Table of Content Introduction Who am I? Who this book is for? How this book is structured? Digital Marketing Overview $36.6B was the Digital marketing spend in US 2012 China landscape dominated by locals Singapore: $100M Online Spend in 2011 Digital marketing in Vietnam Potential in Vietnam 31M internet users in Vietnam Agency world in Vietnam 10 11 13 14 17 Big Agency Group in Vietnam Other Agency Groups Local agencies, ad networks and others Jack of all trades 19 21 24 28 Digital Marketing Career 30 How to learn Digital Marketing 33 The Big Picture 38 Owned, Paid and Earned Media PC Assets Getting the basics right 39 42 43 Development plan User experience Reference 46 55 65 Mobile Assets 66 Post PC era is here Mobile options for Brands Reference 67 69 76 Social Media Assets 77 What is Social Media? Facebook domination in Vietnam Channel Recommendation Guiding principles Facebook fanpage Measuring success Reference 78 79 81 83 90 99 106 Digital Analytics What is Digital Analytics Definition Different Analytics Tools Free Offsite Tools Paid Offsite Tools Listening Tools Effective Analytics Strategy Google Analytics Overview Reference Display Advertising What is Display Advertising? How to plan a Display Campaign Google Display Network Facebook Ads 107 108 109 111 114 118 123 128 135 137 138 139 140 148 151 Real Time Bidding Tracking different media campaigns Reporting and Optimization Reference Search Marketing Demand Capture Channel When to use it? How Paid Search works? How SEO works? SEO Cheat Sheet Working process for PPC and SEO Performance Evaluation Common Myths How much does it cost? Reference Digital Strategy Brief Research Ideation Evaluation Campaign Development Conclusion 156 158 161 164 165 166 173 181 187 195 200 201 204 207 210 212 214 216 218 223 225 227 First Edition Intentionally Left Blank Introduction Section Who am I? About Chandler Nguyen I was lucky I found what I love to early in life In 2003/2004, a friend introduced Google Adwords to me I still remember, the first ever book that I read on this subject was “The Definite Guide to Google Adwords” by Perry Marshall Initially I started as an affiliate marketer without even knowing what it was, a friend needs sales leads and I used Adwords to generate them After that I worked for an agency focusing on SME segment in Singapore I helped the agency to set up the Google Adwords program at the time Yahoo still sold Yahoo Search Marketing on a CPM basis per keyword Then I moved to a regional agency started in the UK, when they first set up their office in Singapore in 2007 Here I had the opportunities to work with the global / regional brands on Performance Media marketing After a few years, I came back to Vietnam to cofound a digital agency from scratch I have been very lucky, to be able to work with wide range of professionals from various industries and company sizes, from Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Australia, the US, UK, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan, mainland China etc I have worked with companies like Shangri-La Hotel & Resort global account, Millennium & Copthorne global account, Hong Kong Disney Land global, Club Med Asia Pacific in hotels and resorts; Apple in 13 countries, Avis in car rental, Citibank regional account, HSBC, ANZ, Standard Chartered to local banks in Vietnam like Techcombank, ACB, Vietnam Airlines, Tan Hiep Phat Group, Mead Johnson, Sapporo beer etc Some of the clients are from “dark market” industries like Tobacco (JTI), Diageo As for why I write this book, I hope I could contribute a bit to the Digital marketing industry in Vietnam I know my experience is very limited so many things in this book could be wrong/ debatable This is partly why I publish this book as an ebook so that from reader’s comments, I could quickly make changes Feel free to share your comments/feedback through chandlerblog@gmail.com Section Who this book is for? audience However, it is my firm belief that if you want to excel in Digital marketing, language skill is something you have to master, English is a necessity Also the majority of the reference materials referred to in this book are in English This ebook is about Digital marketing in Vietnam, written for the following audiences: • Fresh Graduates who are looking for opportunities in Digital Marketing Industry • Digital marketing professionals with 2-3 years of experience in one specific area of digital • Traditional Marketers/Account Managers who want to learn more about Digital Marketing • Traditional agency owners in Vietnam • International agencies who want to explore Vietnam • International providers who want to understand more about the local market Why I am writing this ebook in English and not Vietnamese? While it’s true that writing in Vietnamese would reach a wider Section How this book is structured? Next we look at the agency world to understand who the big players are Then we discuss about the potential of Digital marketing in Vietnam Overview Next we talk about different ways that you could learn Digital Marketing This is the summary of all the topics being covered in this book Before learning more about any subject, it may be helpful to look at the career path, what your options will be like if you master the subject Part This is it At this part, we deep dive into Digital Analytics, Owned Media (including desktop assets, mobile assets and social assets), Paid Media (Display and Search) At the end there is a chapter on general principles to build a good digital strategy Part For the first chapters, we are going to review the digital marketing landscape in the US, China, Singapore and Vietnam It is important to understand where we are and where Digital marketing stands in the marketing mix in Vietnam Digital marketing overview A quick overview of the digital spend across more mature markets like US, China, Singapore and of course Vietnam Section Brief What is the main objective of the campaign? Please specify Business Objectives and Communication Objectives What are the key actions we want target audience to take as a result of this campaign? Target Audience Must have components Who is our target audience? Demographics, Income level, Location, preferences (if any related to devices used) If you a google search on “creative brief” or “marketing brief”, there are thousands of sites that talk about this Target audience insights (if available): Basically we all talk about some of the key elements below: Campaign Message And Creative Brand/Marketplace/Campaign Background What is the single most important fact or promise that we must communicate about this product? Proposition? Information about the brand, brand mission, product category, the particular product in this brief, market condition, competition… Reason To Believe Competitors’ offering, marketing, positioning in the market? Product features and benefits that support the above message we are trying to convey Describe any comparative advantages the brand/product has? Campaign Overall Plan Any key issues & challenges / Opportunities that the brand is facing? Key offline/online channels if available? Key offline activities if any? Campaign Objectives Measuring Success KPI’s and results desired? 214 Lessons Learnt From Past Communications / Activities? Please provide insights and key learnings from the past campaigns What are the KPIs and methodology for assessing past campaign performance? Budget And Campaign Duration Mandatories What MUST we include / consider in our agency proposal? (please include any legal restrictions etc) Timeline And/or Pitching Process Deadline to send back/present proposal by the agency Information about the Pitching process (if any) like first round submission, second round presentation etc 215 Section Research • It may be helpful to look around other Southeast Asia/Asia countries to understand how the brand implement its strategy in those countries • etc Competitive analysis The company & the brand in brief It is important to try the above steps again with the main competitors to understand the market place better If the brief is not clear enough, you may need to additional research to find out more about the company: Aha moment! • When the company was found (when the company opened in Vietnam)? The key is to understand the audience insights or putting yourself in the audience’s shoes • Its main value proposition Understand the purchasing funnel (sales cycle) is critical to a successful digital strategy • How the company sells its products? via retailed chains, supermarket? reseller? How many store does it have? • How could prospective customers buy the product/service? • Looking back at the previous marketing strategies, campaigns may help as well • What/How consumers talk about the company/industry online? Listening tool may be helpful here What would motivate them to what we want them to? Similarly, you could think about barriers that may discourage them not doing the desired action? Research could be done offline or online, using many tools that mentioned in previous chapter from Google Keyword tool, to Google Display Planner, Listening Tool, Analytics tool, etc 216 If you have never used the product/service before, it would be helpful to try out yourself or at least interview a bunch of people who Visit the offline store is necessary to understand how the customer would experience if you drive them to store from online If the landing page, website being used for the campaign is available, please visit them and try to complete what you want visitors to Check campaign objectives again? It would be good at this stage to re-look at the campaign objectives again to see if it still makes sense with what you find in the Research stage 217 Section Ideation Photo Contest This is probably the most popular type of campaign in Vietnam for the past 1-2 years Basically the flow is like this: If you a simple Google Search for “brainstorming technique” or “ideation technique” you could see millions of results online with things like “no killing of ideas; going for quantity, not quality at first” so I won’t go into too much details here I would highlight a few common approaches in Vietnam when it comes to campaign idea However, before this step, you need to map out your overall strategy An overall strategy is your way to achieve the business objectives set in the brief One example could be if your goal is to sell expensive cars, you know that in order to sell, the audience need to understand the unique selling points, whether it’s functional or emotional (social status) based etc • The photo contest is often wrapped around a “creative” or “brilliant” idea • The main idea could be about showcasing the love for your child, showing your pioneering spirit by showing yourself with a high end car, about showing your free spirit lifestyle, your love for football, you want to show that you support the environment, the love from husband to wife or whatever • Then what the advertisers/agencies would want participants to is to take pictures/submit pictures of themselves, of the topic of interest in the campaign etc on either a microsite or facebook or Instagram The brand may ask participants to tag the brand Fanpage in your facebook picture or include the hashtag in Instagram etc They need to see the car, test drive it, feel excited etc • Some agencies/brands would want to use the webcam to take their photo etc So your overall strategy would be developed into three phases: surprising teaser online, the reveal moment, offline event, etc • Some require participants to take the photo together with the product, some require participants to upload the pictures into 218 brand related frame so that the photos will have brand elements every time it is shared on social media • Some photo contests require users to join the activation offline and take photos there to upload online • Advertisers may ask participants to include together with the photos a few lines • Winning criteria: ★ Participants need to ask others to vote for them either on Facebook, website, or whatever medium ★ In order to vote, users have to have a Facebook account, Instagram account, website account or sign up via smartphone etc By forcing users to sign up, brands hope to gather some database as well in the process ★ Organizer may reserve the top prizes for a panel of judges Many many brands and agencies have been using photo contests It is almost like if you can’t think of anything else to do, a photo contest is something you can try A few things to note about Photo contest: • General audience in Vietnam has been very familiar with this type of contests so there’s good and bad to that • Prize hunter is the winner of almost 90% of these contests if the only winning criteria is the number of online “Like”/”Vote” These prize hunters are very likely NOT your target audience or even they are, it’s unlikely that they will appreciate your idea/concept etc What I mean by Prize hunter? I mean professional hunter who either sets up a big network of Facebook accounts that they could use to “Like” their photo or they use Facebook Like Exchange website like “chiaselike.net” to ask others to help them These methods are technically not illegal because they are Real facebook accounts who are used to like the photo in the contest However the purpose of the campaign to promote certain concept of course is not achieved by top winner is a prize hunter • An average photo contest with attractive prizes like the latest phone, latest camera or something of enough monetary value ($1500 - $3000) would attract generally about 300 - 1000 participants on average • Knowing that prize hunters will participate in your contest, you could make it more “fair” to your target audience by doing a lucky draw amongst the top 10-20 participants or use a credible panel of judges 219 Limit one user with unique ID number to sign up only once won’t help much because the prize hunters could use ID from their family members etc Online Game contest This is quite popular in Vietnam as well Basically as the name suggests, advertisers would ask the agencies to create a game/ series of games to be hosted on the website/microsite/facebook and participants need to sign up and play in order to win prizes Again these online games are used to illustrate a concept, a form of edutainment or something similar What advertiser hopes for (and the agency sells) is that by playing the game, participants would learn something about the brand or being educated about something of value to the brand These games are often made of flash A few things to note: • As you could expect, neither the advertiser or the agency are professional game developer so these games won’t be too great or addictive Also these games are for short campaigns only so they last normally 2-3 months only These games are prone to hacking quite easily They win this either by playing really hard or more often than not hacking these games Because the budget for producing these games is not big so we shouldn’t expect much from security point of view as well (even iOS 7, the most advanced mobile operating system, produced by Apple is commonly hacked as well) However, we need to avoid the obvious loopholes Because prize hunters hack these games, you often find that the top or top guys get like 5-10 times or 20 times more points than the average players If you use lucky draw amongst the top 3-5 to select the winner, then you may find that one prize hunter signs up under different names for 3-5 accounts to ensure that they would win • Game contest effectiveness in conveying the idea/concept is limited as it appeals mostly to youngsters only Since the game is likely not great (due to budget and lack of professional game strategy), it’s likely that office worker will only play these games once or twice unless the prize is very attractive Video contest This type of contest is not that popular in comparison to the other two types discussed above because it requires user to • Prize hunters often win this type of contest as well 220 a lot more to participate User has to produce a video, which is considered quite a lot of work locally The flow could be similar to the photo contest with slight difference like the platform that videos are uploaded could be the website or the brand You Tube channel The winning criteria could be based on voting, video views etc The number of participants in this type of contest is often lesser compared to photo contest because it requires more effort from user “Sharing ideas” contest For the lack of a better expression, I use the term “Sharing ideas” contest During the brainstorming process, from functional benefits of the product/service like helping you to cook better, taking better photo, producing fresh air, cleaning your hand etc we could explore other emotional benefits by asking the audience to participate So from there the advertiser/agency starts a contest around sharing your ideas of how to “clean your hand properly”, “how to cook for your family”, “take care of your baby” or write about your experience of having the xyz emotional benefits etc The idea is that by inviting target audience to share their advice/experiences on related subjects, hopefully the target product/service would be incorporated in that advice or story At the same time since all of the sharing will be about a particular topic, it will help to raise awareness about that topic and build the association between your product and the topic Some examples could be: • Share your ideas of how to take macro shot (for camera brand) in three angles • Share your advice of how to keep the toilet clean • Share your story of how your husband enjoys cooking for you • Share your experience when you first have your baby • etc Winning criteria for this type of contest could be either by voting (again) or by advertiser’s selection Either way, unless your “request” is creative enough and you have a good media campaign behind this, your results would be similar to other type of contests discussed above Influencer as the key hook 221 One common way is to select a suitable Key influencer (normally a prominent celebrity, whose profile fits the brand & the campaign) and build the campaign around him/her He/she will be the “face” of the campaign, or brand ambassador if you may Basically the advertiser/agency hope that due to the celebrity status, the target audience would be influenced accordingly Famous celebs could attract quite a lot of newspapers themselves so brands or advertisers often create a PR campaign using them as well build new hospitals, saving poor kids, raise money to heart surgery for the poor etc Another type is about organizing mass walking, dancing or doing something to raise awareness about an issue of interest Through CSR campaigns, Brands hope to position themselves as good guys, good citizen, good neighbor in the community etc and of course this will help to push sales as well Viral clip Another way is to invite these influencers to write, upload, talk about your campaign on their blog, facebook fanpage or even participate in these campaigns as participants This is proposed/thought of quite often by agencies and brands However, the cold truth is that most clips are not viral, especially when they talk in promotional ways Moderators, admins of popular forums or those that have popular facebook fanpages are often invited to write their reviews about products/services and publish on their forums/fanpage/ blog etc Advertiser/agency often thinks of using celebrity, shock factor, fun factor to help Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) campaign Normally for this type of campaign to work, not only the creative idea/concept needs to be suitable (followed SUCCESs or STEPPs formula), we need a well thought out media strategy and a good enough budget as well I don’t think I need to talk too much about this type of campaigns Advertisers/agencies use it quite often as well Basically it’s about if consumer buy/use the product/service, they help to save the environment, contribute money to educational fund, 222 Section Evaluation stress the word ALL because unless it does, it may not be the best idea to present to the client/your team The idea may be cool but it may not help you to achieve your goals SUCCESs and STEPPs Evaluation of ideas is not a simple task and I am certainly not the expert in this subject So I will repeat here again the principles presented by two great authors: Chip Heath and Jonah Berger These principles, hopefully could help you a bit in evaluation of different ideas generated in the ideation stage First, with Jonah Berger in his book “Contagious: Why things catch on” But first, let’s review all of the ideas with the overall business objectives in mind first His STEPPs principles are: Business objectives You could start by reviewing your overall strategy and see if the idea would fit into that overall strategy or not One way to go about doing this is to use the “So what” test You assume that the idea(s) are carried out, SO WHAT? How does that impact the target audience? helping you achieving your objectives? At the end of the day it is about whether the idea/concept could help us to achieve ALL of our business objectives? I have to Jonah also wrote for Google on “Google Think Insights” about the same subject “From Complacent to Contagious: Where is Your Brand on the Spectrum?” • Social currency: “People want to be smart, cool and savvy That motivates us to share and engage with things.” • Triggers: “Stimuli prompt people to think of related things” • Emotion: we care, we share • Public: monkey sees, monkey principle • Practical value: “People like to help others If your content can save time, or money, or improve their health, they’ll spread the word.” 223 • Story “People don’t just share information, they share stories” Secondly, with Chip Heath, his principles are somewhat related to what Jonah Berger mentioned Chip wrote “Made to Stick” They are: • Simple Technically many ideas are possible to deploy, it is just the mater of resources (money, preparation time, expertise in house or out source) etc It may be good to have someone with technical background to be part of this process so that he/she could provide feedback from the technical point of view • Unexpected • Credible • Concrete • Emotional • Story There are many useful case studies in these two books so I strongly encourage you to read them Reality check You would want to check the feasibility of implementing the idea at this stage because if it is going to be too expensive to execute, too time consuming (in other words, not feasible), then it is of little use If you still like the idea, you may want to tweak it a little bit to make it more doable 224 Section Campaign Development A quick note, if you have a video and you want to make it viral, beside the creative idea followed the guideline suggested by Jonah Berger or Chip Heath, you would need to support the initial spreading of the video via You Tube TrueView ads, using Pay per View (PPV) pricing option Paid, Owned and Earned Media Please take note of the Paid Media estimated traffic/views vs the total KPI of the campaign You need some experience to account for organic uplift in traffic, the halo effect of your different activities as well i.e the sum is bigger than the parts Once your overall strategy is confirmed and you need to develop a full campaign around it It may be helpful to think of the campaign development across your Owned Media, Paid Media and Earned Media For Owned Media, it would be helpful to decide based on the overall strategy and idea if you need PC assets, mobile assets or social assets or a combination of them Spreading your resources (budget, human resource) too thin across multiple properties may not be the best idea With Paid media, depending on your owned assets and where you want to drive the traffic/interaction to, you could start to choose the placements, audience targeting methods, pricing options etc It is typical in Vietnam to use forum seeding or influencer seeding on Facebook You normally pay for this in Vietnam so it’s not really Earned Media, but rather fall under Paid Media Of course, if you promote your message well using social media or online PR, people would start to view, LIKE, Share, comment and you get your Earned Media that way Timeline and KPIs Before you could present your strategy/ideas to the client/your boss, you would need to have some estimated KPIs in place Instead of repeating whatever numbers in the brief, this time round you put in your estimated KPIs based on the proposed strategy/concept Of course your overall estimated KPIs need to be at least equal or bigger the required KPIs in the brief 225 It is not good at this stage to come back and say that the KPIs in the brief are unrealistic because you should raise this up front, during the research stage already At this stage, again the minimum you need to commit is what is required or renegotiated based on the feedback from research stage Next it is the estimated timeline This is quite straight forwards Basically it is about listing down all relevant tasks and taking into consideration which tasks could be done in parallel, which ones need to be done in sequence Normally Owned Media/Paid Media/Earned Media preparation could be done in parallel 226 Conclusion 15 It is just part Writing about Digital Marketing in Vietnam is hard Not only that the industry is changing too fast, there is no authoritative figure in the market place so I can’t refer to many materials in English in the market place Many of what I write here will be obsolete in the next 6-12 months or even shorter However I hope that some of the key concepts described in this book could last slightly longer than that As mentioned in the introduction chapter, this is only part so you will see many missing pieces I not want to write part yet because I want to make sure the book is of value to its target audience There is no use in trying to something that is of value to no one :) Besides it is already 230 pages long and I am not sure how many of you will find it useful enough to read until this page :) I expect this of course Hence, I publish this book in ebook format so that It could be updated easily, building on the feedback received from the audience If you find this book too elementary, I am sorry for that It is my intention to write this book as an introductory book for those who have relatively limited experience with Digital marketing Last but not least, I have to thank my family (my mother, my father and especially my wife and kid), who has been incredibly supportive I spent quite some time writing this book and they have been nothing but encouraging I can’t finish this book without their help Also I need to thank former colleagues, friends who have helped to review the book, given comments, designed the cover page :) Cheers, Chandler Nguyen P.S: if you have any comments/questions, feel free to email them to me at chandlerblog@gmail.com 228 [...]...Section 1 $36.6B was the Digital marketing spend in the US in 2 012 According to IAB, the internet advertising revenue in the US grew 15 % in 2 012 compared to 2 011 Total revenue for 2 011 was $ 31. 74 Billions Search marketing and Display media (Display banner, Rich Media, Video Ads, Sponsorship) are still the most popular ad formats, which contributed nearly 78% of the spend in 2 012 Coming from... very small base 10 Section 4 Digital marketing in Vietnam A slow drive thus far but the pace is picking up It has been a long and slow drive for Digital marketing in Vietnam The growth rate was nothing like what marketers hoped for Digital marketing spend is between 510 % Overall the consensus amongst digital marketers in Vietnam is that the percentage of online spend is between 5% -10 % of the total... the end of 2 014 By 2 015 , online advertising will account for 21. 9% of all adspend” 16 Agency world in Vietnam 4 This section covers the agency landscape in Vietnam Digital agency world in Vietnam I  would like to list down as many as I could different Digital agencies operating in Vietnam The barrier to entry for Digital Marketing agency is low so there are literally hundred of agencies in Vietnam, from... and TNS was between US $725m - US $1b It would be safe to say that the overall market size is around $1b (+ -15 %) 11 In 2 011 , it was social media which became talk of the town For 2 012 it was Mobile marketing 2 013 is the year of social media, mobile marketing, content marketing again Hopefully by 20 21, when today’s young users are running these companies, advertisers will finally follow consumer sentiment.”... internet in Vietnam, Display Banner has always had the majority share of the ad spend While email marketing is one of the most effective channels when done correctly, the use or rather misuse of it in Vietnam has given email marketing a bad name The same situation happened with SMS marketing, too much spam has given SMS marketing a very bad reputation 2 013 so far seems to be a good year for Digital marketing. .. end 2 011 I couldn’t find the public report for 2 012 so we have to make do with 2 011 data Online spend was at about 8% of the total advertising market, which makes advertising market around $1. 25B While the percentage of online spend vs total advertising market for Singapore is higher than that of Hong Kong, the number is considerably lower compared to US (18 %), UK (33%), Australia (19 %), Japan ( 21% )... August (2 012 ), smartphone penetration in the country was 16 percent.” Another study done by “Ericsson ConsumerLab” showed that the smartphone penetration rate in Vietnam was expected to jump from 16 % in Aug 2 012 to 21% in early 2 013 Reports from Accenture showed that “Smartphone sales are expected to grow in Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand at compound annual growth rates of 37 percent, 31 percent,... VECITA, the Vietnam E-Commerce and Information Technology Agency, states that Vietnam s e-commerce sales hit $700 million ($354 million of that registered officially on VECITA) at the end of 2 012 By the same report, VECITA predicts that this number will reach $1. 3 billion by 2 015 .” This is already huge and fast growing Digital marketing spend potential From comScore 2 013 South East Asia Digital Future... Leading FMCG brands would spend on average $30k - $15 0k for digital channel alone for a 2-4 month campaign depending on the scale and the marketing objectives Finance industry has not been as active as FMCG when it comes to digital marketing However, some international banks started to heavily invest in digital marketing 2 012 was a very difficult year for the Vietnamese economy as a whole and advertising... Vietnam • Publicis Vietnam • Saatchi & Saatchi Vietnam • Leo Burnett Worldwide • Vivaki Vietnam • Performics This would be the main Digital arm for Publicis Group in Vietnam From what I heard while Performics doesn’t have a big team, they handle some of the bigger digital account in Vietnam and their capability in Search Engine Marketing is quite good They are one of the few agencies in Vietnam using Marine