About the client
An online school in professional education runs a new cohort monthly. The core funnel is a free webinar with a sales block at the end. Marketing needs steady registrations at a predictable CPL — otherwise sales sits idle and budget burns on cold traffic without nurture.
GUGA MEDIA joined when search and social targeting produced volatile CPL, sometimes swinging 1.5× week to week. The task was to stabilise flow through influencer channels with more predictable economics and stronger warm-up.
Strategy and tools
We used Telegram + YouTube. Telegram carried native posts in EdTech and career channels plus a lightweight bot path for mobile sign-up. YouTube partnered with creators who already talk career change, skills, and income — integrations and standalone “join the webinar” videos that give away one useful method “as a gift.”
One landing with UTMs, a short form (name, contact, messenger), instant chat confirmation. Copy was cleared with academic leads: no “income in a week” promises, only realistic career paths — fewer complaints and better live-webinar audience quality.
Publish calendar matched the registration deadline: peak placements 72–48 hours before go-live, then a short Stories push for part of the roster. YouTube started earlier so algorithms could accumulate views.
Challenges and fixes
First issue: low registration-to-payment conversion — people came for free content only. We added landing qualification (“is this course for you?”) and a short curator video. Second: audience fatigue in Telegram channels that promote webinars weekly — those placements failed the test and were removed.
Technical losses when the bot spiked: we routed part of traffic to a classic form with SMS verification and scaled hosting. Fourth: legal approval loops; we built a library of cleared offers to accelerate launches.
Results in detail
We collected 8,400 registrations at an average CPL of 350₽ (roughly $4 at the exchange rates used for client reporting at the time). After funnel tweaks, paid conversion reached 12% — higher than pure paid traffic from the prior cohort thanks to warmer YouTube audiences.
Telegram delivered volume and short-horizon CPL stability; YouTube was pricier on registration but better for webinar attendance and average cheque. We split these cohorts so the next cohort budget could be planned by channel, not only a blended average.
The school reused our creative insights internally: which pains in the first seconds cheapened registration vs which drove quality payment. We handed over placement lists and script templates for reuse.
Key insight: promises in the integration must match the webinar’s first ten minutes; mismatch hurts retention and sales more than +50₽ on CPL.
Webinar timing mattered: after A/B across two intakes, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings balanced Telegram and YouTube attendance best; morning slots stayed for B2B segments with different placements.
Sales received a qualification script aligned with creator promises — closing the expectation gap lifted call-to-payment even at the same entry CPL.
YouTube was structured as a mini-series: “myth vs fact” about the profession, one beginner mistake, then the webinar invite — increasing time-with-brand before signup and reducing throwaway emails.
We connected analytics: a single dashboard with placement-level CPL and cost per paid seat — the EdTech metric that matters more than raw leads and rarely appears in ad cabinets without custom work.
That let the webinar team shift budget between Telegram and YouTube on real economics per paying student, not intuition.