. Please note that you may need to make changes. Therefore, it is better to send the entry in advance so as not to redo it five minutes before publication.

Through the exchange "VK"

Publication through the VK advertising exchange is 10-15% more expensive. Suitable for those who do not use third-party community search tools, as the service itself offers accommodation options. And also for those who do not connect third-party metrics to analyze the effectiveness of advertising, because in your account you can see detailed statistics after the campaign.

To place a post through the exchange:

1. Create an ad and submit it for moderation.

When the post passes the test, it will appear in the "Active" tab - it can be posted. If it doesn't pass - "Rejected". In this case, the moderators will definitely indicate the reason, after correcting which, the ad can be sent back for moderation.

1. Based on the given parameters, find groups to place. You can search for them based on topics, budget, coverage, number of participants, etc. However, you won’t be able to find a specific community by name - the service itself will offer options.

1. Submit a placement request. Your ad will be automatically placed within the time range you specified.

Compiling a post

After you have agreed on the publication, prepare an advertising post.

1. In the ad, take into account the needs of the audience, tell how your product will solve their problem.

1. Analyze competitor ads, if any. Then come up with a unique offer and post style to make your creatives stand out from the crowd.

1. Examine the content of the public in which you plan to post. By learning which ones are the most popular, you will better understand the interests of subscribers. This will help make a more interesting and less promotional post.

1. Fill the text with emoticons to make it more noticeable and focus on the main thing. Just do not overdo it, the post should look natural, and the emoticons should fit the meaning.

1. Shorten long links in the text with vk.cc or Google URL Shortener. So the record will take up less space, look neater and, most importantly, inspire more confidence.

1. The image should be catchy to get your post noticed in the feed, but still relevant to the offer.

1. Write a catchy headline. To do this, make it the main benefit. If it does not interest the target audience, then no one will read your text, even the most useful and selling one.

Working with comments

Negative. After the publication of the entry, comments will be left under it, and not always positive. Therefore, try to work out all the negativity.

Informational. Also, people can ask questions: “how to order”, “how much does it cost”, “what is the advantage of the product”, etc. They also need to be answered in time.

Outsiders. Any off-topic remarks can be asked to remove the administrator.

Evaluation of results

To make it convenient to keep statistics and analyze the results, create a table in Google Sheets or Excel with the following fields:

• name and link to the community,
• advertising post,
• placement cost,
• date and time of posting,
• administrator contacts,
• number of transitions
• the number of applications
• ER group,
• profit.

See data on transitions and applications in Yandex.Metrica. And to distinguish between your sponsored posts and the communities you host, add UTM tags to your links. Dmitry Dementy opened this topic in more detail in the article: "".

If placed through the VK exchange, in the advertiser's personal account after the RC you can see:

• the total number of users who viewed the advertisement, and their distribution by gender and age;
• the number of unique users who clicked on at least one link in the post;
• the number of users who shared, commented on, or liked the post;
• the number of subscribed users, if the community was advertised;
• number of applications per group.

To open detailed statistics, click on the corresponding icon in the section of the corresponding advertising campaign.

If you sent an application directly, but there is no way to connect the metric, ask the administrator for the statistics of the post before deleting it. She shows:

• overall reach and subscriber reach;
• likes, reposts and comments;
• the number of users who have hidden a post from their newsfeed;
• the number of complaints about the publication;
• The number of people who clicked on the link in the post.

Re-placements

If your first few community posts were successful, keep posting. But keep in mind that over time, ad conversion will decrease. Most members will notice your ad after a few placements, so next time they will ignore it. To overcome banner blindness, update your post every few placements.

• Test the new header.
• Change emoticons.
• Change the structure of the text.
• Post with a different image.

Give your post a new look and people will start noticing your post again.

For example, I posted several times in the community with this announcement:

The first placement brought ten leads, the second - eight, after the third placement only two applications came, after the fourth - three.

I changed the photo, came up with a new headline, added different emoticons, and the next day I posted in the same group.

Re-placements with a new post brought eight, and the second time - seven applications. Despite the fact that the text of the ad remained the same, only its visual part and title have changed.

Search for new communities

To increase coverage, you need to constantly look for new groups to place. To find similar communities, use an audience intersection tool such as Cerebro Target. In it, you can follow the link to the public in which you have already successfully advertised, find similar ones, where part of the same subscribers will consist. To do this, go to the "Audience search" section, the "Groups with target audience" subsection and insert a link to the desired page.

Groups can be filtered by the parameters you need and download links to them text document or in Excel.

To find audience intersections, you can also use free analogues, for example, the application "

All about Vkontakte advertisements

We continue a series of articles on promotion through targeted advertising on Vkontakte. You can find out what targeted advertising is and how it is used in our article - link.

Two types of Vkontakte ads

Moreover, each of the types has several formats that are created for a specific type of advertising. To select the one you need, enter your advertising account, go to the tab " Targeting» - « Create ad».

Advertisements in the news feed

As you can see, it differs from the usual entry only by a small signature in the upper corner “ Advertising entry».

Advantages:

This view is displayed directly in the news feed, which increases the number of views. Accordingly, a large coverage of subscribers.

Displayed as in full version site, as well as mobile applications and mobile version.

Vkontakte offers a choice of three types of ads for the news feed

Let's look at each of them in more detail.

Carousel- the type of advertisement that is suitable for the promotion of services or goods. You can use from three to 10 links per ad. In addition, each link will be a card of a product or service. Such an entry looks like this:

Ad requirements:

- The number of cards of goods or services should be from 3 to 10

- Header length for each card from 3 to 25 characters with spaces

- Image at least 400 px in width. Animations are not supported.

- The price of the service is from 0 to 10 billion rubles. In this case, the price is indicated either for all cards, or for none.

- You can attach a button with a call to action (“go”, “open”, “order”, etc.) to each card. All cards must have buttons or none.

- You can't attach other attachments to the post

- The statistics show the total transitions for all cards. To get statistics for a specific card, you can use UTM tags.

2) You must select the community on whose behalf the entry will be posted. If you do not have a community, you need to create it and fill it with content.

3) Now you need to create the ad text and add product cards.

4) Fill out the page of this card.

- Upload an image that must be at least 400 pixels

- Enter a title

- Add the old price (if the product has a discount)

- Add the price of the product

- Adding a button

5) After that, create at least 2 more cards by selecting " Add card».

6) Proceed to setting up the target audience. Set the parameters you need and you can send the entry for moderation.

Universal notation

Universal notation - a type of Vkontakte advertisement that is used to promote any product, product, application, community, post, etc. By choosing given format, You can use all the features of the social network: attach a photo, video, poll, etc.

2) Now you need to create a new entry for advertising, or select an existing one.

When creating a new entry, you must specify the community on behalf of which it will be posted. If you do not have it, then create and fill it with content.

After that, click on the button " Create».

4) Set up your target audience and launch your ad.

This type of ad may contain a button with a call to action (Buy, Download, Order, etc.). It is worth noting that when choosing this type, only payment for ad impressions will be available.

3) You need to set up an ad.

- Upload an image

- Create a title (from 3 to 80 characters)

- Select the button to record. It is worth noting that when advertising different products (website, group, etc.), the names of the buttons will be different. You can also remove the button by clicking on the cross next to it.

4) Save the post and set up the target audience. After that, you can start the ad.

This type of ad is suitable for promoting third-party sites, applications and Vkontakte communities. The main disadvantage is that posts are shown only in the full version of the site. An example of such an ad is shown in the screenshot below.

Vkontakte offers 3 types of ads on the site pages.

External site

2) Select " External site».

Image and text

big image

5) Set up the target audience and send the ad for moderation.

Community

3) Choose one of the available ad options

Image and text

big image

Community promotion

4) Set up your target audience and launch your ad

Appendix

Suitable for promoting games and applications hosted on a social network. If you are the administrator of the application, you can pay for its advertising with Vkontakte votes.

square image

Image and text

big image

Special

Application showcase

4) Set up the target audience and run the ad

SHARE

Hurray… wait!

July 1, 2015 Vkontakte launched in public access new format advertisement Record promotion.

To give you an idea of ​​why I'm so excited about this news, here's an example of how post promotion works on my Facebook page:

Those. users do not perceive like an advertisement, like it with pleasure and share it with friends.

Accordingly grows organic reach the audience that sees your ad.

(In Facebook, the interaction of network users with ads at times reduces its cost. But more on that another time...)

Who can take advantage of the new ad format?

All advertisers who fulfill a number of conditions can launch and try out the possibilities of the new format:

• have at least ten thousand rubles,
• govern the community from five thousand people.

What else you need to know before launching an ad

• On the one entry in the system can only be created one ad.
• You can only promote the posts of communities in which you have rights administrator.

(In the future they promise to add advertiser's rights…)

• At the moment, ads are only showing in the full version of the site vk.com. (But they will be added in the mobile version of m.vk.com and in mobile applications.)
• To promote community posts only pay-per-impression option available. You should set the cost per 1000 impressions (uCPM).

(In the future, other payment methods are assumed: for clicks (CPC), for video views (CPV).)

• Cost per 1000 impressions should be in the range recommended values. If the price is less than the minimum recommended value, the ad may not be shown to anyone.

You can read more about post promotion at Help for targeted advertising VKontakte.

If everything you read above suits you, and your community has more than 5,000 people, you can proceed to setting up advertising.

How to set up Vkontakte Post Promotion

#1 Top up your account balance

Your first step is replenish the balance advertising account up to 10,000 rubles.

#2 Create a new post on your community wall

In the future, tests and statistics will show which publication format is more effective...

Create a new post on your community wall

Create a new post on your community wall and post it.

Click on a hosted post to copy its link:

To do this, go to your ad account and choose ad format Community post:

Clue: Take a look at your community stats and look at the demographics of your active members: gender and age. Why pay for ad impressions to non-target audiences.

Be sure to segment your ad audience by interest:

Be sure to segment your ad audience by interest

(Here you have to break your head, many requests are simply not in the VKontakte advertising database.)

2 - Specify the amount you are willing to pay for 1000 impressions of your ad.

4 - Before pressing Create ad, read carefully

The advertising format in the VKontakte news feed was conceived to promote your business through the social network. For those who have opened and manage their own groups, it is possible to set up the display of posts from them to a wider audience using targeting, that is, in fact, this is the same target vk. The difference is that here you can only promote posts published in your group, or create new ones, but only if you have administrator rights.

Features of advertising in the VK news feed.

• Advertising posts can be shown in the news of any users without spam, legally.
• The news hangs for as long as you like, the unrolling is slow.
• Low cost per click with precise targeting settings.
• You can create a new message right in the advertising account and disable its display to group subscribers so as not to waste your budget in vain.
• Likes and reposts are put, that is, if your offer is interesting, you can expect its viral distribution.

You should know that one post in the community is allowed to create one ad, no more. Therefore, most often such advertising is used to draw attention to new discounts, promotions or events. It is also an effective way to increase awareness of your brand or some promoted product.

Entries from closed groups are not accepted for posting in the VKontakte news feed, which is quite logical, because they are closed.

The format is very advanced - in addition to text, pictures, videos, polls, maps are added, that is, in practice, there are no restrictions. This makes it possible to catch the user's attention with creative offers, but do not forget that ads are moderated by VK, which, as usual, is very strict.

How to make and place ads in the VKontakte news feed.

Here everything is the same as in setting up a targeted campaign - go to "advertising-targeting-create an ad", click "post in the community" and enter a link to the page with the post.

If you do not want the ad to be shown in the feed of subscribers and in the group itself, which is quite logical - its members can already get acquainted with all the offers in the community, we create the so-called "hidden" advertising.

To do this, click "create record". To write a new post, you are offered to indicate the community on behalf of which it is being done.

We continue

Pay attention to the explanations at the bottom of the window - community members are excluded from the display, and money from the advertising budget will not be spent on them. To get acquainted with your offer of subscribers, if necessary, you can create a new message in the group itself and it will not cost you a penny.

Now turn on your imagination, peep, write text and upload what you need - pictures, video, audio, polls or maps. You can insert a button with a link to a community or an external site, as well as a phone number for communication (ordering).

Campaign settings in the feed.

There are some differences from the usual settings. For example, when creating a new record in targeting, your group is excluded from impressions

There is no payment for clicks in the price selection, there is only a payment “for 1000 impressions”, and limiting the display of a post is allowed up to 1 impression per person (targeting is not configured in this screenshot, the coverage is “for everyone”, hence such a cost).

That's it, wait for moderation, and after approval, the ad will start rolling automatically.

Yes, it's simple - to open a new community, even if it's fake. Here it should be said that VK will not let you launch a campaign if it is not formalized - there is no logo in the avatar, the name and information about the company, any contact information.

If you use the group purely for advertising purposes on various topics, you can call it neutrally, like Virt-Cap (what came to mind). And from it to drive advertising entries for various offers into the news feed. It is created simply: in the VK account, go to “groups-create a community” and further down the list.

In a previous publication, we made an overview of a tool that appeared in service with marketers relatively recently - native advertising.

One of the sites where you can independently and very quickly launch native advertising (the one that is shown in the news feed) is social network In contact with. Today we will talk about how to set up native VK advertising.

How to set up native advertising in VK?

There are two ways to create native VKontakte ads.

The advantage of the first approach is that a post from the community will gain likes and shares, and all this will positively affect the attractiveness of the community.

The second approach should be used when you do not want advertising posts, for example, due to the fact that there will be a lot of them, do not spam the news feed.

On the page that opens, select "Post promotion".

A window will open where you will need to click "Create Entry".

After choosing the community that you will advertise, you can proceed to the creation of the advertising post itself. Write text, insert a picture and a link if necessary.

Finally, you can choose which button will be displayed in the post. If you use a button, then the maximum text length in a post is 220 characters. If the button is not needed or you want to place a longer text, click on the cross to remove the button from the entry.