Things have rapidly changed for brands and consumers in this savvy market, which presents an opportunity for content marketers.

It may be hard to believe when walking through District 1 of Ho Chi Minh City and gazing at the colourful and creative billboards, but it wasn’t that long ago that commercial advertising was banned altogether in Vietnam.

The Doi Moi reforms of 1986 opened the door to all kinds of changes in Vietnamese society and laid the foundations for the maturing commercial market we see today, where it’s getting harder by the day for brands to cut through the noise and win consumers’ attention.

In a country of voracious and manifold social media users, more and more leading brands are discovering they need to harness the power of content to stand out.

“Consumers demand higher quality content more than ever,” says Hao Tran, CEO of media company Vietcetera.

Is Vietnam a smartphone first market?

While Doi Moi set the stage for the market we see today, you don’t have to go all the way back to 1986 to see a vastly different environment for brands in Vietnam.

In just the last decade, the rapid rise in popularity and the mass adoption of the smartphone have completely changed how companies and consumers connect with each other.

In 2012, the country had an estimated 310,000 mobile internet users whereas the figure this year is 75 million, according to Statista. That makes for a staggering 24,093.5% increase in just 10 years.

The 2022 We Are Social report found that 95.8% of internet users in Vietnam browse the web with a phone, while the figure for laptops and desktops is 72.2%. These numbers go some way towards illustrating how strongly smartphone-first the Vietnamese market is.

It’s not just how Vietnamese consumers connect to the internet that makes a big difference for brands, though. What they do online also makes it a unique market.

Vietnam has what can only be described as a social media addiction. In a country of about 96 million people, it’s estimated that there are 76.95 million social media users. While it’s difficult to calculate the exact number of people on social media – some of the 76.95 million accounts may represent “non-human entities” – it’s clear that the vast majority of any brand’s prospective customers can be found on social media.

Read more: Vietnam’s most popular social media sites

How Vietnamese consumers use social media is also hugely important for brands; if a Vietnamese consumer wants to learn about a brand, they’ll probably do it on social media.

We Are Social found 62.6% of internet users in the country use social media to find information about brands, while 35.7% said they used social media to find products to buy. Unsurprisingly, user-generated content is crucial to how consumers in Vietnam discover brands, as We Are Social found 30.5% of internet users discover brands via social media comments.

These statistics lead to the obvious conclusion that for any brand to succeed in Vietnam, they have to first succeed on social media, regardless of governmental efforts to move companies away from using the likes of Facebook and YouTube.

The rising cost of paid media in Vietnam

The way brands approach their marketing in Vietnam has long been focused on paid media, partly due to the difficulties of building a true community, according to industry experts.

“I think Vietnam brands invest a lot less in earned/owned media and tend to just throw money into paid media (be it ads or KOL marketing) to get awareness as it takes more time and effort to have real organic media like user-generated content and community groups,” says Chi Anh Dao, CEO of Kitchen Art Vietnam, HER VIETNAM and Gather Vietnam.

But on-the-nose sales content by brands has started to turn off consumers, according to Ivy Nhi Chau, CEO of PR, marketing and branding company Ivy+Partners.

“One of the biggest changes is how consumers are becoming more sceptical towards branded content. With more people becoming more tech-savvy and with the emerging generation considering themselves as digital natives, they have been bombarded with many branded pushes of content to the extent that they would reject this content by default. It poses a great challenge for brands, and also reinforces the need for brands to change the way they talk to their customers. Instead of pushing sales content, brands need to find a way to create an engaging, two-way conversation with their audiences.”

Worse still for those still neglecting earned and owned media, the paid media overload has led to rising costs and diminishing returns.

“Performance costs have risen. Consumers are demanding higher quality content from brands and media publishers,” says Hao Tran.

“I have always focused on social media ads in the past 10 years and have seen the costs slowly go up on Facebook with less traction in return,” adds Chi Anh Dao.

Is content marketing popular in Vietnam?

The savvier brands in the Vietnam market have taken notice of these trends and have switched their focus to content marketing to get their message across.

“Views are increasingly becoming commoditised, whereas engagement and focus is being prioritised,” says Hao Tran, adding that brands are ‘shifting their budgets and focusing on content and loyalty, rather than commoditized views and reach’.

Read more: Vietnam marketing trends

While Hao Tran also warns that Vietnam’s owned media market is ‘becoming increasingly legacy’, which means there are obstacles to new entrants, it’s clear that business as usual with paid media isn’t in the playbook for forward-thinking brands.

But content certainly is.

“One of our first clients was a real estate company called Ecopark, and their marketing director shared our vision to create authentic audiences with storytelling,” says We Create Content’s cofounder Ian Paynton.

“We built them a content brand called “Song”, which means ‘to live’ in Vietnamese and grew their audience organically on Facebook by 42,600 people in 5 months by creating family wellbeing content that put the audience first.”

“You’ve got to build community,” adds Chi Anh Dao. “Vietnamese users love to share reviews, be they good or bad, so make sure you have people raving about your brand/products on social media or in Facebook groups and invest time and effort in engaging them and worshipping them, rather than just paying ads or buying sponsored posts,” says Chi Anh Dao when asked what it takes to build an online brand in Vietnam today.

She noted that community building is a big part of her strategy at Kitchen Art and to that end, the brand has built and nurtured several cooking community Facebook groups, which total more than 300,000 members.

Leaders and followers

There are winners and losers emerging in the race to discover the power of content in Vietnam.

With content marketing being a relatively nascent marketing discipline in Vietnam, it makes sense that lots of brands are learning by trial and error, but there are some ahead of the pack already.

“Too many,” says Hao Tran when asked to name some brands impressing him in Vietnam with their content. “Brands are savvier than ever… Of course I'm biased, but the ones collaborating with Vietcetera have stand out campaigns. In particular, our Coi Mo series that showcases sex education content. It's sponsored by Durex,” he adds.

Ivy Nhi Chau says Baemin, a South Korean food delivery unicorn startup, is another example of a brand getting it right with content in Vietnam.

Baemin has a target audience focusing on young people, especially Gen Z – the highest potential customers in the field of food delivery apps. This is also a very unpredictable, ever-changing customer group that requires brands to be always creative, innovative, and close to the customers. Therefore, using KOLs, promotions, and attractive identifiers is sometimes not enough.

“Baemin always keeps updated with new trends and publishes with the right timing… They are also great at using word play and slang, familiar phrases, and themes that Gen Z recognise in a cute and creative way,” she explains.

“Netflix approached We Create Content to build their social media newsroom in Vietnam,” says Ian Paynton. “They’ve been able to grow their audience very quickly on Facebook and TikTok by generating always-on social media editorial that starts authentic conversations.”

Read more: The role of editorial and social media conversation in the growth of Netflix in Vietnam

On the other side of the coin, the experts agree there are a few mistakes brands make when it comes to their content strategies.

Ivy Nhi Chau says brands that are too self-centred with their content are making a mistake.

“No one wants to hear from someone who keeps talking about themselves,” she says. “Brands need to be able to leverage their stories into something relevant to their audiences, showing audiences the value that they can bring to them and create two-way, engaging conversations,” she explains.

Another key to authenticity is who is delivering the message, and Chi Anh Dao says over reliance on influencers and KOLs instead of focusing on actual users and customers makes brands less relatable to Vietnamese followers.

“Most women-focused brands in Vietnam are like this and it creates KOL fatigue… users are bombarded with content by KOLs raving about one product after another,” she says.

“Users know those posts are sponsored and would rather see how other users like them use the products, or see the brand making an effort to create attractive content on their own,” she says.

Commercial opportunities in Vietnam

In some ways it feels we’re just as far away from 2012 as we are 1986 when it comes to the commercial market in Vietnam, as just so much has changed over such a short space of time.

As brands are only just beginning to discover the power of content, opportunities are there for those who can harness that power properly.

“Consumers are fickle, as they are anywhere, but here in Vietnam good brands can stand out quickly,” says Hao Tran. “I would suggest having a genuine mission and sticking to it.”

“As Vietnam is both mobile and social first, hiring very good content creators should not be too difficult as a global brand,” adds Ian Paynton.

“Hire a strategist, editorially-minded social media content creator and community manager, plus some design and video editing support and you can quickly grow an authentic audience of really engaged followers in Vietnam.”