Russian buyers are transitioning online. In 2020 alone, the national e-commerce market grew by 58%, to RUR 2.7 tln ($36.5 bln), according to DataInsight.
Shoppers increasingly tend to make purchases on the advice of bloggers who are becoming an important channel for businesses to reach out to their customers. Last year alone, companies spent more than RUR 11 bln ($148.5 mio) on advertising on YouTube and Instagram.
“We have witnessed this vying between various marketing tools for several decades now. This is quite understandable: the conventional old ways of reaching the target audience are gradually losing their effectiveness,” CEO of Epicstars Denis Volkov noted.
Cooperating with bloggers remains an effective marketing tool, especially when it comes to B2C sales, agrees Yevgeny Titarenko, creator of the bargain-hunting app BenefittY – but microblogging is the niche that promises the greatest effect. It is particularly efficient for businesses due to the attractive price – working with influencers can be dramatically cheaper than cooperating with top bloggers.
“Microblogging might not be the ‘golden bullet’ when it comes to ‘business hunting,’ but it is still a powerful and targeted tool for a company to hunt for an audience. This is undoubtedly a long-term trend. But using this tool requires skill and resources, such as specialized IT solutions. Some of the AI-enabled solutions developed in Russia are capable of producing an accurate portrait of a microblogger’s audience. This can help choose the best target platforms,” Volkov notes.