Vietnam’s Internet market has been marked an appearance of many online marketing campaigns (Digital Marketing) recently and stand out from a crowd is Social Media Marketing, according to eBrand’s research. However, “building Online Community can create a solid foundation for Digital Marketing, not social media marketing which is using for short-term objectives,” some experts say.
This article helps us to see a better portrait of Online Community and problems in implementing this method in Digital Marketing strategy.
Why have to build an Online Community?
Online Community (or more specific “User online community of brand) is a complex website platform which is designed to gather users who have common interests or concerns. This platform creates many features that users can directly interact about their concerns with other members in the community (easily set up a relationship between users and brand or user and user). Online Community dedicated to a brand will be the place to store all valuable data sources such as needs, opinions, desires, customer’s history which relate to consumers; using Online Community, customers are taken care better by the brand, helps to improve services that being more flexible and more efficient in exploiting the consumers. Away from Online Community, the brand will not gain such a complete data from "the market place" Facebook or any other third-party systems.
Researches conducted in more mature markets (than Vietnam’s) show that the construction of Online Community is a better choice compared to communicating only via Facebook in particular or social-networks in general. For instance, according to FeverBee Community Consultancy’s statistic (website: www.feverbee.com), Coca-Cola’s Fanpage (by Dec 2011) contains 34 million fans but only 0.2 percent (56,000 fans) of them are active members. With Disney’s and Starbuck’s, the rates are 0.3 and 1.3 percent. Those very few active members are only active at monthly intervals. This cannot meet public’s demand of interacting with brands because most of fans on Facebook only concentrate on creating connections, entertainment and socializing.
TNS’s statistic (March, 2012) shows that Vietnam has lots of daily Internet users and they pay a lot of attention toward brands. In particular, 72% of users want to contribute their opinions to brands or organizations that they care about, and 58% want brands to response to their feedbacks instantly.
However, with the main communication channels such as newspaper, television, online shopping or social-network make a low interaction possibility between brand and customers. Hence, Online Community is the better choice for brand to communicate with their customers’ community.
Online Community – who build and for whom
In general, Vietnam’s market has no agency specializing in building online community for the brand to connect and interact with users, being more precise, it still can be delivered by a few agencies but lack of specialty. The reason comes from many sides.
From clients’ side - Marketing in general and Digital Marketing in particular are being applied in large corporations, big brands came from outside of Vietnam. Under a pressure of a difficult economic situation, budget for Digital Marketing has been cut down while the goals are very highly squeezed. It leads to that the Social Media or other forms of short-term planning are required and focused more in marketing instead long-term visions like Online Community Building. By the way, long-term vision is not a familiar term in SMEs (Small & medium enterprises), obviously, then tactical options are what they have been using.
From agencies’ side, persuading clients to carry out a short-term campaign becomes easier and agencies can have a better ROI-model of services. Another reason for agencies to propose short-term projects is the investment cost for a team that can meet clients’ long-term demand of idea, technique and experience, which is a less effective choice compared to small-groups model with better ability in using tactics rather than strategic thinking. Moreover, an agency’s development process has to be long enough to master Online Community Building experience. Only from there, agency will be able to help clients fully explore the potential of this service.
Brand’s Vietnamese consumers need to be taken care better with these kinds of long-term vision campaign (Communities of KimberlyClark-Girlspace, Canon-HocvienEOS, P&G-BeingGirl:
Overall, these two issues consequently limit the appearance of high-quality Digital Marketing strategies in Vietnam market. The bright side here is that there are still few clients/ brands and agencies those are still able to maintain long-term campaigns, thank to good strategies (but with moderate investment). This fact reminds strategic Marketing/Digital Marketing planners to be strong, keep a persistent view to build more efficient plans in this recent time.
Mr. Hoang Minh Ngoc Hai (Director of eBrand Co.., Ltd - Digital Marketing) said: "In the past, serveral brands in Vietnam had given a definitely good care to their customers by using Online Community. However, the current market is showing a huge trend of brand’s short-term activities that absolutely lack of focus on long-term vision. Understanding economic difficulties are faced by all brands, but how if we can control efficiency / economy of the Online Community? This is a direction that the brands have reaped more benefits."
Thus, we can say the Online Community is a sustainable direction and very beneficial for the brand. However, businesses need to pass a number of criteria, before establishing their goals, as follows:
-A long-term vision for the brand and investment in online activities. Targeting in serving better is a key element in a development strategy.
- Pioneering spirit to repositioning or refreshing the brand as well as the marketing strategy
-A stable communication’s architecture driven by marketing / branding.
-An adequate budget for 1-2 year vision for this activity.
-Preparing a list of some reliable agencies to implement an online community including tasks for creativity, concept, building & managing the community, effective exploitation of the user community.
A choice of a good partner is a key issue in building successful Online Community also. Understanding the Vietnamese market, having interactive experiences with the online community and insightfully caring about brand’s culture are major points to agencies.
Mr. Hoang Minh Ngoc Hai also shared: "In fact, in five years, eBrand has been deploying long-term DM strategies, building Online Community successfully for multinational brands such as: Kimberly Clark - Kotex, Canon Singapore, Nestle, Arla Food - Milex, San Miguel Beverage, Vinamilk - Probeauty ... Focusing to be the pioneering agency in Vietnam which specializes in providing Online Community Building service, we help the brands to reshape long-term Digital Marketing strategies as well as become a reliable choice for their strategy. Besides, once the brand offers a long-term vision for Digital Marketing in particular and Marketing in general, consumers will receive a better service, and from there, they will love the brand with their loyalty, the highest goal of any brand-owner, especially in this tough economy."
For more details, please access page: www.ebrand.vn, or contact:
Mr. Hoang Minh Ngoc Hai (Director of eBrand):
Tel: (08) 3526 4554 / Mobile: 091 6888 143
Address: 339/46 Le Van Sy Street, Ward 14, District 3, HCMC, Vietnam
Hoàng Hải
About writer: Hoang Hai (Quijot) is the Founder and Director of eBrand Co., Ltd – A Digital Marketing agency established in 2008 in Vietnam (www.ebrand.vn). He is an 8-year-experienced wolf in Digital Marketing who started his career at Pyramid Consulting (www.pyramid-consulting.com) and there he played with Coca-cola, Yahoo!, MRM, BBDO, DDB. His journey continued with TimNhanh!, Kiemviec.com, Hrvietnam.com before he founded eBrand to serve a lot of big brands to explore the Vietnam’s Internet market. Hai Hoang has proved his capability in Branding, Digital Marketing & creative areas. Need a local guy who can deliver the multinational servicing quality, call him up.
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