Local firms have yet to fully tap web ad
By Hoang Phi - The Saigon Times Daily
HCMC – Many local firms have yet to take advantage of free web advertising to cut down on advertising costs at a time of economic hardship, heard a seminar in HCMC last week.
Speaking at the gathering held by the 2030 Businessmen Club under the Saigon Times Club and Rich Media Corporation (RMC), CEO Johnny Thong of RMC said fan pages, social networks, mobile phones and email were increasingly effective channels for online advertising.
Fan pages gather supporters in a certain industry or for a particular brand, so they can be utilized for marketing.
Italian restaurant Capricciosa via their own fan page on Facebook has attracted more than 10,000 members over the past three months. Wedding restaurant Riverside Palace has created a fan page on Facebook targeting office workers, with 80% of the restaurant’s orders booked via this social networking site.
Similarly, the soft drink called Vfresh-nice gecko of Vinamilk has lured half a million viewers on Youtube in just a short time.
Statistics indicate that social network communities in Vietnam are huge, with 4.2 million people subscribing to Facebook and 8.2 million to Zing along with larger user numbers on other social networking sites.
According to advertising experts in the seminar, the nation has 150 million mobile phone subscribers even though the population is less than 90 million people, so this is an excellent means for advertising by texting.
A number of enterprises such as iSchool and Ecopark have heavily invested in this kind of advertising and got positive results.
However, a recent survey conducted by Nielsen unveils that 81% of consumers said they don’t believe text message advertising.
Fan pages and text messages could be combined with emails for more effective advertising. Based on the ratio of email readers counted by management tools, staff members will call the readers to sell products.
Meanwhile, the Tax Office of Phu Nhuan District is applying the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, using sugarCRM software free of charge. Thanks to the system, debt notices and recovery and documents or invitations can be sent via email and SMS to businesses in the area under the management of the office.
These technological solutions will support enterprises in marketing their products in an effective way without extra cost, Thong noted.
On top of that, the solutions allow companies to communicate with their clients via interactions and responses.