Hi, and welcome to the Affiliate Insider Podcast with me, Leanne Johnston. This is a podcast for digital and affiliate marketers. Listen up as I explore the latest digital and affiliate marketing trends and give you the insider scoop on what's occurring in affiliate marketing. Join us as we explore affiliate strategies, host expert interviews with leading affiliates and tech entrepreneurs, and discuss the latest affiliates and digital marketing trends. If you want to stay at the cutting edge of affiliate marketing, you're in the right place. Join me for this week's episode and let's get started.
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SPEAKER_05Welcome to Affiliate Insider's affiliate marketing podcast with me, Leanne Johnston, where we're going to be exploring affiliate marketing around the globe. Today I'm going to be joined by two expert affiliate marketers who will be discussing the CIS region in detail and how affiliate marketing and partner relationships are expanding brand reach and bringing products direct to consumers in an innovative and exciting way. First up in this episode, I'll be speaking to Konstantin Ivanchuk of Paramach, a leading sports fitting brand that have a strong foothold in the CIS region and have been building relationships successfully in affiliate marketing for a number of years. Welcome, Constantine. Thanks for being here with me today. And I'm absolutely super excited to start talking about what lies behind the curtain in this sector of the globe as we delve a little bit deeper into how affiliate marketing really works in Russia and CIS regions and also in the Ukraine. So thanks for being here with me today.
SPEAKER_02Hello, Leon. Nice to be here. Thanks for having me on the show.
SPEAKER_05It's amazing to get somebody with so much experience from this region on the show today to talk a little bit about what's going to be happening. So let's dive right in and talk about affiliate marketing and how this market is currently shaping up as a key channel for brands. Tell us a little bit about what's happening in affiliate marketing over there in Russia.
SPEAKER_02Well, uh as everywhere else on the globe, the affiliate marketing in Russia is obviously expanding on different fields, not only gambling, but the different kinds of products like educational, health, and everything else. It's really starting to be hard to find some product which couldn't be promoted by affiliate marketing. So it's like everywhere now. And if uh the some market didn't try to promote with affiliate marketing, that's quite strange. So it's a really nice field for a startup, I guess.
SPEAKER_05Okay, so it's kind of odd if you don't have an affiliate program and you're targeting a Russian audience and you're a brand that's that's localized there, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, with some flexibility of mind and flexibility of your strategy, it's quite profitable to use affiliate marketing instruments to promote your products or brand or whatever, your personality.
SPEAKER_05Okay. And you know, many brands who want to reach audience in CIS regions, they often miss the mark in terms of the sort of localized culture and customs and traditions of doing business in Russia. So I wanted to talk a little bit about that with you today and also understand what are the finer nuances of working with affiliate partners in Russia and other Eastern European countries. So talk to us a little bit about the culture and the customs of doing business there.
SPEAKER_02Firstly, yes, of course, each region has its special things. Some quite difficult to apply for the uh affiliates that are not working uh each day on this market. But uh, when we are talking about Russia, it's first and foremost it's uh legal stuff. Uh we don't quite really have this much legal stuff like in T1 countries, for instance. It makes business really fast, and uh so you uh can launch your affiliate network or uh starting a cooperation with uh some casino or sports book in Russia uh really faster than in a t one country. They are more reachable, uh of course, than for example, some big brands of uh Western Europe. But yeah, it's also includes the question of trust. So if you're not uh binded with uh legal stuff, so then you uh need to have some trustworthy goodwill or something that will ensure that your money will not be stolen or your traffic and so on.
SPEAKER_05Uh so when you're thinking about Russia, then it's first and foremost very much kind of like old school business. People want to know you and they want to know who's behind the brand and they want to do business for the real human. So it's not just about IOs and contracts and all of those types of things, but the relationship building side of affiliate marketing is very prominent in Russia. But then also there's the tech stack that you're using and the things that build trust before a partner even starts to work with you. So, you know, making sure that you're not using some technology that's never been heard of before that affiliates will sort of look at and say not really sure if I can trust that program or that brand because trust is a big factor.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. And we uh encounter a lot of affiliates which has no reputation, no track record, they are asking us to have a prepay or something like that. Of course, it's not gonna happen because if you have the trusty, uh really media expanded brand, and on the other hand, you have the uh affiliate without any track record, so uh in business, yeah. So, of course, we have no legal documents behind it. So, of course, this uh partnership is not gonna happen. So, yeah, you need to have one of things either the reputation and the track record from some prominent with some uh corporation or with some prominent brands, or you need to have the will to prepay like a partner, so casino or sports book will pay you after receiving your traffic and your players.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, so it's a little bit about like putting your money where your mouth is when it comes to working with Russian affiliates. And what about reaching out to them? Because notoriously they are difficult to get hold of and difficult to engage. So, what about the localization of even your outreach emails as an affiliate manager looking to work with new kind of publishers in that space? What are some of the tips that you can give in terms of being aware of local custom?
SPEAKER_02To find new affiliates, right? Yeah, yeah. Uh so first thing is that uh the call the messages, called emails to the person you that you don't really know are not uh really efficient, at least here. Yeah, yeah. Uh even if you are a Shakespeare or you are some superstar in sales uh texts, it's not something that really works uh today because people are really busy and uh uh you see some text, you are already uh like negative about it because oh, I need to read it. Come on, just say me, you give me money or not, or so it's really cut cut and dried.
SPEAKER_05It's like you know, get the deal done and and stop messing around with trying to build relations and everything else, just like it's very clear-cut dealing with partners in Russia. It's about the product, the price, the promotion, the placement, and getting the deal done, right?
SPEAKER_02Yes, and so uh a more efficient way to approach affiliates like this event, so it's everywhere. So, but uh in Russia and Ukraine and C CIA's countries, yeah, it's also really important.
SPEAKER_05The events face-to-face contact of actually doing business with someone, yeah.
SPEAKER_02They are uh feedback of other affiliates also really important because the affiliates have uh chats where they share the feedback on operators and so on, and the operators as well have the this chats, and this is a really important thing. And the second is of course the statistics. I watch if it's a SEO uh source, I watch the statistics and it tells me much more than any text message of the uh affiliate.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, and in terms of kind of understanding the local culture, because a lot of people will be listening to this podcast and they might be trying to get into the Russian market and they're not having much success because they're just missing the mark in terms of understanding how to take their brand into the local marketplace. But like I heard a rumor, and maybe you can myth bust this, that it's tradition for Russian affiliates to actually decline you, you know, once or twice before they actually say yes to working with you. So is that true? Is it a cultural thing? Can you kind of myth bust that for us and tell us if that's actually something, you know, as an affiliate manager, do you need to have thick skin to go into that uh that marketplace?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you know, it's like uh there is a custom in uh investing European countries to smile when you're uh approaching some people for some deal or so on. Well, it's not really the case in uh Russia or for Soviet countries. There is no culture of smiling when you're first meeting people.
SPEAKER_05And that can be a little bit off-pitting, especially if you're somebody like me who's always smiling, and you know, it's kind of like, oh, does this person actually want to talk to me or not? So it's you know, it's just about understanding local culture and local customs.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and uh, if there is no smile, you need just to keep to the point and uh like show person that you um maybe the value to his or her product, and yeah, you need to be very strict to the point and strict to the deal and really short in uh phrases.
SPEAKER_05So you need to have like really perfected your elevator pitch. Why do you need to work with me? Why do you need to work with me right now? And why do I want to work with you and just get to the point, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. So guide cut all unimportant things, I would say so. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05And this is this is gold, really, because you know, when you're not used to dealing with a certain kind of person, you know, you your sales pitch can be incredibly important as making the connection with that affiliate. So I think it's really good that we talk about things like this on the podcast that um, you know, affiliate managers maybe don't have a lot of experience. They don't have a negative first encounter with affiliates that are maybe from Russia or Ukraine or some of the other parts of um Eastern Europe. So we spoke a little bit about like the common commonalities, understanding the culture, uh getting to the point. So why you, why me, why now, which is something that I often talk about a lot with affiliate managers who are doing outreach, um, which is probably one of the most difficult parts of being an affiliate manager, right? Is to go and get connections. But what about using things like Russian networks to actually build relationships with partners? So if you're going into the region cold, are there any like networks or platforms that you can start to sort of ease your way in and start building that brand awareness in the community there?
SPEAKER_02Uh yeah, of course, uh the there are a lot of uh affiliate networks and platforms and so on for that. But first you need to understand that they are cut quite a significant amount of your profits. Okay, and uh uh yeah, of course, you uh spare some time with their help, but if you are already established on the market, you save these profits for yourself, yeah. Yeah, and so you are more competitive, like comparing to the products and operators that are using only affiliate networks. So you need to combine the approaches, and of course, uh on the start, you have to uh use the affiliate networks, but you uh need to strive to replace them to some extent at least with the direct direct relationships, yeah. Relationships, yeah, with affiliates.
SPEAKER_05More like a strategic approach, really.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, because uh sorry for interrupting. The really important thing is uh that a lot of really big affiliates they have the agreements already with the affiliate network. So when you go to affiliate network and you have a deal with the affiliate network, so so you will approach this affiliate only through affiliate networks. So the possibility to have a direct contact is uh for at least for some time is really closed for you. So you really need to search whether you can have a direct contact uh in order to save this profits for yourself. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05So that's quite interesting because here it's a free-for-all in the UK. You know, if you if you happen to get a contact person and you can make a direct agreement, there's no like tie-in. Affiliates don't really work only through networks here. So that's that's actually quite a really important point for for people listening to this podcast to understand. There's kind of like business customs, there's also like customs in terms of you know who they partner with and how they partner with you and what they can and can't do. So I think that's really, really important. Now, one of the things that I'm dying to ask you is because I know Russia is well, yeah, Eastern Europe is very different to Western Europe, but influencer marketing, obviously that's becoming huge here in Europe. How is the kind of social ambassador influencer marketing space evolving in Russia? Like are brands using local ambassadors there to actually build brand awareness in order to then start working with publishers? Or have you just got a totally different like type of social segment that happens? Because uh, for example, in Africa, nobody uses Facebook. We all use you know chat. So is there something like that in Russia that you can kind of share and open up the doors on in terms of like influencer and social media?
SPEAKER_02The influencers, um, social media is not the first thing you might think about when you start in the affiliate business or operate uh as an operator, the business as an operator. But uh it's maybe the third step of your uh marketing promotion. It's the first step is you're spreading your um advertising uh throughout different instruments throughout different uh fields with um different models like CPA, Rev Share, applications, SEO, and so on. You're trying different things and you're creating some uh the first impression of your brand with your media buying. Yeah, and then you go for enhancing your quality of your message uh with more quality of the advertising itself, uh more beautiful uh video ads and so on. And the third stuff is when you already establish yourself as a quality advertiser, uh you use uh their influences because influence marketing. Because uh, if you're already uh known as a good quality uh advertiser, then the better, I will put it like a better quality, better influence guys you can approach to, you know.
SPEAKER_05Uh okay, so it's all about trust. Like in Russia, it's all about establishing that trust first. You're not going to be able to launch an FNA program successfully if you just go there cold, without actually doing kind of like paid media in the local press and um you know, on maybe on is television advertising something that you know brands can look at. Like how would you recommend that they start that journey?
SPEAKER_02Well, uh as you know, uh in Russia and actually uh only the betting is uh regulated market and uh sports book, I mean. Yeah, and uh we're still struggling with uh casino to be legalized uh throughout all countries, yeah. Throughout all country, not the uh like some zones when you can gamble art throughout the entire country, yeah, and um so uh there is no way to have a TV advertisement for a casino, and you have to comply with a lot of restrictions or to be advertised in a sports book, and so a lot of brands avoiding this uh legalization uh still, but that's a process that is actually inevitable, and as the time uh comes, uh the government uh like tries more and more to restrict the the access to advertisement uh instruments for the affiliates and operators, and they are like learning from their mistakes, yeah.
SPEAKER_05So it's emerging market very quickly with rules and regulations coming in, just like it has here in Europe. Um, right now it's a little bit kind of more relaxed, but that is bound to change. What are some of the common mistakes that you've seen brands who are not based in Russia trying to get into Russia? Like what are some of the common things that make you just go, you know, clearly they haven't understood this market properly? What are some of the things that you can recommend to brands that are looking to enter this market that they do right first time?
SPEAKER_02Well, uh the first thing is um if the company uh shows itself really trustworthy on the conference, yeah, don't do believe them. You need really double check uh the trustworthiness of the company, uh uh like asking the affiliates and other operators that you know or checking the social media, uh, but it's really better to ask their partners, like a word of mouth, like go go straight to the source and actually ask other partners that are promoting them how is your experience with that brand. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's really important because I encountered it myself. Uh, we have uh a lot of partners, a lot of operators, uh uh platform providers that are brilliant, like rock stars on the conferences.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Turns out that this is just really good outside, and inside they have uh uh questions to their quality. So you really need to double check the reputation uh of the uh company you're dealing with. The second thing is always bear in mind that you will most likely, even if you have the contract or something like contract I.O. and so on, uh you will most likely not enforce it in any court in Russia or in Ukraine. In Ukraine, it's uh now better because we have the the huge process of legalization, and it's uh regarding uh not only sports book but a casino. And for example, we had a conference right now, it was like uh Ice London, just the first time in Ukraine. You had slots on the conference, it was public, not like uh some closed place here, but public. So, yeah, um, even here as a court practice is not really developed, as it's all only started. You really don't need to rely on the legal stuff, you need to rely on reputation, the track record of the company on the market, and the yeah, the feedback of other partners about this uh company you're dealing with.
SPEAKER_05So you mentioned a couple of meetups that happen locally in Russia and the Ukraine. What are some of the best events that you've been to where you've seen a lot of publishers and affiliates actually hanging out and doing good business?
SPEAKER_02Well, the most important events is Moscow Affiliate Conference. Okay, yeah, and uh in Kiev we have our own edition, like also is really an original name, like Kiev Affiliate Conference.
SPEAKER_05Um says what it does in the 10.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but it's really say and says what it sells, you know. Yeah, uh yeah, of course, uh SEMPRO conference and uh conversion club events, actually, a lot of them. I think we have much, much more events and uh absolutely different, some like with affiliates on the parade than uh there are in uh West Europe.
SPEAKER_05Okay, that's interesting.
SPEAKER_02Major events for gambling in Western Europe, which are attended by us from Ukraine and Russia as well. And uh there are a lot of uh inside uh market uh events which are happening like uh each month or each two weeks for a lot of networking, a lot of like personal networking, yeah, yeah, which can be tiring. Maybe even too much, yes.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Now the other thing that I've noticed in this region after speaking to experts like you is there's a lot of different traffic sources. Like here in Europe, you know, we've still got the traditional PPC, SEO, you know, like review site, all of that kind of stuff. But what I see in Russia is that there's a lot of diverse traffic sources, so the infrastructure is really good there for online. And I see, you know, like push notification, email, lead gen, like all of these affiliates. And do they all hang out at all of these different conferences and go and network, or are there specific conferences for specific types of publishers?
SPEAKER_02Well, they have to to get their profits, and this is a difference uh I think now is emerging, especially after this stuff with COVID commenced, is uh that Western affiliates they just go went stealth for some time, and uh they're not showing even now, as I see uh the Amsterdam uh event is coming, yeah. They are not really coming so much like the days uh before the COVID.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So Yeah, they're like really started to be online only.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And that's a issue because uh if you are starting business and you have no connections or a little of connections, you're really hard to encounter good partners. And in uh Ukraine, Russia is not uh really the same case because uh the market is developing really fast, yeah, and each day uh some new affiliate is emerging, some new operators emerging new brands, uh legalization and so on. And uh to be in uh touch with the changes, you need to physically be there. Yeah, yeah, to contact with the uh operators and affiliates, yes.
SPEAKER_05Okay. So what are the big trends that you're seeing in Russia and Ukraine at the moment in terms of affiliates getting cleverer at what they do or maybe you know trying new things faster than what maybe operators do? What are some of the trends that are happening in Russia at the moment?
SPEAKER_02I think the main trend is that the main source of traffic is becoming more and more about Facebook. Facebook applications, yeah, and uh of course, if you're lucky enough to represent the operator that whitelisted by Facebook, like me, for example, just recently we got uh whitelisted by Facebook or in Ukraine for promoting our services, and um so yeah, uh that's great, but uh a lot of market uh is still developing the Facebook advertisement, and it's like almost half of advertising market in Gambit right now because yeah, it's uh really fast to launch and the huge volumes of traffic are uh available with the Facebook and not so risky like Google search advertisement when you're risking with the clicks and so on. Uh yeah, it's uh not so risky for the affiliate uh the Facebook advertising. The only risk is that your applications can be banned. Yeah, so uh that's why Facebook is not the only uh kind of traffic uh till now, yeah. Because uh you need to be to have some solution in reserve, like uh SEO, as I told the earlier, like uh Google search advertisement. And actually I think the Facebook apps, the Google SEO, and yeah, I think that's a major source of traffic here. And the SEO is not really developed like in Tehran countries for for instance, I guess. Yeah, there are a lot of uh sources SEO, but uh they are not so prominent, I guess, like not so well known. Uh it's more about like uh a lot of the little sources that are working with a Rev share and uh on a Rev share with SEO traffic, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. And what about Telegram? Because everybody talks about Telegram groups being like the hot space to go and meet affiliates in Russia, but like how difficult is it to penetrate those groups? And you know, is there a lot of kind of chitter chatter that happens on those groups, or do you have to know people and get invited to them? What's the kind of score?
SPEAKER_02As soon as you join one of the groups, you will be connected to several others. It's like the viral connection with uh all uh the uh telegram groups.
SPEAKER_05Um is there value in in hanging out in those groups still as an affiliate manager, or is it just kind of like chit-chat?
SPEAKER_02Uh it's good to have this uh news feed from uh the telegram chats, yeah. But you you're not gonna participate in all those chats. There are some major chats like uh all the conferences I mentioned, but obviously those are all happening in Russian.
SPEAKER_05So if you're an English-speaking affiliate manager, that is for you.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, of course, because if you want uh to really hit it off in Russian or Ukrainian market or any market of post-Soviet country, uh the Russian language is the must. And please don't use Google Translate.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I'm sure it's horrible. Yeah, and that makes you stick out even more.
SPEAKER_02Even a lot of slang, a lot of really, really specific slang, and you'll be like just uh crushed.
SPEAKER_05Okay, and and there's no coming back from that, right? If you make a faux parts, first impressions count.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly.
SPEAKER_05Okay, well, we've had some interesting insights here on CIS regions and how brands can consider entering and avoiding pitfalls, but we'll also be talking about the publisher perspective as well, with the founder of Dognet, a leading affiliate network in Eastern Europe. So thanks very much for joining us today, Kastentan, and for giving us your your view on uh Russia and Ukraine. It's been a pleasure to have you on this episode of Affiliate Insiders Affiliate Marketing Podcast.
SPEAKER_02Thank you, Leon. Have a good one.
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