So I’ve been managing campaigns across both markets for about two years now, and honestly, for the first year and a half, I was flying blind. We’d run a campaign in Russia, see decent engagement numbers, think “great,” and then launch the same concept in the US and get completely different results. We couldn’t figure out if it was the messaging, the influencers, the platform differences, or just… everything.
The real problem was that we had no way to compare. Like, 50K impressions in Russia felt like a win, but when I compared it to US benchmarks, I realized we should’ve expected 150K for the same budget and audience size. We weren’t underperforming—we just didn’t know what “performing” actually meant.
Then I started using the bilingual hub to pull benchmark data from both markets. Suddenly, everything made sense. I could see:
- What engagement rates actually look like for beauty brands in Russia vs. the US
- How cost-per-engagement shifts between markets
- Which influencer tiers deliver real ROI in each region
- How platform preferences change (spoiler: TikTok dominance is very different between the two)
I pulled together three campaigns—two Russian, one US—and analyzed them side by side using the same metrics. Turns out, our Russian campaigns were underperforming by about 30%, but not because the strategy was wrong. We were just underfunding them. Once I adjusted the budget allocation based on actual benchmarks, the results nearly doubled.
The crazy part? My team kept saying “but our engagement is good.” Yeah, it was good… compared to nothing. But compared to what’s actually possible in that market? We were leaving money on the table.
Has anyone else had that moment where you realized your baseline assumptions were just… off? And how did you actually change things once you had real benchmark data to work with?
This resonates so much. I’ve been doing something similar with ROI analysis, and the benchmarking issue is huge. The question that unlocked it for me was: “Am I comparing apples to apples?” Russian market has very different platform penetration—TikTok and VK still compete heavily, whereas US is basically Instagram, TikTok, YouTube. So when you say engagement rates, which platform are we talking about? I built a simple framework where I segment by platform first, then by region, then by influencer tier. Suddenly, the numbers tell a coherent story instead of contradicting each other. What metrics are you using for the cross-market comparison? Engagement rate, reach, click-through, or something else?
Also worth noting: when you say your Russian campaigns were underperforming by 30%, did you account for currency differences in cost-per-engagement? Or difference in CPM rates between regions? I’ve seen people mistake regional pricing variations for actual performance gaps. Like, a US influencer might charge $5K for a post, while a similarly-sized Russian influencer charges $1.5K. If you don’t normalize for that, your budget allocation decisions can actually make things worse, not better. Have you factored in regional pricing into your benchmark model?
This is exactly why I love the bilingual hub approach! You’re basically building a shared vocabulary between your Russian and US teams. I do something similar with influencer selection—I’ll identify top performers in one market, then look for equivalent talent in the other. The benchmarks help me justify why I’m connecting certain creators together. Like, “hey, this Russian creator has the same engagement rate and audience demographics as this US creator, maybe there’s a collaboration opportunity.” It feels like you’ve cracked the code on the data side, but I’m curious—does this benchmark framework help you when you’re actually pitching partnership ideas to brands? Or is it mainly operational?