3 Reasons The Customer is the Core of Every Digital Strategy

We work with a lot of brands here in Tokyo and when it comes to marketing in Japan a lot of people ask us, “What’s the first step toward getting started?

Allow us to provide some insight. Any advertising agency in Japan will tell you that the basics has everything to do with your goals and objectives, but the most important part of every digital strategy is actually your customer.

The US knows this, so much that we’ve developed a religion around understanding our customers better. We use names like Millennials and Baby Boomers to define us, our identity, and the impact we have on the world. In Japan, or any other country for that matter, it shouldn’t be any different. Here’s a few reasons why.

Your customer is the only reason you’re in business

You don’t need to be the CEO or the founder of a company to be in business for a purpose. Regardless of the position you hold in the company, it exists to serve a customer need better or more niche than most people can. That need might be professional, personal, emotional, medical, but it’s there because you can do it better than most people.

For example, as a social media agency in Japan, our entire purpose is to help Japanese companies successfully transition into digital powerhouses, so that they can increase their customer base while having a larger economic impact. Because of this we know who our customers are to the T’. We try and specialize in understanding what all of their problems are and how we can solve them based on what we know we do best.

What about you? What problem are you solving for the world and what makes your solution better than the next guy?

Digital platforms make knowing your customer a priority

Even if you don’t believe us and are going ahead in your efforts with a strategy that says your product targets male and female age 18–64 living all over Japan, you will be sure to fail if you take that approach online.

The reason being is that marketing with digital media is kind of like gambling. It’s built actually in your favor so that you can narrow your customer down, put some money on “Women age 18–24, living in Osaka and who like Sailor Moon” and then see more conversions because they like what you’re selling. Sure, the house always wins, but only as long as you keep betting on target demos. And in this case, the only way you’ll keep using digital is if you see a return on customers interaction, so Facebook, YouTube, Google, and even Twitter are all built now for this purpose and it ultimately benefits you.

So, regardless of your objectives, digital requires deeper customer insights and information to properly be executed right. Since this is the case, you might as well do it at the beginning of your strategy so you don’t have to worry about the negative effects later of skipping this early on.

Japanese Customers are Being Forgotten About

Finally, we believe that in a small sense the Japanese customer is being forgotten about and there’s a chance to bring them along what makes Japan unique back front and center.

Sure, we’ve all seen the studies, declining population in Japan is a real deal. We’re not going to get into that during this article, but we are going to talk about how we can put the Japanese customer back into the spotlight, giving them the due respect that they deserve.

Again, regardless of what you believe about consumer segmentation, you cannot change the truth behind how all digital platforms now cater to this. They cater to this because of the growing trends out of the west, but these trends have found a home in Japan as well.

Japanese consumer behavior is evolving faster today than it ever has before in Japan’s history. Digital adoption is impacting product development, social media percentage growth has changed the domestic marketing landscape, and within all of this companies are looking to find a way to keep up.

The answer isn’t just getting online and creating a Facebook profile, but rather starting with the basics behind the individuals who inspired you to get into this business in the first place and then outlining a better plan for serving them.

If you can do that, you want have to worry about developing campaigns to find your customer, because when you make the customer the first priority in your digital strategy, the right tactics make it that much easier for them to find you.