Table of Content Introduction Who am I? Who this book is for? How this book is structured? 1 2 3 4 Digital Marketing Overview $36.6B was the Digital marketing spend in US 2012 China landscape dominated by l ocals Singapore: $100M Online Spend in 2011 Digital marketing in Vietnam 5 6 8 10 11 Potential in Vietnam 31M internet users in Vietnam 13 14 Agency world in Vietnam Big Agency Group in Vietnam Other Agency Groups Local agencies, ad networks and others Jack of all trades 17 19 21 24 28 Digital Marketing Career How to learn Digital Marketing The Big Picture Owned, Paid and Earned Media 30 33 38 39 PC Assets Getting the basics right 42 43

Development plan User experience Reference 46 55 65 Mobile Assets Post PC era is here Mobile options for Brands Reference 66 67 69 76 Social Media Assets What is Social Media? Facebook domination in Vietnam Channel Recommendation Guid ing principles Facebook fanpage Measuring success Reference 77 78 79 81 83 90 99 106 Digital Analytics What is Digital Analytics Definition Different Analytics Tools Free Offsite Tool s Paid Offsite Tools Listening Tools Effective Analytics Strategy Google Analyti cs Overview Reference 107 108 109 111 114 118 123 128 135 137 Display Advertising What is Display Advertising? How to plan a Display Campaign Google Display Netwo rk Facebook Ads 138 139 140 148 151

Real Time Bidding Tracking different media campaigns Reporting and Optimization Reference 156 158 161 164 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 165 166 173 181 187 195 200 201 204 207 210 Digital Strategy Brief Research Ideation Evaluation Campaign Development 212 214 216 218 223 225 Conclusion 227

First Edition Intentionally Left Blank

Introduction 1

Section 1 Who am I? 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, Cl ub Med Asia Paci c in hotels and resorts; Apple in 13 countries, Avis in car renta l, Citibank regional account, HSBC, ANZ, Standard Chartered to local banks in Vi etnam like Techcombank, ACB, Vietnam Airlines, Tan Hiep Phat Group, Mead Johnson , Sapporo beer etc...Some of the clients are from dark market industries like Toba cco (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 limi ted 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.c om About Chandler Nguyen I was lucky. I found what I love to do early in life. In 2003/2004, a friend int roduced Google Adwords to me. I still remember, the rst ever book that I read on this subject was The De nite Guide to Google Adwords by Perry Marshall. Initially I started as an af liate marketer without even knowing what it was, a friend needs s ales leads and I used Adwords to generate them. After that I worked for an agenc y 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 ba sis per keyword. Then I moved to a regional agency started in the UK, when they r st set up their of ce in Singapore in 2007. Here I had the opportunities to work w ith the global / regional brands on Performance Media marketing. After a few yea rs, I came back to Vietnam to cofound a digital agency from scratch. 2

Section 2 Who this book is for? This ebook is about Digital marketing in Vietnam, written for the following audi ences: Fresh Graduates who are looking for opportunities in Digital Marketing In dustry Digital marketing professionals with 2-3 years of experience in one speci c area of digital Traditional Marketers/Account Managers who want to learn more a bout Digital Marketing Traditional agency owners in Vietnam International agenci es who want to explore Vietnam International providers who want to understand mo re about the local market Why I am writing this ebook in English and not Vietnam ese? While it's true that writing in Vietnamese would reach a wider audience. However, it is my rm belief that if you want to excel in Digital market ing, language skill is something you have to master, English is a necessity. Als o the majority of the reference materials referred to in this book are in Englis h. 3

Section 3 How this book is structured? Overview This is the summary of all the topics being covered in this book. 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. Before learning mor e about any subject, it may be helpful to look at the career path, what your opt ions will be like if you master the subject. Next we talk about different ways t hat you could learn Digital Marketing. Part 2 This is it. At this part, we deep dive into Digital Analytics, Owned Media (incl uding 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 dig ital strategy. Part 1 For the rst 4 chapters, we are going to review the digital marketing landscape in the US, China, Singapore and Vietnam. It is important to understand where we ar e and where Digital marketing stands in the marketing mix in Vietnam. 4

2 Digital marketing overview A quick overview of the digital spend across more mature markets like US, China, Singapore and of course Vietnam.

Section 1 $36.6B was the Digital marketing spend in the US in 2012 According to IAB, the internet advertising revenue in the US grew 15% in 2012 co mpared to 2011. Total revenue for 2011 was $31.74 Billions. Search marketing and Display media (Display banner, Rich Media, Video Ads, Sponsorship) are still th e most popular ad formats, which contributed nearly 78% of the spend in 2012. Co ming from a much smaller base, Mobile marketing spend increased close to 111% in 2012 to command 9% of the spend. Internet advertising spend outpaced all other advertising formats except for Broadcast Television. Reading the de nition of Disp lay Banner ad format and Sponsorship ad format, one would guess that Facebook ad s were counted in this category. Search marketing naturally includes paid search ads, contextual targeting text ads, paid inclusion and search engine optimizati on. One thing stood out was that if a much more matured market like the US saw a revenue increase of more than 15%, one would expect markets like Singapore/Mala ysia/Indonesia or Vietnam to increase at a much faster pace to be worthy of inve stment. 6

Below is the advertising format share of revenue over time. Well, the US is many years ahead of Vietnam so one thing is by looking at this, we could make an educated guess of how things will pan out in this region. Of co urse you have to consider the different in internet usage behavior amongst other things. As you can see, Search Engine Marketing remains stable over time. The same with Display Banner. Mobile is on a rapid rise, while Digital Video is increasing but at a much slower pace. Rich Media percentage is dropping rather rapidly togethe r with Classi ed. If you want to read the full report, please refer to http://www. iab.net/insights_research/industry_data_and_landsc ape/adrevenuereport Why is it important to understand this? 7

Section 2 China landscape dominated by locals There are over 500 million Chinese internet users (according to CNNIC) double th at of the US. However, the penetration rate is quite low, at 38.3%, suggested th at there is huge room for growth. Source: CNNIC Doing Search Marketing in China is of course different from other markets since Google/Yahoo are not the dominant search engines there but Baidu. Baidu Search Engine Result Page is signi cantly different compared to Google. Popu lar Internet services in China are mostly dominated by local players, not Intern ational players like what is happening in many other countries. We have Baidu fo r Search, Sina Weibo for Social, Tmall instead of Amazon etc... Source: CNNIC China As for mobile internet users, the number is getting huge as well. According to article from Adage, GroupM China estimated an increase of 40%+ for Online spend in China in 2012. This seems to be consistent with other reports fr om iResearch. Detailed reports on the break down of ad spend for each ad format are currently not available to China. This is not surprising since 8

data transparency in China lags far behind that of the US, UK or other mature ma rkets. The main reason I include something about China in this ebook so that if you are tasked with developing a Digital marketing strategy in China, please be aware that it is very different from the West, from Singapore or Vietnam. If not hing else, the size of the market alone makes it a completely different game. Fr om technology and digital marketing standpoint, I would think that China model w ould be more suitable to Vietnam as compared to Western models. 9

Section 3 Singapore: $100M Online Spend in 2011 From Campaign Asia and PwC, digital marketing is expected to grow between 8% - 1 3% per year from 2012 to 2017. Search Marketing contributed about 35% of the tot al online spend while display commanded about 50%. The rest went to Classi ed and Directories. From an agency perspective, Singapore is the HQ for many internatio nal agencies. Many regional companies plan their regional budget out of Singapor e as well while letting individual country level to decide how they would want t o do with these budget. Of course how much control the local team has over their marketing budget would vary widely from one company to the next. In my humble o pinion, Singapore is a highly competitive marketplace with more agencies than cl ients to serve. Also the local market is small so local spend is limited as comp ared to other markets in the region. According to report by IAB Singapore, the online spend in Singapore surpassed US $100m mark for the rst time for the year end 2011. I couldn't nd the public report for 2012 so we have to make do with 2011 data. Online spend was at about 8% of t he total advertising market, which makes advertising market around $1.25B. While the percentage of online spend vs total advertising market for Singapore is hig her than that of Hong Kong, the number is considerably lower compared to US (18% ), UK (33%), Australia (19%), Japan (21%). This suggests that there is again a h uge room for growth. The annual growth rate for Online spend in Singapore during the past 2 years stayed at around 20%+, which was only on par with the growth r ate of the US and UK. This is, in my opinion, a disappointing growth rate becaus e Singapore started from a 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 r ate was nothing like what marketers hoped for. The total market size in 2011 acc ording to VAA (Vietnam Advertising Association) and TNS was between US $725m - U S $1b. It would be safe to say that the overall market size is around $1b (+-15% ). 2012 was a very dif cult year for the Vietnamese economy as a whole and adverti sing industry was severely affected as well. 2013 so far seems to be a good year for Digital marketing since marketing budget is being shifted from traditional channels to Digital. Digital marketing spend is between 510% Overall the consensus amongst digital marketers in Vietnam is that the percentag e of online spend is between 5%-10% of the total advertising budget. FMCG is the industry that spends the most online. Leading FMCG brands would spend on averag e $30k - $150k for digital channel alone for a 2-4 month campaign depending on t he scale and the marketing objectives. Finance industry has not been as active a s FMCG when it comes to digital marketing. However, some international banks sta rted to heavily invest in digital marketing. As for ad formats, since the dawn o f the internet in Vietnam, Display Banner has always had the majority share of t he ad spend. While email marketing is one of the most effective channels when do ne correctly, the use or rather misuse of it in Vietnam has given email marketin g a bad name. The same situation happened with SMS marketing, too much spam has given SMS marketing a very bad reputation. Search Engine Marketing only started to be used more often in the past 2-3 years with some success, more popular amon gst SMEs as compared to MNCs or big local brands. 11

In 2011, it was social media which became talk of the town. For 2012 it was Mobi le marketing. 2013 is the year of social media, mobile marketing, content market ing again. While there are plenty of myths and misconceptions in the market plac e, there is no authoritative industry body that could provide good enough case s tudies, proper best practices to guide social media or mobile marketing. IAB Vie tnam was born but died shortly after that. Technically we have Vietnamese Advert ising Association (VAA) and Ho Chi Minh Advertising Association (HAA), however, the information available online is very limited from these associations. I did not come across any reliable research browsing through the two sites. The sites' c ontent are poorly maintained as well. To explain the low spend for Digital marke ting, TNS regional MD for Vietnam & Malaysia Ralf Matthaes wrote in one report Vi etnam has literally grown up in the Age of the shifting media landscape.These ea rly adopters are not relying on TV necessarily for their product information, bu t rather going online and creating blogs to become Brand friends and champions. Unfortunately due to the conservative nature of both international and local com panies, many opportunities are being missed and agencies are having major dif cult ies convincing their client base that new media mediums play an integral, albeit none integrated role in mass communication. Hopefully by 2021, when today's young users are running these companies, advertise rs will nally follow consumer sentiment. 12

3 Potential in Vietnam Vietnam has the largest online population in Southeast Asia, with time spent onl ine exceeds 2 hours daily in big cities.

Section 1 31M Internet users in Vietnam Online penetration rate of 33% It is of no secret that the current online penetration rate in Vietnam is around 33%, with more than 31 million internet users out of about 90 millions people ( data from the Ministry of Information and Communication). Online penetration in big city like Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh is more than 50%. From volume point of view, we have more internet users in Vietnam than any other countries in Southeast Asia except Indonesia. Our internet population is bigger than population of Australia and New Zealand combined. Another report from comScore 2013 South East Asia Digi tal Future in Focus showed that Vietnam had more internet users than any other co untries in Southeast Asia (age 15+, at home and at work only). In Vietnam, we st ill have a large population of users using internet cafe. 1. Online penetration rate is at 33% 2. Time spend online is around 2 hours dail y 3. Research online 4. Smartphone proliferation 5. E-commerce is growing strong Time Spend Online exceed 2 hours daily According to research done by Cimigo, on average internet users in Vietnam spend about 2 hours online everyday. That is a 14

huge number. From media channel perspective, time spent online right now is seco nd only to TV. Time spent online outweighs Print, Magazine or other channels. Smartphone proliferation From Thanh Nien newspaper, Simon Kemp, managing director of the We Are Social of ce in Singapore, as of August (2012), smartphone penetration in the country was 16 percent. Another study done by Ericsson ConsumerLab showed that the smartphone pen etration rate in Vietnam was expected to jump from 16% in Aug 2012 to 21% in ear ly 2013. Reports from Accenture showed that Smartphone sales are expected to grow in Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand at compound annual growth rates of 37 perce nt, 31 percent, and 27 percent, respectively, from 2011 through 2016. As this tre nd continues, the total time spent online across multiple screens by consumers i n Vietnam is going to increase rapidly. More time spent online means less time s pent for other channels like TV, newspaper, radio, out of home etc... Research online, buy of ine/online In big cities like Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh, it is very typical for consumers to res earch online before making their decision online. For example, before sending ki ds to day care school, moms ask friends and relatives for recommendation of cour se, but they also visit webtretho and search online to see what other parents ar e saying about a particular school. E-Commerce started to pick up pace again E commerce is vital to the development of digital marketing. You may ask why? It is because marketers need to quantify the Return on Investment of their marketi ng spend per activity. Right now, while the overall picture is quite complex wit h different attribution model like Across different online channels, From 15

Online to Store (of ine), Across multiple screens (computer, smartphone, tablet); it is my personal guess that once we Ecommerce is growing quickly in Vietnam, th e digital spend will skyrocket. From VECITA, TechinAsia and Thanh Nien Newspaper The latest report from VECITA, the Vietnam E-Commerce and Information Technology Agency, states that Vietnam's e-commerce sales hit $700 million ($354 million of that registered of cially on VECITA) at the end of 2012. By the same report, VECIT A predicts that this number will reach $1.3 billion by 2015. This is already huge and fast growing. Digital marketing spend potential From comScore 2013 South East Asia Digital Future in focus According to ZenithOpt imedias Advertising Expenditure Forecasts, APAC is already the largest advertis ing market outside North America. Internet ad expenditure is set to overtake tha t of newspapers by the end of 2014. By 2015, online advertising will account for 21.9% of all adspend 16

4 Agency world in Vietnam 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 a reliterallyhundred of agencies in Vietnam, from one man shop to 100-200 hundreds o f employee. Note: My comments (if any) about these agencies are strictly coming from my limited understandings and may not be the true re ection. Overtime, these observations may be wrong since many things could change. Please note that the b elow categorization is far from correct because majority of the agencies claim t hat they are doing everything and they are all full service agencies. Also agenc y could change from time to time as well. The purpose of me putting a list toget her so that you could have a broader view of the agency world in Vietnam. 18

Section 1 Big Agency Group in Vietnam WPP with 23 of ces in HCM, 6 in HN WPP group has a strong presence in Vietnam, if not the strongest presence among international agency groups in Vietnam. With 23 of ces under the group in Ho Chi M inh alone, WPP group does cover a lot of ground. However, they don't own 100% of t hese agencies I guess. Many of the agencies below are not Digital agencies but s ince it belongs to WPP, I just put them here for reference. The below are from W PP's own website: Asatsu - DK Bates G2 Grey GroupM JWT Kantar Media Kantar Worldpanel Maxus MEC MediaCom Millward Brown Vietnam dshare Ogilvy & Mather Ogilvy Public Relations OgilvyAction OgilvyOne Worldwide TNS TNS Media Who Digital Wunderman 19

Xaxis Y&R 6 of ces in Hanoi: JWT-G Landor Associates Ogilvy & Mather Ogilvy Publi Relations Smart Media TNS From Digital capabilities point of view, in my 2 cent , only OgilvyOne (essentially Who Digital team) and GroupM have some digital cap abilities in-house. While GroupM mostly do media planning and buying, limited Se arch Engine Marketing work, OgilvyOne mostly do strategy & production work & Soc ial Media. From my limited knowledge, Y&R and Wunderman handle Coca cola and Nok ia accounts. However these clients normally just adapt regional campaigns to Vie tnam. Nokia is going downhill fast so we haven't seen much buzz from their online initiatives this year 2013. Update from Mina Menon: Y&R and Wunderman operate under one YR Group umbrella in Vietnam and have of ces in Hanoi as well. Together, we have all the digital capabi lities of a full edged Wunderman of ce, and the integrated marketing ones of a Y&R o f ce. Apart from Nokia, our clients include Emirates, Colgate-Palmolive, Ovaltine, Nutifood and Ford. Of these, Nokia, CP and Ford are global alignments, the rest are local relationships creating campaigns locally. Coca-Cola has a roster of a gencies in Vietnam that they work with depending on the project and Wunderman is one of them 20

Section 2 Other Agency Groups Omnicom Group Until 2013, Omnicom didn't have a strong presence in Vietnam I guess. However it s eems that starting this year, 2013, Vietnam has received more focus from Omnicom Media and the digital team is having more specialists compared to previous year s. Focus Asia OMD Vietnam XPR-Campaigns Group 1. Omnicom Group 2. Publicis Group 3. Interpublic 4. Havas 5. Aegis 6. Dentsu

PHD Vietnam (TNHH qung co Phng Cch Method Advertising) BBDO DDB TBWA: Biz\Tequil cus, TBWA\Vietnam, Vira OMG Publicis Group There are ve of ces in Vietnam, all in Ho Chi Minh City according to the Group webs ite: ZenithOptimedia Vietnam 21

Starcom MediaVest Vietnam Publicis Vietnam Saatchi & Saatchi Vietnam Leo Burnett Worldwide Vivaki Vietnam Performics. This would be the main Digital arm for Pub licis 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 V ietnam using Marine I guess. They outsourced Social media, production and other work to other agencies. UM - Curiosity works: media services, communication planning Havas MPG Vietnam Mai Thanh company Aegis Globally, the agency has ve brands under the group namely: Carat IProspect Isobar Posterscope Vizeum As for presence in Vietnam, from my limited understandings t here aren't much at this point. While this may change in the future, the coverage is less than desirable compared to GroupM or Vivaki. Aegis probably has two af lia tes in Vietnam, one is VMC, which is Carat's partner and another one is Emerald Ma rketing, which is Isobar's partner. It's unclear, however, that there is any invest2 2 Interpublic Draftfcb Initiative: media services, communication planning Lowe + Partners: Adv ertising, CRM/Direct. Lowe outsourced the majority of their digital work out, th ey play the role of the brand agency and project management only.

ment from Aegis into these two companies or their relationship is at independent partner level. Dentsu Dentsu has Dentsu Alpha, Dentsu Media and Dentsu Vietnam. However, they still ou tsource majority of the digital work out like Social media marketing, production , search engine marketing etc.. And mostly do media planning in-house. Dentsu co mpleted their acquisition of Ageis globally not too long ago so it's unclear what would be Dentsu's strategy for Digital marketing in Vietnam. Other Japanese/Korean agencies There areHakuhodo,Chuo Senko or Asatsu DK, Daiko Vietnam. However I don't think they do a lot of digital work in-house also. CyberAgents,Mediba and a few other compa nies set up their rep of ces and invested in a few local agencies. 23

Section 3 Local agencies, ad networks and others TV Plus 5i Media Youth Advertising 365 Days Advertising Media agencies Dat Viet Media TKL ADT Golden Media Goldsun Group Mekong communication: through their of cial partnership with Cheil Wordwide, I guess you could consider them str ongly related. Mekong has partnership with other companies like Emerald and DNA as well but I haven't heard any of cial announcement, just rumor from the street. FS communication Ad Network Innity Admax Ambient Ad micro Pixel Moore Search Engine Marketing agencies These are Google Small and Medium Business (SMB) partners: Clever Ads VCCorp - A d micro Nova Ads 24

For Google certi ed partners, you could nd them using Google Partner Search There a re so many Google Certi ed Partners in Vietnam now so I won't list down any names he re. It is important to note that Google welcomes any agencies who want to be Goo gle certi ed partners as long as they have at least one employee who is a current Google Quali ed Individual and the media spend for 3 consecutive months with Googl e is more than US $10k. If you want to nd out who is Google quali ed individuals in Vietna, please use this link. You could search for quali ed individual from each country and based on different certi cations (search advertising, Display advertis ing, reporting and analysis, Google Analytics quali ed individual etc) % % Thietkeweb Social media / PR agencies Click Media: it is known for a while now that Click Media and Sofresh are well u nder way to be acquired by GroupM. It makes sense because Unilever represents a big part of GroupM/Mindshare media business in Vietnam and Click Media and Sofre sh are doing Social media + Production work for Unilever as well. King Bee Media E Brand AVC Edelman Le & Associates OhYeah Communications Search Engine Optimization Agency I am reluctant to put together this list because from my limited experience I do n't think our capability in this area is strong in Vietnam. Anyway, I put some nam es here based on comments from some guys: % % % % manseo (previously known as lams eo) Vinalink Production Sofresh: it is known for a while now that Click Media and Sofresh are well under way to be acquired by GroupM. It makes sense because Unilever represents a big part of GroupM/ Mindshare media business in Vietnam and Click Media and Sofresh are doing Social media + Production work for Unilever as well. 25

It would be interesting, however, to see over time whether the relationship and status of the core Sofresh team would be like Who Digital and OgilvyOne. There a re not that many people from the core Who Digital team at OgilvyOne after 2 year s from what I heard. Glass Egg Sutrix Media Time Universal Splash Interactive Me dia Gurus HD Digital Ozerside April Digital Itsy Bits Mobile Application TNS Effective Measure: (they no longer have anyone based in Vietnam) AC Nelsen Brand Strategy Left Brain Connector Red Brand Builder Phibious Purple Asia Ambrand Ambrosia Vie tnam Brandtalk WildFire Collaborative Market Research Cimigo comScore Kantar Media Mobile marketing (mostly SMS marketing) Gapit Idee 26

Viet guys Mobile Solution Services MSS VHT So Smart (part of Goldsun Focus Media ) Fibo sms

eBrand Edge Marketing River Orchid IDM Vietnam FPT Media Maro Media Ringier S mEye Creative Vietbuzz Ad D Square IMS (Integrated Marketing Solution) Emerald G 2 Asia Paci c Integrated agencies Notch: many people from Notch left and set up a couple of agencies (DNA, Echo et c). Notch recently joined with RiverOrchid group to form a new entity as well. Go lden Digital: from what I heard, Tony Truong, which was one of the founding memb ers of Golden Digital left the company not too long ago. Quo Global Climaxi IO M edia: the majority of the previous core team left to join other agencies Cheil V ietnam: through their partnership with Mekong Communication I guess these two co mpanies are strongly linked. Buzz Digital Outsourcing agencies Pyramid consulting Studio 60 27

Section 4 Jack of all trades, Master of none Generalist are common Jack of all trades, master of none. This is the common problem with the majority o f Digital agencies in Vietnam. Everyone is saying they are offering full digital services from strategy, creative to execution, from Search engine marketing to Email marketing to Social Media etc However, the plain cold truth is that we do n ot have enough specialists in Vietnam for so many rms to offer everything in-hous e. Besides, It does not make business sense to have every thing in-house as well because the overall budget is often quite small. This generalist approach from the agency is partly because big clients often want to work with a few contacts and ideally only one or two rms. Agency could differentiate itself by becoming a specialist in a particular servi ce, going after certain verticals, only working with other agencies as a sub con tracts and many other ways. It is important to take note of the client segment ( SME, MNC, local clients) that an agency serves i.e. how many percentage of its c lients are small and medium businesses and how many percentage are MNCs/big loca l brands. Agencies who serve SMEs (small and medium enterprises) or SMBs (small and medium businesses) are not suf ciently equipped to work with MNCs or big local brands. The business development or the Director of the agency may paint very a ppealing pictures. However they are not the one who carry out the execution. SME world and MNC world are miles apart. The nature of SME agencies is that under n ormal circumstances they only employ relatively junior employees because SMEs' obj ectives, budget, decision-making, working culture are not that complex. SMEs do not often work with complex marketing plan that involves multiple channels (of ine and online) or having their own creative agency, PR agency etc English uency is a nother major concern facing specialists from SME agencies and even bigger agencies . Next would be communication skill and I am talking about the basic communi28

cation skill so that both parties would be able to understand each other in Engl ish/Vietnamese. Another point worth mentioning is the difference between working with government-owned rms, private rms and foreign rms in Vietnam. While relations hip plays an important role everywhere in Vietnam, with government-owned rms, tha t is even more prominent. The sales cycle for government-owned rms is hence very long, anywhere from 3-12 months. Working culture in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh is ver y different from each other as well. Generally sales cycle in Ha Noi is longer c ompared to Ho Chi Minh (2-3 times longer on average). The majority of MNCs are i n Ho Chi Minh so they set the working scene in Ho Chi Minh as compared to govern ment-owned rms setting the scene in Hanoi. 29

5 Digital Marketing Career There are many choices from working for agencies, direct clients, technology ven dors, publishers, or even your own company!

There are a couple of options for you. Agency Side From the previous chapter, you would know many types of agencies and a few names in each category already. In general, you could go deep and narrow, becoming a specialist like Search Engine Marketing Specialist, Media Planner, Social Media Expert or go wide and shallow, following the account management path, or busines s development. In many agencies, the account manager or project manager, would b e the interface between the client and the operation team inside the agency. Bes ide project management skill and client service skill, I think it would be bette r if the account manager understands digital marketing and different channels wi thin digital. They would do a much better job that way. In any cases, for most a gencies, you would start from entry level to senior executive, to manager, senio r manager, director, vice president etc... Below is an example of a job descript ion (JD) from agency side. Head of Paid Media The Head of Paid Media is responsi ble for managing all the day to day Paid Digital media planning and buying for t he agency. This includes Premium Portal Buy, Ad Networks, Google & Yahoo Paid Search, Google Display Network, Facebook Ads, and Mobile Ads (as well a s all other paid media channels that emerge over time). The Head of Paid Media m anages, mentors and motivated the junior paid media staff and leads by setting a strong example. Key Responsibilities: Lead and manage media planning and buying aspects for agency clients. Negotiate best rates, bonus inventory etc from medi a partners. Monitor delivery of campaigns from beginning to end to ensure that a ll paid media campaigns are achieving the established campaign KPIs. Manage all n ancial closure of media planning and buying activities with the nance department directly and with the media partners. Develop clear, concise digital media repor ts for all active campaigns. Provide campaign optimization, recommendations base d on a strong analytical foundation with data from different analytics tools. 31

Develop and constantly update best practices in the areas of digital ad serving and performance monitoring. Provide management and training to the junior staff. From Salary range point of view, there is no benchmark. You could try to look a t the salary survey published by TalentNet or any other head hunting rms. However Digital Marketing is a niche eld and I haven't come across a good salary survey fo r digital yet. From my own experience, there are some guidelines below: Generall y the pay in Ho Chi Minh would be 1.2 - 1.5 times the same level in Hanoi. Entry level (executive): $250-$400 Senior executive (minimum 2-4 years of experience) : $350 $800 Manager level: $900 - $1500 Senior manager level: $1500 - $3000 Dire ctor: $3000 - $5000 The main point here is that there are demand for digital specialists across segm ents. Working on the client side (from what I was told) is signi cantly different in comparison to the agency side. For one thing you will only work with one clie nt, your own company. You will be asked to come up with the request for proposal , media brief to brief the agency, or come up with marketing plan for the whole year etc... Sales target is something you will be pressured with for any campaig ns that you want to run internally or with external agencies. If you work for pu blishers or technology vendors, you could play the role of either business devel opment or account manager or operation (account optimization like Google, Yahoo) . If you are from business development/ account manager side, your job would be to develop the relationship, understand the needs of agencies, direct clients an d propose a suitable plans/ technologies to them. However, since your option is limited to the products that your company sells, the plan that you come up with won't vary much. Of course, there are outliners like Zing or Google where Zing sta rts to become a full service agency and Google offerings span across Search, Dis play and Video. From salary point of view, it really depends on the type of orga nization that you join. Client Side & Publishers & Technology Provider The truth is I have never worked in the client side or publisher or technology p rovider so the below is rather limited. 32

6 How to learn Digital Marketing On the job training is one of the best way to learn Digital marketing because of the lack of professionals and too many myths or misunderstandings in the market place.

Marketing before Digital In my opinion, many people get it the other way around. It's not about the digital tactics, the tools or any fancy, over-hyped new medium, rst it is about a Solid Marketing Strategy that either brings in sales or increase brand awareness. No a mount of hard work, of new tools, new channels would save a campaign from the wr ong strategy and poor market understanding. It just so happens that there are ma ny internet users and the amount of time they spend online is signi cant so market ers could reach/engage them potentially more ef ciently. There are so many books o n marketing so I am not going into too many details here. Where do they live? What kind of education do they have? How much expendable inc ome could they afford? Are they married? Do they have kids? Watch out for any bi ases you may have or trying to target a too generic audience. For example, more often than not, you do NOT want to target all countries in the world for your Pa id Search Program. Similarly, it is unlikely that you want to target all areas ( rural and urban areas, mountainous area and big cities) in Vietnam for your camp aign. As for insights, there are many insights about the target audience that yo u want to know. How do they often buy your product? Where can they buy it? What factors in uence their behavior? What are the barriers you face in persuading them to try your product/ to think differently about your products/ to even stop for a sec and see/ read what you have to offer? Could Digital channel in uence the be havior somehow? How do your customers often know about new brands, new products in your industry? 34 Consumer Insights are key Always start with consumer insights and never forget them along the way during b rain storming or brain writing, strategy planning, KPI setting, media planning a nd buying, execution, optimization and reporting. Do eld work, try the product ou t, go to the store, experience it. If you never bought milk powder for a 6 month old baby, go and ask people who do. We need to understand who our consumer is: Ho w old they are? Are they male/female?

How do they want to communicate with brands? We have a whole section on Digital Analytics, which covers tools that could help you get some insights about your t arget audience or your competitor, market place. EQVN AIIM INET Etc... I will not be able to recommend any school publicly becaus e it is subjective. My advice to you if you want to go down this road is to audi t their classes at least 1 or 2 sessions before committing your money. It is of my personal belief that no matter which school you choose, it is all up to you t o get the most out of it and self learning is far more important. Of course, if your purpose is just to get a paper saying that you participated in a digital ma rketing course then just go ahead and choose any school. Where to learn? There are a couple of options for you. If you are still in the university, you c ould check to see if your school offers any courses in Digital marketing. Univer sities in Vietnam, especially International Universities (RMIT for example) star t to cover digital marketing materials in their generic marketing course. Some m ajor local universities start to offer courses in digital marketing as well. I h ave never audited any of these courses so I would not be able to comment on them . I would imagine it is not easy to nd GOOD lecturers with real life experience w ho could teach digital marketing courses though. If your university doesn't offer digital marketing course or you are fresh graduate or you are working, you could sign up for night classes at different schools like: Self Learning & On the Job Training Since we do not have many professionals working in the industry, the chance that you nd good lecturers with real life experience is quite smaller I think. Coupli ng with the fact that not many professionals who are good at what they do, could teach well or want to teach, I think Self Learning and On the Job training is t he best option at this point in time. Because of this reason, I try to include a s many reference links in this ebook as possible so that you could learn more if you 35 BMG International Education Vietnam Marcom

want to. Try to read in English as much as you can because I have seen enough mi sleading, wrong information in Vietnamese when it comes to our new eld. 36

Section 1 Challenges while learning Digital Marketing ogy evolves and new platform emerges. There are new technologies, better way to do things happening everyday especially with the internet so reading regularly i s a necessity. However don't try to embark on the hottest trends just yet, please be sure that the fundamentals are right and your strategic plan is in place. Goi ng faster using a wrong map will only get you to the WRONG destination faster. Too many myths & misunderstanding To me, knowing something wrong and believing it to be true is much worse than no t knowing. It is because if you think you know something, you will go ahead and do it the way you understand, which could bring very bad results. Besides, you m ay try to teach this or pass this along to someone else, which is even more dang erous. Digital marketing is too new in Vietnam so there are no authoritative gure s yet, everyone is an expert in something. My only advice for this is that do not believe everything that you are told. Develop a healthy habit of double checking by looking at other trusted sources online and of ine. Things are changing way too fast Yup this is a real challenge faced by digital marketers. What you just learnt ma y change drastically and quickly as technol37

The big picture One way to look at the complex world of Digital Marketing is to understand Owned Media, Paid Media and Earned Media 7

Section 1 Owned, Paid and Earned Media The ecosystem is vast and complex. If you want to see how What Will Be Discussed I n This Chapter complex it is, just look at a few LumaScape, you could see that t he supply chain from Advertiser to end consumer included many steps. The screens hot below was taken from Display Lu1. The complex world of Digital Marketing mas cape, which highlights the Display Ecosystem and you 2. Owned what is it about a nd it stage of could see soMedia: many companies participating in what different the includes? journey. 3. Earned Media: what is it about and what it includes? 4. Paid Media: what is i t about and what it includes? If you go from left to right, rst, marketers would work with agencies. These agen cies would then work with their trading desks. The trading desks may employ reta rgeting technology, tag management from other companies. They may then work with Demand Side Platform and Ad Exchange. The next player in the food chain is Ad n etworks, Supply Side Platforms and then individual publisher. Finally the ads ar e shown to consumer and track the performance. 39

Multi Screen is a fact now From consumer point of view, they have so many choices now between different scr eens like never before. site/Mobile App, You Tube Channel, Facebook Fanpage, Twitter account, Facebook A pp etc... When it comes to things that you own, you have great control over the medium and you could build/update/change them as frequently as you like. To do t his well, more often than not, you need marketing understandings, technical (cod ing), user experience (or User interface) specialist, content marketing, Paid Media: it includes your usual suspects like banner ads, rich media ads, pai d search, sponsorship, facebook like ads, PR articles on Online Newspaper etc... Earned Media: this is about other people/blogs/fanpages/ forums/newspaper that talk about your brand, your products without you paying them, your EARNED media. You could include organic traf c from search engine in this as well. There are basically so many ways for advertiser/ brands to reach/engage/sell to consumers and consumers could response, comment, Like/ Unlike, voice out their o pinion about certain brands on their desktop/tablet/smart phone. Could it be Ins tagram? Vine? Linkedin? VnExpress? Zing Mp3? Google, Yahoo, Facebook? One way to categorize all of these is by looking at them from: Owned Media: these are prop erties/ digital assets that you own like your website, microsites, your company Blog, Mobile Owned Media Your platforms in the multi screen world. PC assets: Website Campaign microsite 40

E-commerce Platform Mobile assets Mobile site Mobile native app Social Media ass ets: Facebook fanpage You Tube Channel Corporate blog Twitter account Instagram account Pinterest, Tumblr, Flickr CRM assets: CRM platform EDM program Mobile marketing Social Network Ads Online PR Video marketing Email marketing Fo rum seeding Earned Media Key Opinion Leader/Hot Blogger outreach Word of mouth marketing Social mentions Virality SEO Paid Media Display banner Search Engine Marketing 41

PC Assets Detailed discussion of website, microsite, the normal development plan and user experience 8

Section 1 Getting the basics right In Vietnam, when it comes to Digital marketing, people often talk about differen t channels like Search Marketing, Social media etc...and often overlook one very important key component which is their website/microsite. There are so many boo ks/articles/blog posts on how to create a great websites already. So I won't try t o reinvent the wheels. Instead, I will list down a few things that Vietnamese we b masters/marketers/agencies often miss/forget. A pretty looking website/microsi te is needed, however it has to be user friendly and useful as well. Of course t he role of the website in the whole marketing strategy is different from industr y to industry, from one company to the next. However, a few straight forwards qu estions should be asked like: 1. Who is the target audience of the website? 2. Why do you need a website/microsite? What role does it play in our marketing, sales, customer service plans? 3. What is your business value proposition and h ow well the website conveys it? 4. What do you expect visitors do while they are on your site? 5. How do you know if your website is a success? i.e. how do you translate from business goals to measurable KPIs? 6. Are you ready for a mobile world? Let's go deeper in each of the questions, one by one. Why your site exists? This simple question may not be that easy to answer thoughtfully and comprehensi vely. To answer it, we probably have to answer another question rst: who the targ et audience is? And research the customer insights. For the purpose of this disc ussion, I would exclude sites like online newspaper etc...and zoom in on a few p urposes only: To introduce the company and what it does basically the products/s ervices introduction 43

To launch a new promotion To promote a new event To be the content hub so that i nterested users could go and nd authentic information. To sell online/Encourage D irect Response from users Etc... What is your business value proposition? Why consumers should choose you over your competitors? What are your products/ s ervices unique selling points? What role the website/microsite has in conveying these unique selling points? Why should user visit your website again? I know it sounds really basic these type of questions, but you would be surprised what th ese basic questions can help you. For example, we know that for a real estate pr oject, location is one of the key considerations (if not THE key). Conveying the location of your project should be one of the most important elements of the si te. However, it is not common to see how they could be done in a sub optimal way . Asking visitors to read and imagine the location instead of looking at a map i s not the optimal experience. Further more, the color of the text on a blue sea background does not make it easy to read. What do you expect visitors to do on your website? The more speci c the answer is, the better it is for you and your users. The call t o action should be visible on the homepage and important pages. 44

If you expect someone to call you, then your hotline should be prominent on as m any pages as possible. If you ask people to sign up or give their personal infor mation, what will you give them in return? What do they get by lling out the form on your site? Important content should be featured clearly, above the fold i.e. if you expect site visitors to nd your store locations then including a simple m ap (Google Map is advised) is a necessity. Generally, people are interested in t hemselves and their needs so unless your users are looking for a job or trying t o see if they should invest in your company or the like, About us section, Press Re lease should not be positioned as important as products/services. Are you ready for a mobile world? You could use this tool from Google to understand how your website looks like on mobile device. Or you could visit your site on smartphone and tablet to see it in action? More about this in the Mobile assets chapter. How do you know if your website is a success? This is when we translate the business objectives into SMART metrics/outcomes. N ot all the business outcomes that you want to use for the website could be measu re easily. However, many of them can and that is one of the bigger advantages of Digital. Please read the section about Web Analytics for more details. 45

Section 2 Development plan production manager (coding side), digital producer, digital strategist, paid med ia team, earned media team or any other departments that may be involved in this project. The purpose of having this is to make sure everyone is on the same pag e and know the latest changes/ con rmation from the clients in comparison to the v ersion used for pitching. A proper creative brief could be useful at this point to cover things like: Background: for those people that are not involved in the pitching process to have an overview. Target audience: clarify any differences c ompared to the pitching materials Objectives: What are the objectives of the cam paigns? Well, many people from sales/account/client service team would know the answer to these questions by heart, especially those that are involved in the pi tching process. However, the real question is whether all of your other teams kn ow? The production team, the creative team, any other teams that will actually w ork on the delivery of the project should know this upfront, from the beginning. Also from the pitching state to the implementation state, more often than not, client wants to change certain things, add in certain aspects that may add to th e call to actions. 46 I do not mean to reinvent the wheel, however I don't think the process of developi ng a website/microsite as part of the campaign is well practiced in Vietnam even though many people would say that they know them already. I have come across ma ny people (who don't have a strong owned media or paid media background) make mist akes that are hard to rectify later on or they simply drive creative team or pro duction team crazy when they do project management since they don't really underst and how it should work. The process below is by no mean perfect or rigid or you have to follow blindly step by step. My aim is to touch on some fundamental step s that should not be ignored. Kick off meeting It is a good point in the journey to have a kick off meeting between business de velopment team/account/client service team and creative team (Digital art direct or, Designer), copywriter,

Mood and tone Key message, Unique selling points Key bene ts Reasons to believe Ca ll to actions Overall Schedule including timeline for creative, production, anal ytics, seo, testing More on creative brief is at the last chapter on Digital str ategy. If there are any earned media elements, people may put KPI likes the number of l ike/share/comments per in uencer post, the number of views per topic on forum etc. .. Domain, Hosting and other technical requirement It would be better to discuss this upfront with the client and have your product ion team fully understand the requirement as well. It is even better to have all of these documented and have the client signs on it. It is NOT good enough that the account team/ project management team have this information and not sharing with anyone else. Domain name is rather straight forward. Everyone needs to agr ee on what domain to be used. Normally there would be three scenarios: The campa ign would run on a subdomain of the main corporate site i.e. campaignX.abc.com.v n where abc.com.vn is the corporate domain. The campaign runs on a sub folder of the main corporate site i.e. abc.com.vn/campaignX The campaign runs on a separa ted domain like campaignX.com.vn Con rm KPIs for the site Some of the most common KPIs that I have seen are: Visits to the site Overall bo unce rate Number of people sign up to play certain games on the site Number of p hotos, videos uploaded Number of people who join the contest Revenue 47

The decision depends largely on the role of the corporate website in the long te rm and of the speci c campaign in discussion. If you want your corporate website t raf c report looks good, the rst two options are the way to go. Please try to stay away from lengthly, wordy campaign domain like domain with 5 words (or 20-charac ter length). No one is going to remember it or type it back correctly. Besides, it would be good at this stage to cover technical aspects like server spec, serv er environment (Windows based or Linux based etc...), programming language for t he backend (PHP, .Net, Java), database requirement (if any). For the front end, HTML 5 is getting increasingly popular in comparison to ash. So unless there is a very strong reason why you should use 100% ash for the front end, I would strong ly recommend against that for many reasons including mobile site friendliness, S EO, etc... Screen resolution is important as well. For now in Vietnam in 2013, o ne common screen resolution for desktop/ laptop is 1280 x 1024. However this dep ends on your target audience and their devices so please check carefully. Screen resolution would affect how much visitors could see on the screen without havin g to scroll up/ down, left/right. Information Architect (site map) & wireframe Normally, the Strategist & design team would start rst and they would develop the detailed site map & wireframe. However, I think we would need additional member (s) with experience in User Experience, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Web An alytics team to join in this stage as well because users should be at the center of everything we do with the website/microsite so user experience specialist pl ays a key role. Search Engine Optimization expert would be able to contribute wi th the site map & wireframe as well to make sure that it is search engine friend ly. More often than not, people care about the look and feel, the mood and tone and completely forget about information architect or wireframe. This leads to mi ssing key call to actions or users would have to go through hoops to do what we want them to do. Unoptimized wireframe would result in bad design and bad user e xperience because wireframe represents the skeleton and design is the esh. It is impo rtant also that not only the agency but the client needs to con rm the information architect and the wireframe before actual design/coding. Because when the desig n is done and then someone wants to add in/ remove certain elements of the site map, it would create a lot of rework. 48

Also based on the information architect, the SEO team should be able to start wo rking on keyword research, keyword distribution per section, per page etc... If you ever wonder what a wireframe looks like, below are a couple of example This example is taken from http://www.hitreach.co.uk/perfect-web-page/ There is another software that is quite alright for generating wireframe called http://ww w.balsamiq.com/download Disclaimer: I am not related to either hitreach or balsa miq in anyway. Another wireframe example is below 49

for approval. The reason is because we want to test the style, look and feel wit h the client/ decision maker rst. After the homepage is con rmed, the style is con rm ed then it won't be too dif cult to design other sub pages. Also client may ask agen cy to come back with two different concepts for the homepage to choose from. Som e creative directors/ art directors are alright with coming up with two options, some only want to offer one option at a time because they want to spend all of their effort in one design. I have to repeat this but It is important however to note that it's better to design the homepage or one additional main page rst and s end them quickly to the client to get approval on art direction rather than desi gning every page and then send them for approval. If it turns out that the art d irection is not what the client wants, the latter approach would mean lots of ef forts wasted. If responsive web design is needed, one should be mindful of the r equirement of responsive design regarding the wireframe and design. More on resp onsive design at the chapter about Mobile assets. Double checking the actual des ign against responsive web design principle at this stage is not a bad idea if r esponsive design is a requirement because many interface is not suitable for res ponsive design. I won't go too deep into design revision because managing this pro cess is an art, not exact science. Actual Design More often than not the homepage and may be one other page would be designed and send to the client/ decision maker 50 rst

Just make sure that unless there is a damn good reason for it, after the wirefra me is con rmed or the design is con rmed, we move on and don't come back to change the wireframe or changing the design at production phase. Any major changes would m ean double work and cost may increase. Rand Fishkin posted a beautiful, simple post on how to choose a suitable CMS for your site (from a SEO perspective). So unless your own CMS could meet these cri teria, just use one of the free open source CMS. And please do NOT use the lame excuse that open source CMS is not secure. Come on this is 2013, not 1990. Techn ically many agencies would start working on production after the design is con rme d, if you are tight on timeline, you could always start to work on the backend, database, CMS in parallel with the design. However, the project manager needs to be capable in this case. Before the site is ready for internal testing, please check the loading speed of the site to make sure that it is on par with other we bsites in Vietnam. The latest report from Google showed that an average site in Vietnam would take around 2.3 seconds to load. Generally making your site as fas t as possible is not only great for user experience but also for SEO purpose. Go ogle loves fast loading sites and so do the users. 15 seconds is kind of my limi t and then I am gone. Google offers this great tool to check how your site perfo rms speed wise and how to make it faster. It is called PageSpeed Insights. Below is the screenshot when I run the test on my blog www.chandlernguyen.com, the sc ore was 86/100 which is not bad. 51 Production Since the choice of technology, programing language are con rmed during the rst few steps in the process, there should not be any changes at this stage. Technical SEO needs to be taken care of at this stage like Content Management System (CMS) features to support SEO. Some time in Vietnam, there are cases where developers prefer to use their own Content Management System because they are familiar wit h it (or it's their own) and could replicate from one client to the next easily. H owever I think that is often a very bad idea, we need to leverage as much as pos sible on these very capable, FREE, open sourced CMS. Some examples are Wordpress , Drupal, Mambo, Magento etc... For the majority of microsites, campaign based w ebsites in Vietnam, one of the free open source CMS would be more than what you actually need and they have great plugins to go with them as well.

If you do not have time to read through the article, here are some highlights fr om it: An ideal web page should do all the following: Be hyper-relevant to a spec i c topic (usually a product or single object) Include subject in title tag Includ e subject in URL Include subject in image alt text Of course the loading speed w ould depend on where you locate the server as well because international bandwid th in Vietnam is very limited so if your server is overseas, be prepared for lon g loading time. Specify subject several times throughout text content Provide un ique content about a given subject Link back to its category page Link back to i ts subcategory page (If applicable) Link back to its homepage (This is normally accomplished with an image link showing the website logo on the top left of a pa ge.) Keyword research needs to be done to decide what exact term we should use to describe the subject/ main topic of the page. More on this under the chapter ab out search engine marketing. On page optimization (SEO) I would argue that even with a 2-3 month microsite, you would still need to do O n Page optimization. For those who do not know what on page optimization is, it simply means optimize different factors within your website to improve your natu ral ranking on Google Search Result Page. Again seoMOZ has an excellent article to cover the basics named on page factors. Tracking code (Analytics) set up 52

More details about goals, conversions in Digital Analytics chapter so you could read more later on. Many websites in Vietnam are using Google Analytics and many clients prefer using Google Analytics so I would write this section using Googl e Analytics as example. Depending on what domain or sub domain or sub folder you would want to use for the microsite, you would then need to set up slightly dif ferently in your Google Analytics account (using different pro les) The important thing is set something up so that you could monitor traf c separately for this mic rosite. Goals/conversions should be used as well. Normally you should de ne any ac tion that you want user to take as a conversion like sign up for an account, joi n the contest, play games etc... After set up, please do testing carefully to ma ke sure that the code is working ne by taking the action and see if Google Analyt ics records the correct conversion. I can't stress this enough because people ofte n do NOT test after setting up goals and then later on arguing over wrong data. Google Webmaster set up should be done at this stage as well. The production team should test the site with multiple browsers, using multiple versions of a particular browse like Internet Explorer or Chrome or Safari. The site should be tested with smartphones/tablets as well to ensure it functions as planned. Different test cases could be developed and you could read more about testing here. It is very important to test the key call to actions that you want user to take, put yourself in user shoes and see if they could complete the tas ks without bugs. For example, if you want user to sign up for a contest, try the sign up function yourself. Try to input wrong data and see what error message i s sent back to you. Test each page by clicking on every single link and every si ngle clickable image to make sure it functions as plan. If there is a video on t he site, try to click on the video to see how long it would take to load the vid eo. If there is a game, try to play the game yourselves and record all the bugs. Internal Test & Fixing Bug This stage is crucial before launching the site. Client test 53

It is important that the client tests every function carefully and sign off on t hem via email or on paper before the site is launch. You may hear the term UAT a t this stage, which stands for User Acceptance Test. It will be very risky not h aving client to con rm by email or sign off on paper before launching the site bec ause when users start to come in and experience the site, if there are any major bugs, the complaints would start to come in very quickly. Normally agency would need to guide the client a bit in their testing as well to make sure that they do test all main functions. Having a list of all the Urls/functions for the clie nt to check off could be useful. Launch More often than not, since the microsite is part of the bigger marketing campaig n with some promotions/ activities to engage users on the site, soft launch coul d be dif cult. The main reason is that you want to synchronize the communication m essage across channels. On the rst day of the campaign, there should be lots of p aid media channels running, pumping users to the site so please monitor your sit e/ server carefully to ensure no down time. 54

Section 3 User experience I have come across so many websites (including my own), so many forms, so many c ontests that I will be of absolute lost trying to complete certain critical task s. Because of these experiences, I've always wanted to learn more about User Exper ience, not just for website but how to bring good overall experience of a produc t/ service to users/customers. And they said that the best way to learn is to te ach so while bearing in mind the risk of sounding too ignorant and a complete am ateur when it comes to user experience, I put together some materials on this su bject. Recently I came across this watch from Casio. FYI I almost bought it. It is one of the classic Casio G Shock watches. It looks quite cool and actually lo oks better when you wear it. However I didn't buy eventually because as a watch, I can't look at the analog watch and gure out what time it is. Being able to show wh at time it is, is THE basic functionality of a watch. Don't get me wrong, I think many people would buy this watch because of its design and I saw a number of pedestrians wearing it actuall y. Everyone is different. Insuf cient attention from marketers in Vietnam I have to say user experience is an area that doesn't receive suf cient attention fr om the digital agencies, marketers in Vietnam in general. While it is not new, i t seems like everyone is looking for a beautiful design and not necessary a user -friendly site. Also, the agency may say they care about user experience during pitching, however, it may not happen during the execution phase. (duh!) Lack of time is the common excuse, lack of budget from the client is another common one. Lack of expertise might be another reason as well. The truth is there are not t hat many user experience professionals in Vietnam. 55

User Experience is hard or is it just common sense? User experience is hard because it requires so many disciplines to come together . From Jodie Moule point of view, it requires: interaction design, human factors engineering, industrial design, psychology, anthropology (anthropology de nition ishere),sociology, computer science, graphic design, cognitive science. There are many factors that in uence the experience of an user with a product/ service as we ll: % % % % % % % % % % Usefulness Usability Learnability Aesthetics: does it look ni ce? Emotions have website/microsite, Facebook fanpage, You Tube Channel etc Not only that user s use desktops, laptops, smartphones, tablets to access these properties so we n eed to ensure a pleasant experience duringthe entire user journey, from the begin ning, when they rst come in contact with us, what do they after that and then whe re they would go when they nish. Foramateur, a lot of stuff for User Experience sh ould be easy and common sense. It comes from an understanding, a focus on user's n eed while designing, building a product/service/website.Don't make me think by Steve Krug is probably one of the best, easy to read book for amateur like myself. The title of book simply summarizes it all for us, doesn't it?Our job is NOT to make u sers having to think too much just to use the website/application.Everything shou ld be natural, obvious to users especially the key call to action. If you want t o go further and conduct usability test yourself, Steve Krug has another good, s imple to read book called Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to F inding and Fixing Usability Problems Amazon has one section about best sellers in User Experience and Website Usability so you could check that out as well. By the way Jodie Moule wrote a good book titledKiller UX Design.The Killer UX Design is quite applicable if you are working in an agency because the author writes f rom an agency angle. Jodie didn't just talk about User Experience on the web alone , she discussed generally about all the touch points that you may have online/of in e with your users/ customers. This is a powerful concept to note because more of ten than not, under Owned Media Channel alone, we would 56

Because there are so much materials on this subject already so I don't want to rei nvent the wheel here. I would strongly recommend you pick up a few books on User Experience and read them. However, I also understand that some of you do not wa nt to read too much and just want some practical tips that make your life easier . So here is the checklist of basic things that you should look at Speed Maters As you could see from Google report, the average loading time for a site in Viet nam is around 2.5 seconds so if the site takes like 15 secs to load, something i s not right. User doesn't want to wait when it comes to the internet and 20 secs i s a long time online. There are many articles on how to make your site faster, including articles from Google. I don't care how beautiful, useful, rich your website is, if it takes 30 seconds to load the site, I am NOT interested. If you have Google Analytics inst alled on your site, you could look at the page speed report under Content catego ry. 57

First Impression Counts Could you easily understand what the site is about? Which site it is? Which sect ion/page of the site you are on? Is it obvious to you what you could do from whe re you are now? If it takes you too long (like 20 secs) just to nd out where you are, what you could do here/ how to start, the information architecture of the s ite might be too confusing or the design is too complicated. If there are terms in the main navigation that you are unsure what it means, then it's probably not u ser-friendly enough. While it's true that certain site requires user with domain k nowledge to use because they are highly technical. However, my challenge to thos e site owners is: Would you want more business?, Would you want more business from people who are NOT your customer previously, new customers? So making things as simple as possible for people to understand is of paramount importance to attra ct these new customers. The overarching principle here is again Don't make me think. Where Am I? Where Could I Go From Here? To help user understand where they are on the site, what options do they have at this level, we could use breadcrumb and other design cues. If you don't know what breadcrumb is, please refer to the screenshot below: 58

comes to online, if I can't immediately nd what I am looking for, I would use the s earch function. Amazon, one of the biggest e-commerce site has a very robust sea rch function, which makes life very easy to users. Also, it is important that users could search the site if they get lost. This is a very important function. However, I am ashamed that my site the search functi on is not very good! In my opinion, the internal search function is no longer an option but a necessity (of course if your site has only two pages, you probably won't need search function). Internal search function is the search button that a llows users to search for stuff on your site. A real life analogy would be if yo u can't nd what you are looking for or get lost in a department store, you have two options: You look up at the signs to understand where you are and look for the areas where you want to go. i.e. look at main navigation You ask any store assis tant near by about how to nd thejewelrysection or kid section etc this is the equiva lent of the search function when it comes to online. I am often very lazy and al ways ask the store assistant so when it Basic Accessibility Issues Text to background contrast: Text should be easy to read, and have enough contra st with the background like black text 59

on a white or slightly grey background. Please do not try to use dark blue text on a black background or blue background etc The example below doesn't have good te xt to background contrast besides other stuff like trying to explain a location using words? We could spend a lot of time discussing this point. Essentially it is about the more important thing is, the higher they need to be on the page. Important conte nt should be above the fold. Another thing would be font size and spacing. I would argue that anything less t han size 10 is not easy to read on the web. May be I am getting old but I will n ot waste time trying to read small text. The above is LITERALLY the above the fold part of a landing page after I click on the banner on vnexpress. If you are a user, what do you think? Also, the more im portant headline should be in bigger font compared to less important one. Please look at the below screenshot and guess which information it is trying to convey i.e. which is the important information 60 Clear Visual Hierarchy

from this map? The context of this screenshot is that it is the location of a re al estate project. Could you see the project anywhere on the map? I couldn't nd it after like a minute looking at the map, under the Location menu. Site ID needs (logo) to be clearly stated and more often than not, it is on the top of the page. It is at the top left corner or top center location more than t op right corner. Have you seen the site logo on the top right corner before? Com pany logo should link back to the homepage Make clear which part is clickable: b y convention, blue & underlined text is clickable (even blue text only in some c ase). Don't use self invented icon without text to support it. This is applicable to self invented abbreviation as well. It may make you sound cool because you us e some newly invented abbreviation but it is NOT good for business. If people do n't understand something and you are NOT there to answer their questions (it's onlin e remember?), then it just turns people off. Site search should be on top center ed position or top right position. Things that are related to each other logically should be close together physica lly. It is like how you would arrange merchandise in a supermarket. You don't see s h and dry food mixed together in one section, do you? Ability To Complete Key Actions This is consider the most important aspect of all. If user could successfully co mplete what you want them to do easily, without hiccup, you are a star! If user can't do/ ful ll what they want from your side, you are doomed no matter how pretty yo ur side is. Following Convention Is Important Some of the conventions are: 61

List down the top 3-5 key actions you want users to do while they are on your si te. Then write 3-5 scenarios that match these key actions so that if you ask som eone else to complete these tasks, they would have the background information. T his should be easy and almost anyone from marketing to IT to sales could make th e list. NOW test this list with someone who is NOT from marketing team, creative team, sales or IT team. Basically what I am looking for is either you test it w ith your target audience, or since your target audience would tend to be quite w ide, you could test it with anyone who is NOT involved in building, designing, m aintaining the site. It is to be hoped that you won't be as surprised as I was in many occasions. Some examples are below: If you want to invite people to a party /event that you organize, it's best not to direct them to your PR news page or put your of ine brochure online. I came across brochure type landing page, in which u sers have no clue how to register. They have to scroll down for about 5 pages to see a very small call to action at the bottom about register here for your free tickets. If you are a fast food chain and you want users to the site to call yo u and order, your PHONE number should be visible on the homepage and on as many pages as suitable. Don't try to hide it somewhere else. Some Other Small Things So I would include a few common mistakes for website/ microsite that I have seen s o far here so that you could watch out for them: Sign up form with only 1 eld for password, no eld to retype password?? Sign up form that asks way too many person al information without good reasons. Sign up form that once you click the submit button and there is something wrong, everything is gone and you have to retype everything! Come on it's 2013 and users should NOT have to retype all elds in the f orm just because something is wrong. Retyping the password or CAPTCHA is underst andable but not everything like name, email, etc Status bar while uploading a pho to or video: with the relatively slow internet connection in Vietnam, it is very important that if we ask user to upload something, we should have a status bar running so that user know that it is in progress, or failed or how much more tim e they need to wait? 62

Auto play video with sound ON: I know as a marketer, we want people to watch our video, especially if it takes thousands of dollars to produce. However in my op inion, auto play video with sound ON is a big NO NO. As a user, my rst reaction h as always been to turn off that video and sound no matter what i.e. I don't bother to wait and watch to see what the video is about. Location without map: more of ten than not, we would have locations of our of ces, our stores, our restaurant on the website and we want users to visit them. However just listing down the addr ess without the map is sub optimal. Google Map is pretty accurate and easy to do so just tuck it in there so that user knows how to get to your store/your resta urant etc The listing of stores below to me is sub optimal. This one is much better. It has detailed address, phone number, map etc 63

Logo that is NOT clickable! This really kills me. It is a very common habit that people would click on the logo and expect to go back to the homepage. Having a logo and it is NOT clickable just sends the message that you do NOT care about y our users. 64

Section 4 Reference

A couple of good resources Dont make me think by Steve Krug Some Slightly Irregular: http://someslightlyirreg ular.com/ Killer UX design by Jodie Moule Helpful usability checklist from Dr. Pet er J. Meyers 25 point website usability checklist Software to create wireframe Bal samiq How to choose the right CMS platform from Rand Fishkin Page Speed Insights b y Google Is the web getting faster by Google SEO on page factors by Moz Google Webm ster 65

Mobile Assets Different options for brands (including mobile site, responsive design website, native application) are discussed with their pros and cons. 9

Section 1 Post PC era is here The Post-PC era is here Lorem Ipsum iPad, iPhone and other smartphones/tablets have helped to usher in the new digit al era, the POST PC era. With Apple's 1. Post PC era is here earning results, many analysts con rmed again that the post PC era is here. (read WSJ article rate Apple Reaf rm 2. Smartphone penetration inEarnings Vietnam Post-PC Era, or About that pos t-PC era...Steve Jobs was 3. right). There are some interesting data from TNS Glo bal like From a device ownership point of view, while developed countries still rely on PCs, in emerging markets the smartphone dominates. And we are using more and more data with smartphone with nearly a third globally used more. 67

From the chapter on the potential of Digital marketing in Vietnam, you already s ee that the smartphone penetration is forecasted to be 21% in early 2013 in Viet nam. The above graph shows the share of time spent on PC/Laptop from comScore. Howeve r I don't see much difference for smartphone with social networking, services and news are the three biggest categories from time spent point of view. In conclusi on, having a presence on mobile devices in no longer an option. In the next sect ions, we will discuss in details what options are for brands. What do people do on their smartphones? According to Vietnam Telecommunications Authority (VNTA) and VNNIC, there are ab out 3.3 million 3G users in Vietnam. 68

Section 2 Mobile options for Brands So with millions of smartphone users, using their phone Lorem Ipsum every day, w hat we could do to take advantage of it? For ever-increasing numbers of consumers , across markets, 1. Multi screen & connected world income levels and demographi cs, the mobile phone is the de2. World wide statistics vice and the communicatio ns channel closest to their hearts. It 3. Vietnam statistics is by de nition intim ate and personal, carried everywhere, used throughout thebased day and customise d through taking and 4. Emerging trends on consumer insights saving personal pho tos, downloading music, adding wallpapers, 5. Gomo - is your website mobile frie ndly? creating shortcuts and, increasingly, through the selection of 6. Mobile A pp - iOS or Android? apps and functions. From TNS Global Key Insights Mobile Lif e. Because of this, smartphone represents a major opportunity for brand to have an intimate, one on one relationship with its customers. From owned medium point of view, we would have options like developing a mobile site, a native mobile a pp or leverage on existing social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. With mobile site, you can't take advantage of different functions like access to p hoto album, camera, videos, contacts and others. The experience is not likely to be as rich/interactive as with native mobile app. However the good thing is a m obile site is platform agnostic i.e. it could run on both iOS, Android or Window s. As for Native App, you could build really complicated app with rich experienc e, beautiful graphics, 3D images etc... However, it is very important to know th at you would likely have to create different versions of the same app for iOS, A ndroid, Windows Mobile or any other operating systems. Is your current site mobile friendly? To answer this question, you could try to visit your own site on a smartphone or you could use this tool GomoMeter from Google. It is essentially the same thing where you could see how your site looks like on a smartphone. If your site made of ash, then you would NOT be able to see anything on iPhone (or any iOS devices like iPad, iPod Touch) because iOS doesn't support ash. If you use the tool from G oogle, after entering your site URL into the tool, it would show you how the sit e looks on a smartphone. Next if you choose the category that most ts your site, and answer a few respective questions, the tool will give you 69

some hints on how to optimize your mobile site. Questions they ask could be like : Do you see broken images or missing content? Can you read the text without zoom ing or scrolling side to side? Can links and buttons be clicked with a thumb? Ar e videos, games or other animations visible? Are visuals and tone consistent wit h other marketing materials? By answering these questions and knowing how much ti me your mobile site takes to load, I guess you could have a very rough idea of h ow your mobile site performs and what area you should look into to improve the s ite. Again the above list is very basic and there are many other things else to examine to know whether your site is mobile friendly. Responsive web design (RWD or Responsive Design) is relatively new so there is s till a long way to go for designer and developer to master this concept and brin g it to life beautifully. There are many examples of a responsive design website like http://mashable.com/, http://www.bostonglobe.com/ or my own blog uses them e that supports responsive design. I haven't come across many sites in Vietnam tha t implements Responsive Design. From Think Insights with Google, they wrote Respons ive web design (RWD) enables you to optimize your site experience across differe nt screen sizes without creating multiple websites. By using exible templates, CS S media queries, and JavaScript events, a responsive web design can respond to t he viewport size of a device, adjusting images, template layout and content visi bility. You can even harness novel device capabilities such as dragging, swiping and other user-gestures recognized by touch devices. All of these CSS and JavaS cript techniques can be layered onto a single le of HTML content, delivered to al l devices. Example from Mashable to feature responsive web design in case you are not sure what it is: Mobile friendly site In Vietnam, when it comes to developing a mobile site, from a technical point of view, there are a couple of options for you: 70

This is the normal screen size for desktop (I am using Macbook Pro and the resol ution is best scaled), you notice that the title of the article on the right hand side Google Glass Photographer Makes Picture Taking Awkward. If you look at the hi ghlighted portion, you could see the article has title in 2 lines and some descr iptions below. Now take a look at the below picture for iPad screen size. If you want to replicate this, you just need to reduce the size of the browser window. Because of the smaller screen size, the article title now appears in 4 lines, we don't have space for the article description anymore. However as you could see, t he layout is responsive and our view is still optimal. The layout doesn't break an d you could still read the content easily. The last example is the smartphone sc reen size for the same Mashable site. As you can see, the layout completely chan ge to cater to the small screen size. You see only the New section on the homepa ge. The main navigation reduces to the button at the top left hand corner. If yo u want to go to other sections, you have to click that button. 71

Dynamically serving different HTML on the same URL When a customer visits your w ebsite, it's possible for your webserver to detect what kind of device they're using and present a custom page (HTML + CSS) on the same URL. These custom pages can be designed for any kind of devicemobile phones, tablets, desktop computers and e ven Smart TVs. Detecting the users device and changing the content you serve re quires some customization (e.g. stylesheets) that need to be maintained on a per -device basis. Separate mobile Urls Another option to customize user experience based on device type is to build a separate site for mobile traf c, independent of your original desktop site. The browser detects if a visitor is on a mobile dev ice and redirects them to the mobile-optimized version of your site (e.g. m.vnex press.net). A dedicated mobile site allows you to tailor the site speci cally for mobile users and is often independently built and hosted. 72

This solution is quite commonly used in Vietnam. Some of the biggest news portal s in Vietnam use this type of implementation like VnExpress, Vietnamnet (2013). site with responsive design is much cheaper in comparison to native apps. If you ask for how much cheaper exactly for mobile site vs native app, again my answer would be that depends. I would estimate the ratio to be between 3-20 times more expensive to have a native app depending on functionality as well. Besides the fact that it takes less money to build, mobile site has the advantage of reach, compatibility across platforms, browser. User could nd the mobile site pretty eas ily just by searching on Google. For responsive web design site, it inherits all the above advantage of the mobile site, plus it offers much better user experie nce across devices due to custom layouts. If you want to update your Responsive web design (RWD) site, you could do so via CMS quite easily. The changes would b e live on user's browser instantly without approval from third party like the case of Apple AppStore. Both normal mobile site and RWD site have some very big disadv antages like: Many of them can't function without internet connection ( From my li mited understanding, there are some Web Apps that offer of ine mode) Mobile friendly site or native mobile app? From budget point of view, the option with lowest budget would be to have a sepa rated mobile site i.e. separate mobile URLs. Responsive Web Design would be more expensive generally in comparison to the mobile site. And of course, building a mobile 73

They can't access user's personal data on the phone itself, the camera, calendar, ph oto stream, accelerometer etc... (This might change in the future) They generall y don't offer as rich user experience as native app since complicated animation, g ames, reporting, calculation etc...couldnt be implemented easily. Push capabili ties: If you want your mobile site (web app) to run on the background and send y ou noti cations, it is not possible at this point The ease of monetization: with G