Boosting Yandex's content engagement from an average of 25K to over 350K views and engagements

The Client

YANDEX PRAKTIKUM / EDU SaaS / Netherlands (GLOBAL)

Yandex, registered in the Netherlands, is a technology company that builds intelligent products and services powered by machine learning. Since 1997, Yandex has delivered world-class, locally relevant search and navigation products, while also expanding into e-commerce, online entertainment, cloud computing and other markets to assist millions of consumers in Russia and a number of international markets.

The Challenge

NO AUDIENCE TO LAUNCH SUBSCRIPTION TO

Yandex’s newest venture - Yandex Praktikum - was gearing up to take on the world of online English language training to compete with the likes of major, established schools in the Russian market like SkyEng.

Yet unlike traditional online language platforms selling individual lessons, Yandex was preparing to launch a SaaS-style subscription-based service that gave students unlimited access to the platform’s learning materials and lessons.

Being completely new to the online education space, the Praktikum project needed to build an audience prior to launching to which we could market to and build up a strong base of initial paying users.

The Solution

A VIRAL GROWTH STRATEGY TO RAPIDLY BUILD AN AUDIENCE

Having grown my own social media following to over 1 million subscribers in a short period of time, Yandex brought me to Moscow as the lead marketing consultant for Praktikum.

Bring my experience growing social media channels to the team, I quickly devised a content strategy that focused heavily on challenging assumptions. We researched the opinions and beliefs that Russian-speakers held around learning English, travelling to English-speaking countries, and North American and British culture and used that research to layout our content plan.

By challenging assumptions and rigourously A/B testing titles, descriptions, and thumbnails before launching, we were able to majorly increase click-through and share rates, which ultimately sparked social media algorithms into heavily promoting our content.

Having successfully grown social media followings including my own, a magician’s following from 10K to 140K, and now having added significant engagement, conversions, and signups to Yandex, I was able to pull together and summarize my strategies on viral organic marketing in this Medium article discussing why certain channels go viral while others flop.

The Results

INCREASED CONVERSIONS & MORE PAID CUSTOMER SIGNUPS

Yandex’s content engagement grey from an average of 25K to over 350K views and engagements.

Here’s one example of a typical video’s performance before and after my involvement:

By focusing on humans’ natural response to having their assumptions and opinions challenged, we were able to drive a major increase in growth to viewership and ultimately paid signups to Yandex’s new subscription-based platform.