How a B2B company can reach the C-suite through its own media
Translated from Russian.
In short
Executives don't read corporate channels, but they do read media about their industry if it's written by people who understand it. Our Telegram channel bailanys gathered 3,000 subscribers in six months, including the CEOs of most telecom companies in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. This model works in any industry with a small but valuable audience: telecom, fintech, pharma.
Why executives read media, not corporate channels
A corporate channel talks about itself. Industry media talks about the market: what the regulator has come up with, who moved where, which jobs have opened, what people are gossiping about. Executives are interested in the latter, because it's their market.
Research backs this up. According to Edelman and LinkedIn, 64% of people who influence B2B purchasing decisions trust expert content more than marketing materials and product sheets.
How bailanys brought together telecom CEOs from two countries
We launched bailanys in July 2024 as the agency's own media, with no client. Telecom is a technologically advanced but closed industry, and we wanted to create a place where the market is discussed openly.
In 2024 we went all in on promotion: Telegram Ads, paid placements, collaborations. By the end of the year the channel had grown from zero to 3,000 subscribers.
How did we realize the industry's top people were reading us? About six months after launch, the CEO of one of the telecom companies sent us a donation in Telegram Stars under a post. Some executives wrote in the comments, and we met some of them to discuss the project in person. Today it's hard to find anyone in the industry who doesn't know bailanys. Except, perhaps, people who don't use Telegram.
The nicest thing we heard: “everyone was discussing bailanys posts in the smoking areas of telecom offices”. That was a real first.
We haven't promoted the channel at all since January 2025. In that time about 200 people have unsubscribed. Not pleasant, but for a channel that has lived on content alone for more than a year and a half, still not bad.
→ · Case on the TELLER website
Topics and formats the C-suite reads
Everything worked for us: from the regulator's latest antics to gossip and job openings. The range of topics is wide, but they have one thing in common: it's what's happening in the market right now and what people inside the industry are talking about.
- Regulatory news and decisions in plain language.
- Analysis and explanations of industry processes.
- Interviews with people from the industry.
- Rumors and informal topics that usually stay behind the scenes.
- Job openings: read both by people looking for work and by people keeping an eye on the market.
What top managers won't tolerate
Texts that make it obvious the author has no idea what they're writing about. This is the same old question of the copywriter as a structural unit of a media outlet or agency. An industry leader will spot within one paragraph that a text was written by an outsider, and stop reading.
That's why at bailanys our writers were people who had worked at Kazakh telecom companies themselves.
How to use an audience like this
We wanted to show that it can be done: take an audience of a couple of thousand people across a whole country and gather them in one channel through content marketing. It worked.
Now this kind of media has clear value. If a business needs to reach a telecom audience and doesn't do it through bailanys — sorry, but it's not spending its budget in the most efficient way. All the right people are already in one place.
Who knows, maybe one day we'll sell to a telecom company and go from an independent channel to a dependent one. That's also one possible scenario for industry media.
Can this be repeated in another industry?
In any industry. I'd really like to build a network of industry channels in Kazakhstan: on telecom, fintech, pharma. The potential is enormous: every industry has a few thousand people who make decisions and lack honest media about their market.
Key points
- Executives read media about their market, not corporate channels about a company.
- In B2B you don't need a big audience, you need the right one. 3,000 subscribers including CEOs are worth more than a million random ones.
- The writers should come from the industry: an executive spots an “outsider” text within a paragraph.
- Topics: everything happening in the market now — the regulator, analysis, interviews, rumors, jobs.
- The model can be repeated in any industry with a small, valuable audience.
Want your own media for your industry, or to reach a telecom audience? Message me on Telegram at @maximfetisov. How strategy work is organised and what it costs is on the Services page.
