6 Marketing Strategies for Mobile Game in Vietnam 2023

The rapid development of the Vietnamese mobile game market, both in quantity and quality, provides a fertile ground for international game companies. However, to enter the gaming industry and achieve success in terms of revenue and brand credibility in the Vietnamese market, having a smart Vietnamese mobile game localization strategy is of paramount importance.

In the scope of this post, let’s discuss the 6 best marketing practices for mobile game localization projects in the Vietnam market.

Overview of the Vietnam Mobile Game Market in 2020-2021

In the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, unlike many industries in Vietnam which are negatively affected, it is reported that the gaming and app industries have enjoyed tremendous growth in terms of quality and revenue. The pandemic makes people spend a lot of time using the Internet and playing mobile games. Gaming gradually becomes one of the most popular forms of entertainment during this time due to its low cost and high availability.

What’s more, free mobile games still account for a high proportion, which makes mobile games easy to reach and attracts a lot of new players during the period of social distancing. Specifically, in the first quarter of 2020, application downloads increased by 40% over the same period, and the number of players also increased by about 30%, according to the Appota report.

According to Statista, with the highest popularity of mobile games in the world, surpassing even populous countries such as China or the United States, there were approximately 4.5 million eSports Vietnamese fans in 2018, with this number expected to rise to 9.1 million by 2021.

What’s more, the eSports revenue of Vietnam is expected to grow 11.6% over four years from 2019 to 2023, reaching $147 million over the next three years. In 2021, it is estimated that revenue in the Vietnam mobile games segment reaches US $223M. Appota also reported that 52% of Vietnamese people follow eSports and games they’ve never played.  The figure has indicated that the number of audiences in Vietnam watching the game live stream is much larger than that of actual players.

6 Marketing Strategies for Mobile Game Localization in Vietnam 2023

Not only the gaming industry, but most other fields also divide the marketing plan into several stages to have the right strategy with the aim of attracting the maximum number of users. In particular, the period before the game release date is quite important for game companies, so they often put a lot of effort into implementing this stage to gain the highest efficiency. Thus, let us help you figure out practical methods that your company can apply for game online marketing in Vietnam.

#1. Creating a Landing Page or Teaser Page

To make your game successful from the very first days of game release in Vietnam, the first task you should do is introduce your game to players, impress them, and persuade them to download the game to experience it. At the same time, you need to take note of the player’s reviews and the game features they desire. Therefore, using a Landing page or Teaser page is a way businesses can benefit from and is the first choice of modern businesses in promoting their products.

Landing Page of Tam Quoc Vo Song

Vietnamese gamers in particular often impress the game website with vivid and eye-catching graphics. Therefore, an indispensable component of a Landing page for the Vietnam game market is a large-sized banner that illustrates the game graphics. Together with that, a short storyline will be the perfect opening to get Vietnamese audiences into your introduction. By doing this way, players will have the best overview of your game. They can visualize what they will do when playing it and if that’s what they expect, they won’t hesitate to experience your game.

The page should also present outstanding features of characters in the game in the form of images or videos, reveal interesting upcoming events, and count down the release date. To boost page engagement, you can add a feature that helps users get the latest notifications via Facebook, or email so that they can easily follow the next update of the game.

Landing Page with Teaser Video of Vang Danh Thien Ha

Plus, it would be better for your company to equip your Landing page game with social media buttons so that gamers can share your game news or events with their online community. You can also design the page with “call-to-action” buttons such as “download now”, and “free trial” to maximize user experience before officially releasing the game.

Landing Page with CountDown Section of Huyet Chien

#2. Taking Advantage of Social Media Channels

Marketing through social media channels is considered the fastest way to spread information, especially for game mobile promotion campaigns, the reason why you should take advantage of this marketing channel is that 71.54 million Vietnamese users now access the Internet by their smartphone in 2021, according to Statista. This opportunity facilitates game publishers to promote their products.

Vietnamese people, especially gamers are quite active on social networks, they spend over 4 hours per day on average surfing Facebook, Youtube, or other online social platforms to update information and share the news. Thus, you should create accounts on the main social media channels in Vietnam such as Facebook, Youtube, and Instagram to update information about the game, organize follow-up events (eg: prediction of the release date of the game), and advertise game features along with game-related hashtags.

Interacting regularly with followers by posting game details and responding to users’ comments as much as possible are the two common approaches that assist you to maintain Facebook or Instagram engagement between your target players.

Facebook Posts of Garena Lien Quan Mobile

Importantly, you had better pay close attention to Youtube channels because gamers often want to see the actual gaming experience, so they’re quite interested in such short introductory videos on Youtube. Moreover, according to Word Stream statistics, viewers consume up to 95% of a message if it is in the form of a video display compared to 10% of a message in the text display. The above figure proves that Youtube is a particularly potential channel for game advertisers, and is suitable for many different goals apart from increasing brand awareness.

#3. Joining Game Forum

You can search for forums specializing in applications and games in Vietnam to promote your products. Your post should be written from the viewpoint of players so that it can build trust and increase user experience for your products. Remember that content of posts for the forum plays an important role in attracting readers, including gamers so it should meet the following requirements:

• • Short but concise and straight to the point
  • Easy to understand
  • Unique

In addition, you should include call-to-action messages in your post such as “Download now”, and “Subscribe for more” to stimulate gamers to explore your game and then experience it.

Gamevn Forum

During the process of posting on game forums, you should regularly track the article or post to see the reaction of the reader or even the defamation tactic of your company’s opponent. Unhealthy competition is a normal problem when joining a forum to promote your game.

In the face of these situations, you need to be mindful to resolve them instead of arguing with others. In case your opponents have negative reactions to your post, you can delete negative comments or report them to the forum admin. Post tracking on a forum also tells you when to re-evoke the topic of your article, keeping it in a “hot” status to achieve the best outcome.

#4. Localizing Game Content

English is not quite popular in Vietnam and the number of people who have a good command of English or just understand common English sentences is quite small. As a result, game localization is an effective method for foreign game publishers to approach this booming game market. Before officially localizing game content into Vietnamese, the stage of carefully researching the language and culture of Vietnam is an inevitable task for international game companies to become successful in this promising market.

It is worth mentioning that in general, the Vietnamese gamers community appreciates games that consist of elements of Vietnamese history because playing such games is an opportunity for them to explore the country’s history in a whole new and interesting way. Historical elements can be shown in the game background and outfits of characters.

Game publishers can design their historical characters with Vietnamese national costumes such as non la and ao dai. This marketing strategy will attract more and more Vietnamese gamers and give them a friendly look at the company’s game.

Character Outfits Inspired by Ao Dai of Vo Lam Truyen Ky

#5. Building a Network with News Website

Currently, Vietnam has a lot of websites specializing in updating game news. The cost of posting an advertisement on these pages is much cheaper but aimed at the right target audience than the other traditional marketing methods.

#6. Using KOL to Promote Games

Using KOL (key opinion leader) to advertise your product brings high efficiency and has a great and direct influence on target audiences.

Here are things we suggest that you consider when using KOL for your game promotion:

• • Based on the game character’s personality to choose the right KOL
  • Make a transparent contract with the KOL
  • Understand and create a friendly working environment to maintain a good long-term relationship during the process of collaborating with KOL
  • Do not overly impose them on the promoting rules because each person has different ways to approach the public, so let them create their own way
  • Always have a backup plan to deal with any unexpected situation

Tran Thanh –  A Vietnamese Celebrity Chosen for KOL of Vo Lam Truyen Ky

Wrap Up

We believe that the 6 following marketing strategies will be useful methods for game companies to invest in the Vietnam game market. It can be said that the rapid development of the country’s game market both in quantity and quality will be fertile land to expand the gaming industry for your company to yield success in terms of revenue and brand credibility.

If you are looking for an experienced Vietnamese mobile game localization partner in Vietnam, look no further than GTE Localize. With years of experience in the Vietnamese market, we know how to make your games successfully localize into Vietnamese.

Book a 1:1 consultancy with our Vietnamese game localization experts today and get your mobile game localization projects started.