3 B2B Digital Strategies for Getting More Customers in Japan

We had mentioned in a previous article the importance of small business in Japan. While there is a major emphasis on these small companies selling niche products and providing unique service offerings, there is one thing we cannot forget, B2B marketing in Japan.

This beast of a mess has been haunting marketers for decades to the point where most people have all but given up. I mean really, how do you digitally engage an audience that has trouble logging into Facebook?

Good question, allow us to provide some ideas.

Write really fricking good content

Yes, it’s true, the lack of sarcasm in Japan doesn’t equate to a lack of smarts. Japanese executives love to read blog content. As a matter of fact read rates for most of our blogs is around 40% by English readers and 90% by Japanese readers.

So, why aren’t you writing more blog content?

Find out what your readers are looking for, the problems that they need solved and then find a way to write a blog series in Kanji that directly speaks to these individuals and how you aim to solve their problems with your service, that’s why you’re in business right?

Juice up every blog posts with optimized keywords

All right, confession- I hate writing about SEO. It feels old, plain, and like a dull strategy to me. That was until our keyword-optimized posts started driving us new opportunities and people to help.

Truth is that Japanese executives are on line via Google or any one of their many partners searching online (in Kanji) how to market online and other B2B resources that can help or accompany it.

To make this work for you, go back to who your core personas are and develop a keyword search map. This means both short tail and long tail keywords that you think they would be searching for the most. Then, go into Google Trends to identify which keywords are the most relevant. And finally, visit Keyword Planner, and search for “Keyword Intent” to identify how people are searching for these keywords and develop an SEO strategy around this. If you want to know how to develop a full SEO strategy, follow Neil Patel, his content is on fire.

Bring everyone home using a digital funnel

Once you’ve got some great content and it’s optimized to the brim, get it out there, strategically. This means you’re going to have to develop a funnel approach. A funnel in most cases refers to something along the lines of awareness, interest, desire, action. You can call your funnel whatever you want, the idea is that awareness gets a customers attention; interest shows them you can solve their problems; desire shows you can provide results; action gives them a chance to opt-in and let you actually help them.

This entire process is important within all B2B digital marketing, because in my experience few people will just opt-in from day one, especially in Japan.

If you can build a good enough funnel you can tell a good enough story around how you aim to help the people you’re in business to serve and why they should give you an opportunity to do so.

If you’re a business in Japan looking to apply any of the features mentioned above, contact us at hello@definition.media and we’ll help you get started.