I just got back from Ad Days Digital Marketing Conference in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam and it was a legit conference even with the language barrier.
I also was a featured speaker at the event. Discussing how to speed up conversions with simple on page tricks. The best part is I got to meet up with a lot of my friends I just recently made in Turkey at the Ad Combo Ferrari Giveaway Event.
First lets discuss Vietnam, I love this country. I have traveled here multiple times and every time I come back it seems that the online world of tech is always evolving here. Just 2 years ago, there was no such thing as tech or co work space in Vietnam.
Last year there are several booming co working places. This year affiliate networks are popping up all over Vietnam.
So it made sense that Tim from Ad Day reached out to me and several speakers to discuss the evolution and strategies of online marketing. Most of the speakers were Vietnamese businesses, so that means the majority of the event was in Vietnamese.
So Ian, how did you communicate to the audience, do you know Vietnamese? Ofcourse, I had the help of the mighty headphone...
These headphones had human translators. As the speaker was speaking, they would translate the content into english or vietnamese. When I spoke, the headphones translated my horrible english skills to vietnamese for the audience.
I discussed something very simple and that is landing page optimization. I essentially talked about how to optimize image, increase page speeds, how to utilize a CDN, etc. Information on how to speed up your landing pages so you are not letting the end user wait, which can mean lost profits.
You can download my presentation here...
As I listened to some of the speakers, the headphones also translated it to english for me so I to can learn something from the conference in Vietnam. It was def something new and something I think will help distribute proper marketing to around the world. I know when I spoke to Tim and its partners they have plans on expanding to Latin America and other parts of South East Asia.
Now a lot of the content was very basic, very intro level. I am not sure if it is due to the 'earliness' of online marketing in Vietnam or if it was just the speakers pushing their services. But I did learn some new things at the event....
For example new Traffic Sources!!!
There are traffic sources in Vietnam that are pretty interesting and very similar to a lot of them in the states. They all range from Google data search to native display on Vietnamese sites. This is what caught most of my attention at the event and something I am always curious about when it comes to online marketing.
Traffic sources are the key to what make ads drive. I won't share them right now as I want to test them and see. I can tell you there are some pretty cool sources that are specific to Vietnam only. You can probably Google them if you want to be that curious.
Also one very important part I found out about was the laws and licenses you need to run a website in Vietnam. Though it is still a communist party, the internet business is being controlled by a central office. Every website especially ones that take transactions needs to be registered and it is a process.
Ofcourse the party after the event was legit. The first day event was a dinner with the speakers. Thanks to Tom Claflin and Ad Days for setting it all up.
I was able to meet with all the speakers and discuss their slides and introduce myself. A lot of legit people in the industry in Vietnam and I never really met affiliates or marketing people from Vietnam so this was a HUGE plus for my network.
Vietnam you are an amazing country and I am glad that I was able to speak at the Ad Days event. Thanks Tim for the opportunity and thanks to all the new friends that I have met and continued to party with while growing in this diverse industry.
Successful #addays event. #lastdrink with the #speakers
Posted by Ian Fernando on Sunday, August 20, 2017
