Blog about successful marketing strategies in russia

Blogger vs. Celebrity: Pros and Cons of Cooperation in the Russian Market

DIGITAL MARKETING

Today, it is difficult to imagine a business (especially B2C) that would not interact with Instagram in any way. Be it official brand accounts, placement with influencers, or targeted ads, Instagram allows businesses to effectively solve any and all tasks, from increase of brand awareness and image management to direct sales.

Russian Instagram in Figures

According to Aitarget, an official reseller of Instagram and Facebook in Russia, at year-end 2018 Russia has taken the 6th place in the world and the 1st place in Europe by number of active Instagram users.

More than 2.5 million Russians use this social network daily, while the monthly Instagram coverage in Russia is 18 million users, according to WEB-Index.

Most popular Instagram accounts in Russia belong to celebrities: signers and actresses. Top 10 Russian-speaking authors and groups, built on the basis of the engagement index, has only one man—Khabib Nurmagomedov, a world-known UFC champion.

No.	Name	Profile	Audience	ER*
1.	Olga Buzova	@buzova86	15,357,488	24,060,924
2.	Samoylova Oxana	@samoylovaoxana	8,127,532	16,453,357
3.	Ksenia Borodina	@borodylia	12,822,132	14,312,875
4.	Nastia Kamenskykh	@kamenskux	3,536,101	13,741,972
5.	Nastia Ivleeva	@_agentgirl_	11,619,672	13,523,055
6.	Khabib Nurmagomedov	@khabib_nurmagomedov	14,560,994	11,985,764
7.	ReginaTodorenko	@reginatodorenko	6,168,284	8,098,272
8.	Anna Hilkevich	@annakhilkevich	8,544,441	7,483,193
9.	LOBODA	@lobodaofficial	5,047,530	7,426,167
10.	Elena Sazhina	@helen_yes1	3,068,312	7,303,126

*ER – sum of all comments, likes, and reposts per month

Source: Brand Analytics, May 2019

Work with Influencers

This is one of the most effective promotion methods on Instagram. By influencers, we mean bloggers whose opinion is weighty for their subscribers: these can be both common users who found their own identity and their audience in a certain theme (instamoms, food, travel, beauty bloggers) and celebrities (singers, actors, famous sportsmen etc.). Advertising placement with influencers enables a significant expansion of reach and an increase of brand loyalty, but on one condition—he or she must have enough target audience of yours among his or her subscribers.

With what bloggers will the cooperation be most effective? An instamom microblogger or a multimillion audience of a famous mom Oxana Samoilova? This depends not only on the product that you offer, but also on the advertising budget that you possess. Besides, it is worth considering some peculiarities of working with both categories of opinion leaders.

Blogger

Celebrity

Cost

Starting from 5,000 RUB. It is hard to tell a ceiling value, but a potential reach can be from 10,000 to several million users

The price can reach up to 500,000 RUB per post or, in case of a video ad, even more

Content quality

They usually get subscribers by means of beautiful and/or interesting content

There are those who make classy content, but users subscribe to most of them out of curiosity only

Content nativeness

As they attract subscriber with their content quality, they are interested in doing everything to make an interesting and subtle advertising post

With a few exceptions, posts look like clearly paid for

Opportunity to contact directly and get a quick reply

Communicative enough, sometimes offer various cooperation formats themselves

Get in touch in person sometimes, but this is uncommon. Most often, one can contact them only via an agent or, in some cases, only via agencies

Flexibility

+ –

It matters for them what they advertise, so they, trying to maintain quality, go for mutual approval before posting

+ –

Ones are ready to publish your carbon copy text, others immediately tell ‘I write what you want, if you want my ad—live with it’

Coverage

Coverage can be as large as celebrities have, but the price is much lower

Usually very large

Subscribers’ quality

+ –

As subscribers are their bread and butter, there can be non-target audience obtained through mass following and adding commercial accounts

+ –

They do not need additional promotion and juked subscribers, consequently, the audience is mostly real users

Subscribers’ reaction to advertising content

+ –

A lot depends on ad placement frequency and how native it is. However, the probability of positive reaction and trust to ads is much higher

+ –

More often than not, users are used to ads and do not pay attention to them. In general, there is little negativity, but little trust as well

Reputation

In their account, they can create a desirable image and maintain it successfully, while any damaging material can be found online rarely if ever

+ –

Stars are often associated with juicy open scandals, both real and fabricated. You never know when another one will break out and how it can affect your brand reputation

Geotargeting

You can choose opinion leaders in a separate region. Level of trust to them and a chance for nativeness is much higher, while prices of regional bloggers are lower

–

Mostly work in Moscow

Source: Ingate, Instagram for business

Conclusion

So, how do you choose an optimal option of placement with opinion leaders? Learn more from our article Brand Ambassador: How to Work with Opinion Leaders in the Russian Market.

Even better, leave it to professionals: our experts will choose best influencers for you, taking into account your relevant target audience, your marketing purposes, and within your advertising budget.