In this article, I’m going to show you how to get clients on telegram or call it Telegram marketing. I’ll be sharing with you how you can market your business, promote your brand or communicate with your clients through Telegram.
I’ll present to you two major ways you can do this, that’s through groups and channels, and a couple of other options you can use to take this even further. But first;
What is Telegram?
Telegram is a fast, simple and free messaging app that you can use to communicate with friends, customers or followers. Telegram was launched in October 2013 and currently has over 700 million monthly active users. It is also one of the 10 most downloaded apps in the world.
Being a cloud-based messaging service, Telegram enables you to access your messages and data from different devices.
You can use it to send messages, videos, photos, and files of any type, like doc, zip, mp3, etc, as well as create and use groups of up to 200,000 people, and channels that you can use to broadcast to unlimited audiences.
Telegram also supports end-to-end encrypted voice and video calls, as well as voice chats in groups for thousands of participants.
Why You Should Use Telegram For Your Business
To keep your clients informed.
With Telegram, you can create a public or private channel and invite your current customers to join it. This way you can share photos and videos of your products, tell your subscribers about the history of your brand, and even introduce to them your team. You can also notify your clients about upcoming sales or promotional offers.
To communicate better with your customers.
Telegram groups will help you interact directly with your clients. In a group, you can communicate with your audience, and your group members can interact with one another.
You can also add administrators to manage your group more efficiently. With a group, you can let your loyal customers help new members by answering questions about your products or services.
Primarily, Telegram groups are a great opportunity for your business to build a community.
Telegram is free; with Telegram, you can promote your business and boost your clientele for free. You can send messages to advertise your products to your customers without paying a single dime. Who wouldn’t want to do that?!
You can have 24/7 customer support.
This can be done through the use of Telegram Chatbots. A chatbot is an online assistant that you can use to streamline everyday tasks. You can delegate a chatbot to answer FAQs, handle orders, and other customer consultations, and they can do this 24/7, while your customer support team can work on more complicated issues.
Increase traffic to your website.
With Telegram, you can share links to your landing pages, invite your customers to check out a new collection, or share a link to your client reviews. This way, you’ll increase traffic to specific pages on your website.
Boost user engagement.
You can easily do this using the Telegram polls. You can create a poll with multiple answers to get to know your customers’ opinions about a particular product or service; you can create a quiz where you’ll explain why a user chose the wrong variant. That last option is especially perfect for educational services. And to make this deal even sweeter, your polls can be anonymous!
Now that you know the benefits of Telegram to your business, let’s get started on how you can go about using Telegram for your business.
Step 1: Establish your goal to get clients on telegram
What exactly do you want to achieve with your clients on Telegram?
Whether you want to support your clients, increase your sales, build a community, or any other of the above reasons, when you answer this question, you’ll have developed a goal for your Telegram marketing strategy, and therefore you’ll know what steps to take to achieve your goal.
Let’s say, for example, your goal is to build trusting relationships with your already existing clients as well as increase your sales, what you can do to achieve this is;
Create a private channel for your most loyal clients, then through it let them be the first to learn about your upcoming sales and offers, you can also create a poll to let them choose their desired items and maybe get a discount on them.
Step 2. Create your Telegram account
After you’ve developed your goal and strategy, and you have an idea of how you’re going to go about your marketing, it’s time to create a Telegram account to get started on this.
You can use your mobile Telegram app or Telegram Desktop to create an account. Give it a name; that is, your business name and a profile picture or your logo.
Next, I’m going to present you with the 2 major options you can use to market your business;
- Telegram Groups
- Telegram Channels
Telegram groups are a very powerful communication tool. A group can have up to 200,000 members each, and these members can send messages, and share photos, videos, and audio files. A group can either be public; where any user can find it in the global search, can join, and can view the history, or it can be a private group where people can only join if you manually add them or send them an invite link.
Here are a few key features that make Telegram groups stand out:
- In a group, you can edit your messages after posting them, or even delete them so that they disappear, for everyone. You can also access your messages at any time from any device.
- With Telegram groups, you can appoint administrators that can control membership, mass-delete messages, or pin important messages.
- You can search and find the message you’re looking for, even among millions of messages. You can also filter by the sender to make searching extensively easier.
- Telegram groups offer you easy replies, mentions, hashtags for you to easily trace your conversations and keep communication efficient, irrespective of your group size.
- You can be able to mute the group and get notifications only when people mention you or reply to your messages.
- You can pin any of your messages so that you can have them displayed at the top of the chat screen. All members will get a notification — even if they muted ordinary messages from your group.
- You’re able to set up default group permissions to restrict all members from posting specific kinds of content. You can even restrict members from sending messages altogether – and let the admins chat amongst themselves while everybody else is watching, how cool is that?!
- You can send and receive files of up to 2 GB in size, files of any type, and you can access them instantly on your other devices.
- You can create custom tools for any specific needs using the Telegram Bot API and Inline Bots.
- Group mentions, in a Telegram group you can mention some people you may want to so that they are notified and can see your message right away.
- You can find other Telegram groups that are relevant to your business and join them, this will help other people discover your business too.
- You can make use of the discussions feature on your Telegram channel. Channels only provide the option for admins to broadcast content but not for channel subscribers to comment on the content, you can enable the discussions feature to allow your users to comment on your content.
Create a Telegram group
To create a group, click on the 3 horizontal lines (☰) in the top-left corner;
On iOS:
Tap the icon in the top right corner in Chats > New Group
On Android and Telegram Desktop:
Click the menu icon in the top left corner then select New Group
Give your group a name and click ☑ to save, and then you can go ahead and add your friends and clients using the ADD MEMBERS option. Remember, you can have up to 200k members!
You can add your contacts, or you can use search by username.
You can also add people by sending them an invite link. To get your invite link, go to your Group > Add Members > Copy Invite Link.
Anyone who has Telegram installed will be able to join your group by following this link, and if you choose to cancel the link, it will stop working immediately.
Assign administrators to a Telegram group
After creating your group, you can add administrators to help you manage your group better, and you can define their privileges, for example, they can delete messages, invite users, pin messages, add new admins, ban users, etc.
Here’s how you go about that:
iOS:
Go to Group Info by tapping the photo in the top right corner of the group‘s chat screen, then go to Edit > Administrators.
Android:
Go to Group Info (tap the name in the header) > the pencil icon (in the top right corner) > Administrators.
Telegram Desktop:
In the group, click ‘…’ in the top right corner > Manage group > Administrators.
- Telegram Channels
Channels are used to broadcast public messages to large audiences. Unlike groups, channels can have an unlimited number of subscribers. As the channel’s owner, when you post on the channel, the message is signed with the channel’s name, not yours. You can also appoint additional administrators to help you manage your channel.
When new members subscribe to your channel, they can see the entire message history in it.
Each message in a channel has a view counter that gets updated when the message is viewed, including its forwarded copies.
Telegram Channel Features
- You can promote your business by posting announcements on your channel for your clients to see what’s new, discounts, etc.
- You can ask for feedback from your clients on their purchases, they can also post videos and images of the products they purchase.
- You can add an unlimited number of users to your Telegram channel, hence having more clients on Telegram.
- A Telegram channel allows you to share a direct link to your website, this way you can use it to redirect people to a sales page or landing page on your website, thereby increasing your sales.
- Telegram channels can help you increase your brand awareness and sales; you can share news, customer testimonials, product overviews and so much more on your Telegram channel. This is what will drive more subscribers to your channel and boost your brand.
- Your channel subscribers have anonymity. New visitors to your channel will not be able to see who is subscribed to your channel, they’ll only see the total number of subscribers you have.
- For each message you share on your channel, you can view how many people have viewed it, this way you can track the effectiveness of your content, and of course, know how to better it to reach more people.
Create a Telegram channel
On iPhone: Start a new message (tap the icon in the top-right corner in Chats). Then ‘New Channel’.
Android: Tap the circular pencil icon in the chat list. Then ‘New Channel’.
Windows: Tap the ‘+’ button on the bottom bar. Then ‘New Channel’.
Give your channel a name of your choice, and a description, plus your logo.
And you can choose whether you want your channel to be private or public.
Difference between public and private channels
Public channels have a username. Anyone can find them in the Telegram global search and join.
Private channels on the other hand are closed societies – you need to be added by the channel owner or get an invite link to join.
Public channels are easier to find on Telegram, once someone types in a keyword that matches your channel’s name or description, they can see your channel in their results and can decide to become your subscriber.
Note: a private channel with publicly available invite links will be treated in the same way as a public channel in case of content disputes.
Channel administrators
The owner of a channel can broadcast messages, delete any messages, add the first 200 subscribers, remove subscribers, change the channel’s name, profile images and links, as well as delete the channel entirely. The owner can also add and remove administrators to help manage the channel.
You can also set up specific administrator rights for each administrator when you appoint them.
To add administrators click on the 3 dots (⋮) > Manage channel > Adminstrators > Add Administrators.
You can add up to 50 administrators to manage your channel.
Tip: As the owner of the channel, you can enable admin signatures that users will see next to the view counters. These signatures only mention the name of the administrator and no link to their profile.
If admin signatures are disabled, there will be no way for users to know whether a message was posted by the owner or one of the administrators.
How to add people to your channel
As a Telegram channel owner, you can invite the first 200 subscribers to your channel. Once the subscriber hits a count of 200, the channel is on its own.
Go to the 3 dots on the right (⋮) > Manage channel > Subscribers > Add users.
If your channel is public, it will have a username and a telegram.me/ link (e.g. t.me/telegram) which you can post on social media, advertise in magazines, send by email etc.
If you have a private channel, you can send an invite link to your preferred recipients.
Also read: How to Delete Telegram Account
Additional Telegram Marketing Strategies
The Telegram People Nearby Feature
You can use the people nearby feature to market your business in your local area.
To try this out:
Tap in the 3 lines (☰) and go to People Nearby
Make sure you turn on your location and allow Telegram to access it.
In the People Nearby section, you’ll find options you can use to market your business to people in your vicinity.
For example, you’re able to view the people that are nearby and see their distance from you. When you tap on their name, you’re able to see their info/bio and send them a direct message.
This way, you can be able to find out their interests as well as add them to your group or channel if they’re interested in what you’re selling.
You can also see the nearby Telegram groups available, and join them if they have the potential to grow your business.
You can as well create a local group with only people in your area. Anyone close to your location will be able to see your group or channel in their People Nearby section.
Note:
- Telegram will not make your location visible to other people by default unless you tap on the Make Myself Visible option, then people will be able to find you n their People Nearby section
- You can only use this People Nearby feature on your mobile app.
The Telegram t.me link
Telegram gives you the option to access a unique link; the t.me/(your telegram username), which you can share with your clients.
After you’ve set up your username, you can send people the t.me/username link that you’ve been given. Opening that link on their phone will automatically launch their Telegram app and open a chat with you. You can share username links with friends or clients, write them on business cards or put them up on your website and other social media platforms.
When they click on that link they’ll be able to access your telegram account where they can view your products
This way people can contact you on Telegram without you even having to share your phone number.
To create your t.me:
Go to your Telegram account on mobile, tap on your profile picture or go to Settings.
Make sure you have a username otherwise this won’t work.
After you type in your username Telegram will automatically generate a t.me link for you.
To access t.me on your Telegram channel:
Go to your telegram channel, Tap on the 3 dots then go to Manage Channel> Invite Links, you’ll see a popup window with your permanent t.me link, copy it, share it or even get a QR code for your link.
You also have the option to create a new link, and you can limit the number of people you want to access your link.
Anyone who has this link and clicks on it will be able to subscribe to your channel, view your products and send you a message.
To access t.me on your Telegram group:
Go to the Telegram group you own, tap on the 3 dots then go to Manage Group > Invite Links, you can see the permanent t.me link assigned to your group, copy it or share it.
Just like on the channel, anyone who has this link and clicks on it will be able to access or join your group, view your products, or even send you a message.
Telegram channel feedback feature
You can add a discussion group chat to your channel so that your subscribers will see a comment button for each post in the channel. Comments show up in a thread of their own and also land in the discussion group to keep everyone in the loop and make it easier for admins to keep the conversation civil.
Telegram Polls
Using your Telegram group or channel, you can set up polls to gather data about what your clients like and you can use that data to do future discounts/promotions and to further expand your business premise.
Also read: How To Know If your Telegram Is Hacked
In conclusion
I hope after this article you can now be able to use Telegram to market and promote your business. Additionally, you can also add your Telegram groups and channels and have them uploaded on Telegram Catalog websites like best of telegram to make them more discoverable.
You can also look up other groups that share your niche, join them and get to know their members, and you can invite them to join your groups and channels hence getting more clients.
