What is MarTech?
Marketing Technology (MarTech), usually is a tool that marketers use to optimize and streamline their marketing processes to achieve their marketing objectives.
According to the CEO of AccessTrade Vietnam – Mr. Do Huu Hung, MarTech is not a new trend, but inherently the breath of contemporary Digital Marketing.
The technology is usually used to assist in planning, executing, and measuring marketing campaigns. Some examples of MarTech usage include Social Media Management, Email Marketing Designing, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), etc.
Overview of MarTech Market
Digital Advertising Market in Vietnam
With one of the highest numbers of internet users globally, the market value of Digital Advertising is growing rapidly too and is estimated to reach USD 476 million by 2025. Due to COVID-19, the Video Advertising Market has overtaken Google Search Engine Market and become the highest value growth rate in the digital advertising market in Vietnam in 2022. This is because online entertainment activities like watching the video and audio streaming have become the new common leisure activities for Vietnamese people.
Furthermore, more than 27,000 Facebook accounts are using the platform to promote their brands. According to a survey by Q&Me Vietnam, about 99% of the enterprises use Facebook as part of their digital marketing efforts and about 84% of them spend money on Social Media Advertisements.
Social Commerce Market in Vietnam
Facebook is the leading social media platform in Vietnam, with about 94% of internet users have used it at least once in 2022, with Zalo as the second most popular social network platform. Furthermore, there is an increasing number of users in Tiktok in the first quarter of 2022, with more than 70% of Vietnamese youths who are constantly active on the platform.
According to the Chief Digital Marketing Office at L’Oreal Vietnam – Mr. Pierre-Olivier Guy, Vietnam’s unique in its embrace of Facebook as a source of digital commerce.
In 2020, about 77% of the social media users have at least purchased an item from an influencer on social media, which also shows the increasing trends of Social Commerce, an act of buying or selling on social media platforms. About 72% of consumers in Social Commerce in Vietnam mentioned they prefer to shop on social media than E-commerce platforms as they are more convenient. Moreover, 82% of consumers find Facebook is the easiest-to-use social commerce platform in Vietnam.
With the growing usage of Social Commerce, the demands for MarTech that could streamline or optimize the process for businesses to reach consumers might be increasing too.
Global MarTech Market Size
According to Emergen Research, the Global MarTech Market Size was about USD 245.6 billion in 2022, and is estimated to have a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 44.4% from 2022 to 2030, and reach about USD 6,6612 billion in 2030
Rising MarTech Startups in Vietnam
1. Gosama
- Gosama is a blockchain-based customer loyalty system for e-commerce.
- It creates an E-commerce platform with tokens as a rebate and a sales management platform with an automatic mechanism based on Blockchain Technology.
2. Epsilo
- Epsilo is a provider of SaaS (Software as a Service) – based onsite marketing tools on E-commerce platforms for brands
- It is one of the leading E-commerce software for E-commerce to grow revenue with automation and data across online marketplaces like Shopee and Lazada.
3. Sales Bot (Bot Bán Hàng)
- Bot Bán Hàng is a platform providing a sales and marketing chatbot, which can assist marketing and sales teams to nurture their leads and engage with their customers easier.
Challenges of MarTech
1. Integration of MarTech
It is extremely difficult to develop a MarTech that fits all purposes. According to research by Airtable, more than 60% of marketers have to use more than 20 different MarTech tools when doing marketing. However, according to Mulesoft, only 28% of the MarTech tools can integrate with other tools. This means that instead of streamlining the process, it seems to make the marketing process to be more complicated, which might result in a disjointed customer experience and harder to measure the effect created by each MarTech tool.
2. Data Collection
According to the Senior Marketing Manager of Baby Care – Shweta Vig, Data Collection is one of the biggest challenges when adopting MarTech. This is the same as a survey with various marketers in Vietnam, conducted by Econsultancy in association with Resulticks, to find out more about their experiences when using MarTech, with about 41% of them indicating there is too much data to manage.
The quality of the data is extremely important in MarTech as it determines the accuracy and efficiency of the algorithm, hence, this seems to be an important challenge for many MarTech companies to take into consideration.
3. Dominant Players
There are quite a number of dominant MarTech companies in the global industry which set a high barrier of entry for other MarTech companies. Some examples of Major MarTech companies include HubSpot (CRM), Salesforce (Marketing Cloud, CRM), and Adobe (Marketing Attribution, Lead Generation Management).
These MarTech companies have the dominant powers within their specialized areas, which limits other MarTech startups to only being able to target a niche segment to grow. However, when these startups become successful within the niche segment, they will become the acquisition targets for the big players. For example, Adobe acquired Figma for USD 20 billion in September 2022, to accelerate top-line growth and roll out additional Adobe offerings.
Opportunities for MarTech
1. High Potential in E-Commerce
Vietnam is one of the fastest growing E-commerce markets in Southeast Asia, and is estimated to increase by 32% within 5 years and reach about USD 39 billion in 2025. With the rapid growth in E-commerce, more brands in Vietnam have gone digitally to reach more customers, which resulted in about a 23% increase in Digital Advertising spending in 2021, and is projected to reach USD 934 million in 2022.
According to the Founder and CEO of Involve Asia, a Malaysia-Based MarTech company – Jimmy How, Digital Advertising Spending in Vietnam Market is forecasted to grow by 51% from 2022 to 2026 and reach about USD 1.69 billion. He also mentioned that he observes Vietnam be one of the leading countries in ASEAN which is more open and sophisticated in partnership marketing.
2. Higher Usage of Social Media
Figure 1: AJ Marketing
Social Media is one of the most used Online Advertising Tools in Vietnam in 2021.
Vietnamese people usually spend around 6 hours 30 minutes online per day, with around 2 hours 22 minutes on Social Media, 2 hours 9 minutes watching videos, etc. With about 77 million active social media users and 72 million active internet users in Vietnam, it is expected that the demand for Digital Marketing for businesses to reach their target audiences will be increasing.
References
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