Today we will have a short conversation with Mr. Ho Trung Dung - Director of Mix Digital Marketing Agency about the development of Social Media Marketing in Vietnam. Mr. Trung Dung is currently in charge of operating activities at Mix Digital – a young agency operating in the field of consulting, planning and implementing digital marketing projects for businesses, as a partner of some brands such as Canifa, VietinBank, Kichi-Kichi, T&A Ogilvy ...

* Hi Trung Dung, first of all, can you share with GAM7 about Social Media Marketing (concept characteristics, core points...)?

Before understanding Social media marketing, it is necessary to understand the concept of social media that many people mistakenly think it is just Facebook. Social media are communication channels on which users have the ability to share information and update/respond to other people's information. All media platforms that converge all such elements are considered social media. With this view, not only social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, but forums, or Youtube, Instagram, Zalo, or even news websites such as VnExpress, Dan Tri ... are also considered social media.

Accordingly, social media marketing is the marketing communication activities on such social media platforms. These communication activities not only focus on reaching the target public but also make the most of user interactions and sharing to help convey the message more effectively to the public in order to achieve the marketing objectives.

* When and where is social media marketing imported into Vietnam? In your opinion, what are the important milestones in the development of this form of marketing in our country?

Social media marketing always appears in parallel with the development of social media. In Vietnam, with the development of Yahoo 360, forums – the first social media platforms, some brands quickly approached to promote their image. However, social media marketing in Vietnam really started from 2008-2009, after the success of Close-Up's Find Where to Find Where campaign, which has opened the way for social media campaigns of many big brands.

"Social media are communication channels on which users have the ability to share information and update/respond to other people's information."

It can be said that the milestone on the development of Social Media Marketing is the period of decline of Yahoo 360 in 2008-2009 along with the breakthrough development of the social network Facebook starting from 2011, early 2012. With the rapid growth in the number of users in Vietnam, Facebook has emerged as a fertile land that brands want to exploit. At that stage, we see the beginning of a feverish new digital marketing trend called social media. The house raced to set up a fan page, which raced to increase likes at all costs to build a fan base. Hundreds of racing flowers bloom!

* Social Media Marketing can be seen through each stage to develop according to different trends. In your opinion, which social media marketing trend is most notable in Vietnam today and how long will it last?

The most notable trend in my opinion is the mobilization of social marketing activities. It has appeared in the past few years in the context of a rapid increase in the number of people using mobile devices accessing the Internet in Vietnam. Social media users use mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets, phablets to access increasingly large social networking applications. Therefore, social marketing ideas are now also more focused on whether or not customers are compatible with mobile. For example, when brands organize interactive programs such as events, contests on social media platforms, they will choose a web-based app or mobile apps instead of deploying on the Facebook app as before with the desire to attract mobile users to the program. Or as content shared via Facebook, website ... are more focused on good visibility on a variety of mobile devices. Obviously, businesses don't want to ignore a large number of customers who are accessing the Internet using mobile devices daily instead of desktops.

This trend will not be lost but will have more changes suitable for new types of mobile devices in the future. We'll see more of the newly born technological devices that people use when they're with us. In particular, Google Glass, Apple Watch ... are pioneering products.

* "Use social media as a chat channel, not as a radio system." (Scott Monty, Global Director of Social Media at Ford Motor). Is this the difference of Social Media Marketing compared to other forms of marketing? Your comment on this view of Scott Monty?

It must be! The ability to "chat" with the public is a major advantage of social media compared to other traditional media. If brands can only speak to the public in the past and don't know how the public responds to those messages, then for social media, they can get a response immediately. This two-way interaction brings two benefits: the opportunity to build sustainable relationships with customers by "talking" with them regularly; the opportunity to listen to customers' thoughts about themselves in order to promptly make appropriate adjustments (social listening).

However, the good thing about Scott's saying is that it's the second thing: don't treat social media as a radio system. This advice is very suitable for the majority of brands in Vietnam today, which most consider social media as a channel to promote their full introduction. No matter if the target public is interested and willing to receive information, brands are still racing to offer self-praise, which is "advertising smell". With social media, information is actively received by users, they can easily ignore unnecessary content that annoys them and only stops what they think is interesting. 

put the target public at the heart of the content, not the brand. At the same time, the brand should make the most of the opportunity to chat with customers.

"Put the target public at the heart of the content, not the brand. At the same time, the brand should make the most of the opportunity to chat with customers."

The advice here is: put the target public at the heart of the content, not the brand. At the same time, the brand should make the most of the opportunity to chat with customers.

* "Not all types of businesses should invest in Social Media Marketing". What's your point about this? According to him, which industries should focus on investing in Social Media Marketing?

Personally, I do not agree with the above, but in my opinion should be: depending on each industry, there will be different levels of social media marketing investment. In fact, even B2B businesses, their customers are still specific people, participating in social networks. To maintain the image and relationships with these customers, businesses still use social media marketing as a tool to reach harm. However, the target audience will be at a narrower range, the level of access is not too high so investment resources can be much less than those targeted to mass audiences.

In Vietnam, with the characteristics of Internet users at a younger age (mostly from 16-35), B2C enterprises with target customers in this group should focus on investing strongly in social media: FMCG, automotive, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, banking ...

* In your opinion, what are the advantages and difficulties of implementing Social Media Marketing?

The biggest advantage is that the number of social media popular in Vietnam is not much. Vietnamese users still focus primarily on a major social network, Facebook, Youtube & large forums (part of the teen group that uses Zalo as a second social network). Meanwhile, in many other countries, the use of social media is dispersed on many different platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest, Google Plus ... Therefore, in Vietnam, the investment will be more focused, save resources and easier to measure.

In terms of difficulties, Digital marketing in general and social media marketing in particular in Vietnam are currently struggling with human resources. This is a relatively young industry, not many experienced digital marketers to be able to operate large-scale digital marketing campaigns. This not only appears on the side of brands but also digital agencies in Vietnam today.

* How do you predict the use of social media to promote Vietnamese businesses in the next 5-10 years?

I think there will be some fundamental changes as follows:

- Social media will be used by brands in a smarter way. The development of technology and the ability to collect big data in the coming years will help marketers better understand and reach more accurately to their target customer groups. We see that social media in Vietnam today is still only serving the goals of brand access and promotion. In the next 5 years, social media in Vietnam is better known as market research, helping brands listen to customer reactions to promptly take appropriate actions. User activity on social media platforms will be saved, tracked & processed as valuable sources of information for the brand. The crisis risks borne out of social media – which is likely to spread at a very fast rate – will be more focused on businesses. We will see many expanding agency units providing social listening and online reputation management solutions for businesses in the future.

- Customer-centric trends: put customers at the center of media content. As mentioned above, many brands in Vietnam are still racing to talk about themselves on social media. Over time, however, brands will realize the ineffectiveness of talking about themselves because social media users are gradually erecting a thicker and thicker information barrier. They receive information selectively, which is really interesting to them. To overcome this information barrier, businesses must change their creative way of content as well as understand the context. Nom na is to create content that users are interested in and choose the right time and access point.

- The trend of diversifying social media platforms: Currently the advantage for social marketing activities in Vietnam is that Internet users focus mainly on Facebook, Youtube & some large forums. However, niche social networks with many different advantages will appear & gradually attract users to switch to use. We've seen a large portion of teens increasingly alienate Facebook by saying "it's not private" and running through more mobile social networks like Zalo. This trend forces social networks to share users' time with each other. Brands also need to expand their communication activities on new social media platforms. In fact, this is also the reason that Mix Digital's way of doing social marketing is not so dependent on some tools like Facebook. We need to understand the nature of social marketing to become more flexible before these shifts.

Source: Wiki Marketing