Expensive First, Cheaper Later

Year: 5, Month: 5, Week: 1, Day: 3

The client chose a classic path. It works. Measurement is the hard part.

The goal was simple: grow a VK community (major Russian social network) for a luxury lingerie brand by acquiring subscribers.

We value subscribers differently depending on the niche. The lower the chance that a person follows out of idle curiosity, the better.

Luxury lingerie creates a constraint. We agreed with the client we wouldn’t drive men into the community — they tend to find their way there anyway. We targeted women. The product is for them, so even if curiosity starts idle, it has a higher chance to become real intent.

The biggest problem was measurement, because sales matter most.

So we placed a site link in the VK community with a UTM tag (tracking parameter), and planned to use Yandex Metrica (Yandex’s analytics tool) to track an indirect but meaningful proxy: rising interest in products and rising purchase potential.

From 6 to 20 August, VK campaigns showed positive results across key metrics, which signalled our actions worked for audience acquisition and optimisation.

The community started to “wake up”: more reactions, saves, and content interactions. We saw 510 likes and 104 reposts.
Across the period, there were 370 interactions at a cost from RUB 11.49 to RUB 21.39 per action (likes, reposts, comments).

New subscribers: 125.
We reduced subscription cost from RUB 386 at the beginning down to RUB 187.53 by 20 August.
The most effective campaign used automatic audience selection based on community activity and delivered subscribers at RUB 65 on average.

Average CPC ranged from RUB 5.61 to RUB 14.22. That is cheap. The product genuinely grabs attention.

We tested several competitor groups and interest clusters, which helped identify the strongest combinations. Best results came from groups tied to direct competitors (lingerie), pushing CPC down to RUB 5.61 and improving subscription cost.

We’ll keep supporting and developing the campaigns that perform well on subscriptions and engagement. New tests stay in the plan too. A conversion system doesn’t stabilise itself.

Result you can apply: Audience-building often starts expensive and improves as optimisation learns. Use proxy tracking (UTM + analytics) until sales attribution is ready, then keep iterating based on signal.