This article will help you to avoid the 5 major mistakes in advertising on Yandex in Russia. You can reduce the ad spendings and increase the number of “targeted clicks” on your ad.
Yandex – search engine number 1 in Russia
According to the statistics of LiveInternet 2016, the proportion of Yandex in RuNet is more than 60%, Google has 30% and Mail.ru 8.5%. With the most market share Yandex is the most used search engine and have the most reach.
Yandex contextual advertising is displayed directly on Yandex- over and under the generic search results-, then on the biggest Russian internet portal Mail.ru, other Russian search engine Rambler.ru and other numerous partner sites. Therefore the actual reach of the adverts in Yandex is about 71.4% of all Internet users in Russia.
Advertising in Yandex (SEM)
To advertise in Yandex you would use the Yandex.Direct , where you will pay for every click on your ad. The system is similar to the well-known Google Adwords. In both of the search engine advertising systems you have to follow some simple rules in order to save your money and get only targeted, interested in your products users. Here are some of our tips:
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Not enough longtail-keywords
Do not limit your campaigns using only the main keywords or keyword phrases like. A good advertising campaign should also include all possible combinations of relevant keywords, calling “longtail-keywords”.
How many keywords should be in the campaign? We responsibly declare – for any niche you can find a minimum of 300 keyword phrases, even if they would consist more as two words. Don’t focus only on the main keywords like “cruise”, “cruise Italy”, etc. By configuring in this way the campaign, you will not get a good result that can be achieved when you will use longtail-keywords with more precise specifications.
Check, what your target audience is searching for. One of examples: “Cruise from Italy with children”- with the additional word “children” the first advert would look as the best fitting result.
How much ads should you put? A good guideline is the principle – for each phrase one ad. The more keyword phrases you use, the better control you will have over the advertising campaign. And the cheaper will be price per click (CPC) of each longtail-keyword phrase.
2. Lack of “negative-keywords”
Negative keywords are the keywords to be excluded from the campaign. Example: If you sales smartphones, but no smartphone accessories, exclude such keywords like “case, USB cable, display protection etc.”.
Without the negative keywords the rest of the work on setting up advertising will be conducted in vain. In the example above your ad would collect user, who was searching for smartphone cases for his new smartphone. This user will probably click on your ad in order to find also some “smartphone cases” for his new smartphone, but he will not buy your smartphones. In this case you will spend too much of your ad budget pointlessly.
3. Incorrect geographic targeting
If you have a local store and don’t offer any shipping, specify the region in the search advertisement that you can serve. Example: If your local store is located in St. Petersburg, select as region only St. Petersburg. User from Novosibirsk or other cities won’t have any possibility to buy your products.
Invalid established or not specified regions (default geo is “Russia”) will lead to your site a large flow of visitors from other geo regions, the most of them will not convert to buyers. But every click on the ad will lead to higher advertising spending.
But even if you advertise an e-commerce shop or offers your services Russia-wide, we suggest to separate the campaigns through different regions. You will see, that the conversion rate and the click price (CPC) are different in all regions of Russia.
Incorrect set time targeting.
If your your business is not an e-commerce or other online service, you will probably have limited working hours. The marketing campaigns should run, when you are available, if the potential clients would like to call you immediately.
Think also about the time zones in Russia, if you don’t offer the local Russian support in each region. So use different campaigns, devided in time zones.
- No Yandex Metrics
Yandex Metrics, what is a equivalent to Google Analytics, allows you to analyse through which search phrases the people saw your ad. In the statistics you can see the number of clicks and which keywords were clicked on and what did the user look for before he got to your site. This is a very valuable information which you can and should use.
Working with the Yandex Metrics will allow you to significantly increase the number of customers and reduce untargeted advertising costs. It will also allow you to receive full, reliable information about where the money is spent in Yandex Direct.
Conclusion
Don’t lose money for clicks, that don’t lead to conversions. Check following points in order to avoid the mistakes in your search advertising campaigns:
- Use a wide set of keywords and phrases
- Exclude not relevant “negative” keywords
- Set geolocation targeting
- Specify the time for advertising
- Use Yandex.Metrics to analyse users behaviour on your website
Online Marketing in Russia 