7 mistakes to avoid when developing your Japan marketing strategy
For prospective businesses entering the Japanese market, or those looking to overcome challenges in driving growth, we’ve assembled a list of common watch-outs when developing your marketing strategy for Japan.
1. Using your global marketing strategy for Japan
When entering the Japanese market, it’s often easy to be tempted to leverage the same marketing playbook that has worked in other countries in Europe and APAC. While this can be a valuable starting point, your team needs to be both open-minded and willing to throw away the playbook and start from scratch if the data shows your local customers require a different approach. Oftentimes, qualitative and quantitative research in-market will uncover unique customer perspectives and requirements, that result in a need to develop an entirely new marketing strategy. Rather than limit growth, different customer needs and communication preferences can be an accelerator for your business, enabling you to reach your target segments at lower cost with higher relevancy.
2. Hiring a team that speaks good English but doesn’t have the right marketing experience in Japan
Navigating the Japanese market is tough, but it’s important to take the time to find the right team with relevant industry and marketing experience. Management hires with experience in English-speaking environments can be a valuable asset to your business in Japan, but it’s even more important to look for depth of industry knowledge and proven results in sales and marketing. In the short-term, local partners can be a bridge into the local market and offer valuable marketing experience to your team.
3. Jumping straight into a media plan without understanding your target customers in Japan
Established advertising agencies are a critical stakeholder in ensuring the success of your go-to-market execution in Japan; however, without the right customer strategy, your campaign is unlikely to be effective in delivering the result. Japanese customers have a unique set of needs, pain points, drivers and barriers to purchase. Moreover, each customer segment is likely to have its own nuances. It’s critical to dive deep into customer research to uncover the right target customer segments, value proposition and messaging that will resonate. Once you’ve got the right foundation, your media strategy can follow and should be far more effective.
4. Launching a campaign with your standard global creative assets
As with your customer strategy, it’s important to figure out the right creative approach that will resonate in the local market. For both B2C and B2B domains, there are a plethora of creative formats and channels to leverage, depending on your target customer segment. It’s important to tailor your creative assets to both the market and the communication touchpoint, in order to deliver the highest impact. Simply re-using assets from other markets can be a short-term solution, but is unlikely to differentiate your business.
5. Forgetting to develop a comprehensive PR strategy
Management teams and investors should go beyond a standard launch announcement, and develop a tactical PR strategy that can amplify your product benefit and business differentiation to customers, partners and ecosystem stakeholders. For businesses with a unique founding story or track record in driving business results overseas, these can be a great starting point to amplify your reach. Leveraging PR and local media can often be a more cost-effective way to drive initial interest in your product or service among your target customer set and can form part of broader content marketing initiatives.
6. Failing to adapt to local customer preferences and trends
Japanese customer preferences can vary substantially from overseas markets, but are not to be ignored. In adapting your product or service to meet local expectations, you can differentiate versus other overseas competitors and are likely to see higher customer adoption and retention. Moreover, tapping into local trends can accelerate growth by capitalising on existing customer interest and demand for new categories of product or service.
7. Translating your product value proposition and messaging rather than strategic localization
Global marketing teams often take a standardised approach to product positioning, messaging and communications for multiple geographies. This can work for European markets, but is of lesser benefit when approaching Japan. Translation fails to take into account the nuances of consumer and business messaging in the local market, and risks falling flat in the minds of customers. Strategic localization leverages customer research and competitive analysis to determine the right value proposition, customer benefit and messaging will resonate with your target customers and differentiate your offering. Oftentimes, a blend of global consistency and local adaptation can be the optimal approach, offering the benefit of scale and market-driven positioning. Conducting message testing in-market with a local partner offers a practical way to validate your approach.
If your business has a unique set of challenges in Japan that require a differentiated strategy, our team is happy to connect and share our perspective.
