International Search Summit – Russia: How to localise your approach for the Russian market?

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Who doesn’t love to travel and surround themself with other cultures. To see how other nationalities devise marketing campaigns. So, last week I traveled to Castilian Barcelona for the International Search Summit.
In addition to meet up with our Spanish partner, there were many interesting issues discussed during the International Search Summit. Of course I would like to share those key take aways with you.

Russia

Words like ‘fascinating’, ‘challenging’, ‘interesting’ and ‘huge’ are widely heard terms when Justyna Wilner from Webcertain made us more familiar with the Russian culture.
Justyna gave us several tips on how to successfully enter the Russian online market:

Tip 1: Embrace the change.
If you want to succeed in Russia, you need to accept the changes. Yes it’s true, Russians don’t use Google, and make very little use of the most popular websites of the world: YouTube and Facebook. Don’t wonder, why? They just do. You can only achieve success if you deal with all of these online differences that Russia has.

Our search engine versus the Russian search engine.

Search engine Google

Search engine Yandex - Russia

 

 

 

 

Tip 2: Learn how the Russian language works.
95% of the Russians (the whole popuation is 145 million people) doesn’t English. If you don’t speak their language, they are not going to buy anything. You don’t have to speak it, you just have to learn how the Russian language works. If you would like to create a non rubbish campaign, just translating existing campaigns will also not work. You have to adapt it to your Russian target audience

Tip 3: Help the Russians with the e-commerce process.
E-commerce is still a pretty new concept for many Russians. They don’t know how to behave online. Help them and make sure that your website includes information about how to order. When they can’t find the terms / conditions or all the details of the product, they are not going to buy anything.

Tip 4: Trust is very important.Koelkast met inhoud
The Russians are known as people who don’t have a lot of confidence in e-commerce websites. So make sure your website is reliable. Show prices in the correct currency (ruble). Use a Russian phone number. Focus on quality and obey the local laws. Like this refrigerator ad that got rejected in Russia.
Reason: Despite the fact that the average alcohol consumption in Russia is the highest in the world, you are not allowed to advertise with it. It is not allowed that an advertisement contains drinking products (such as 2 bottles of wine in a fridge).

Russia is “Huge”

Well, I know, Russia is not the first country you think of, but there’s a lot of potential. Did you know that:

Online markten Europa

  • Russia is for example 55 times as large as Poland and the UK even fits 131 times in Russia.
  • Russia has 11 time zones. When it’s morning in Moscow (West), it’s already evening in Kamchatka (East).
  • Russia is by far the largest online market in Europe is.


Russia versus the rest of Europe

Russia has it’s own online world where they are living in. This is not comparable at all with the online world as we know it nowadays.

  • Internet = RUnet
  • Google = Yandex (search engine and much more than just a search engine)
  • Facebook = VK (80 million users), and OK (70 million users), These networks are more comprehensive than Facebook (in Russia 25 million users).
  • Gmail = Mail.ru (this is the largest email provider)
  • YouTube = RuTube
  • WordPress = LifeJournal.ru (20 million) a blogging platform, besides blogging it is commonly used for conversations, engaging, debating, giving opinions and exchanging ideas).

 

Yandex

Yandex was an important topic. This was not surprising as 87% of the Russians are being reached through this channel and has a marketshare over 50%. The search engine Yandex is different from their competitor Google. But that’s not suprising, because:

Yandex was created by Russian people,
for Russian people
searching in the Russian language.

Yandex is also much more then only a search engine.

There are about 26 services related to Yandex. Below are some of the indispensable services that can help you to conquer the Russian market:

Yandex.ru

  • Wordstat.yandex.ru -> keyword tool that provides insights into monthly searchvolumes of keywords.
  • Webmaster.yandex.ru -> Tracks the performance of your website.
  • Direct.yandex.com –> For Pay Per Sale (PPS) campaigns.
  • Translate.yandex.com –> Translationservice. These translations are more accurate than the free translation tools that we know. So I would definitely give it a shot.
  • Metrica.yandex.com –> This shows how visitors behave on your website. This is more comprehensive than the popular Google Analytics. Also worth a try.
  • Money.yandex.ru –> This is the local payment solution for your webshop.
  • Delivery.yandex.ru –> A delivery service of Yandex. Russia is huge and there are not many carriers that ship the online goods to the end-user without multiple providers to use.

 

Key Take Aways:

We got an interesting look into the fascinating online world of the Russians. What a challenging and huge market this is!
Make sure that you don’t use another language then Russian to enter this market.
Don’t just translate existing campaigns because the Russians are different and behave differently online.
It all starts with trust.
Use the platforms they are using. It is another approach then you are used to, but Russia is also a totally different market then you are used to.
Your success in Russia will depend on how well you localise.

For more information:
Yandex Advertising -> yandex.com/adv
Yandex Direct -> yandex.com/support/direct/
Yandex Webmaster -> yandex.com/support/wemaster
Yandex Metrica -> yandex.com/support/metrica

The next interesting market that was discussed at the International Search Summit, of which I will summarise the key learnings here next week, is: China!

Elle Schoenmakers

Elle, Head of International Marketing at Leads International. - She graduated in 2008 from Tilburg University (Digital Media) and is Registered Digital Marketeer (2013). Already more then twelve years active in the dynamic world of online marketing. Elle's specialty is online marketing across boundaries. She is a lot in contact with international marketing specialists all over the globe and with companies who would like to expand their businesses abroad. She combines this perfectly with her passion for travelling, exploring the world and getting inspired by all those different cultures.