Guide: Influence Marketing for Telegram Mini-Apps (TMA)

Influencers are an important tool for TMA development. Collaboration with influencers helps attract quality traffic, increase audience engagement, and reduce the cost of acquiring active users. 

In this article, we will briefly discuss how TMAs can work with influencers – information from market experts. You can get the full version of our extensive market research on TMA products and marketing for free by filling out the registration form. (For users from some countries, access to the full version of the study may be restricted. To get full access, please use a VPN or fill out the contact form.)

Our Experts

We express our gratitude to the experts in TMA marketing and promotion who participated in a series of interviews dedicated to the TMA market.

Why Use Influencers?

• Highest quality audience.
• Best conversion to target action.
• Possibility of scaling through referral mechanics.

How to Choose Bloggers?

• Style. Analyze content and previous integrations to ensure the blogger's style initially matches the product.
• Effectiveness of past campaigns. Evaluate CPA, engagement, real performance in other projects, who has worked with this blogger.
• Audience activity. Community engagement metrics (ER), comments, reach, likes typically cannot provide an objective assessment of the channel but can filter out obvious fake metrics.

Quick Recommendations

• If it's completely unclear how it will work, it's more useful to do a test campaign (allocate 20% of the budget).
• Formulate the offer for bloggers briefly and clearly (blurb).
• Implement a flexible payment approach: fixed fee + KPI.
• Use micro-bloggers.

How Bloggers Choose Projects

• Study the product, its mechanics, and prospects (roadmap).
• Verify earning potential and project longevity.
• Assess the quality of advertising conditions, frequency, and stability of payments.
• Consider the project as a way to form their own community.
• Good project = big name, support from known funds and angels, quality content, adherence to clear agreements, withdrawal mechanics.
• If there is support from well-known funds, you can negotiate a revenue share.
• The more active community the project has, the higher the conversions.
• Bloggers are more willing to work with well-known funds and proven projects.
• Key factors: payment in USDT, availability of promotion budget, competent referral program.

Working Cases

• Ambassador program. Increased percentage from 25% to 40%, which allowed saving on bloggers' payments (with a price of $600, they agreed to $100).
• Scaling. Starting with 20 ambassadors, through comprehensive work (curator, content, communications) grew to 230.
• Referral program. 10% on top of user purchases within the application.
• Content. Team creates materials, bloggers adapt to their style.
• Curator. Ensures communication, immersion in the project, control.
• Working with tier-3 bloggers. After reaching 500,000 users, influencers agreed to work for revenue share.
• Incentives. Regular payments, ambassadors attract other bloggers.
• Framework. Selection of influencers within budget, conversion analysis, project brief, test campaign.
• Testing. 20% of budget for tests before scaling.

Mistakes to Avoid

• Launching ads in inappropriate places (bot farms, other large apps).
• Lack of marketing budget.
• Misunderstanding the Web3 audience (not just gameplay is important, but also earning potential).
• Lack of stress-testing before a large-scale launch.
• Absence of fund withdrawal mechanics (increases trust among bloggers and users).
• Traffic overflow through the app without engagement → passive audience.
• Payment without checking engagement, referral transitions.
• Evaluation without engagement, referral transitions.

Performance Evaluation

• Metrics. CPA, CPI, ROI, reach, engagement.
• Referral payments. Tracking purchases and user activity.
• Payment frequency. Weekly based on KPIs (number of purchases, engagement).
• Flexible payment models. Fixed fee, % of profit, KPI bonuses.
• Placement cost. CPM, CPA (min 8/13–max 80 cents per user).
• Post cost. CPM (CIS — $100 per 1000 views, 8-12 thousand views = $1000).
• Test launch. 1 post → analysis → scaling through ambassador program.

Best Strategies

Depending on the product type, use:

• Organic shilling. Create a project worth covering, with a gamified reward system.
• Testing bloggers. Mass traffic purchase → analysis → work only with effective ones.
• Referral bonuses at all stages. Payments for each step, including actions of attracted users.
• Creating personalized content. Separate materials are developed for major bloggers.
• Finding bloggers through content analysis. YouTube – keywords, Twitter – follower analysis, CPA metrics.
• Flexible collaboration model. If the first post didn't work, further placement may be pointless; better to test and choose less expensive placements from those that work.

Future of the TMA Market

• Telegram apps are evolving, users want real earnings.
• The market is moving towards more complex, socially-oriented products.
• Successful projects are built on strong communities, personal brands of bloggers.
• Good results come from projects with fund support, clear support, and good background.
• Bloggers are more willing to work with projects where the earning mechanics are clear and payments are stable.
• Ambassador programs should be individual and flexible, combining fixed payments, tokens, allocations.
• For successful collaboration, it's important to have a manager dedicated to working with bloggers.
• Additional values: exclusive information, NFTs, bonus airdrops.
• The best bloggers are those who have their own community; they are more expensive but more effective.
• Effectiveness metrics: reach, active users, engagement, real payments.

Influence marketing is a key tool for TMA. A competent selection of bloggers, an advanced ambassador program, and a clear strategy will help achieve maximum results. The future belongs to complex, high-quality products, not simple gaming apps.