Japan is an interesting market for many companies not only because of Japan’s great buying power, but also because of the high expectations of the Japanese and the hunger for all things new. Breaking into the Japanese market or enlarging your share means that you will need a strong marketing strategy. As of 2021, 97% of Fortune 500 companies use social media and half the world is a user of social media. You simply can’t have a complete marketing mix without a great social media marketing strategy anymore if you don’t want to fall hopelessly behind your competitors. For smaller companies who concentrate on niches, social media is a goldmine for potential new customers with ways to reach very specific audiences if you do it right. Let us tell you more about social media marketing in Japan in 2021 to make you understand its great potential!

What is Social Media Marketing

The simple definition of social media marketing is the use of social media to market a company’s or brand’s product or service. But what are the possibilities of this form of marketing? What are the advantages over traditional marketing such as TV ads or printed magazine ads? Social media marketing is much more dynamic than traditional advertising, and it has more options for actual interaction with your customers.

Social media marketing can help you reach goals such as brand awareness, driving website traffic, increasing website sales, and creating a community surrounding your brand. Social media can also be central to your customer support or be an additional way for customers to reach you for help if they have questions about or issues with your product. Almost every consumer is online these days, and the audience you can reach on social media is potentially wider and more diverse than with traditional media. Plus, a well-managed social media campaign can be much more cost effective than other avenues of advertising.

Social Media Interactions

In the early days of social media marketing it was enough as a business to have social media presence in the form of a business page on the largest social media networks such as Facebook and Instagram. Just having a business page on socials used to put you ahead of the game, as it used to be much more rare to have one. But over the years, businesses have realized the great potential that social media has for not just finding your target audience and letting them know that you exist, but for interacting with them in a positive way and binding them as loyal customers. There are several way to conduct this interaction:

• Social media listening: scouring social media channels to see what is being said about your brand or company provides you with valuable information that you can then constructively respond to through your social media channels. If there are any issues you can address them directly with your customers, improving customer satisfaction. You can also dive deeper into what makes your followers tick and respond to anything that’s trending amongst your followers at any given time.
• Direct responses to customer inquiries: if you are only reachable by email and by phone answers may take a while to reach the customer, especially if the inquiry emerges outside of business hours. Also, not everyone likes to make phone calls. Having the option to contact you by direct messaging on social media gives an additional opportunity to the customer to solve any inquiries they may have with a very low threshold. As younger generations aren’t as patient as the ones before them, a fast response time can make all the difference.
• Social media analytics: there are many instruments that allow you to analyze social media data in-depth, providing you with valuable insights on what performs well with your audience and what doesn’t. Google Analytics is the most-used tool for this, but getting most out of the wealth of data it provides you with is quite a specialized job that a digital marketing agency can take off your hands. If read right, the data can steer your next posts and ads in the right direction.
• Publishing content: publishing posts about subjects that relate to your product or service that you know your followers love to read about is an excellent way to not only get those clicks that will push your content higher on the timelines, it can also create great conversations with and between your customers. This, in turn, stimulates the forming of a community around your brand.

Social Media Promotion

Besides having a good strategy for your social media interactions and publications, running advertisements on social media is an indispensable part of your social media strategy. The snowball effect of getting clicks to your page(s) first and getting consequent engagement will contribute heavily to getting your page on the timelines of your desired audience. 

By far the greatest benefit of running a promotional campaign on social media is the option to greatly customize who will see your ads. You can choose from different ad formats such as messenger ads, story ads, interactive ads, and video ads. Furthermore, you can choose whose timelines your ads will appear on and set parameters based on things like age, gender, location, and even general interests. This makes ads on social media even more targeted than less flexible TV ads or printed media ads.

Japan Specific Social Media Business

While there are many similarities between social media marketing strategies in Japan and anywhere else, there are also some Japan-specific conditions that you need to deal with when you’re going to market toward an audience in Japan. Besides the most obvious hurdle, the language, there are other things to keep in mind when you set up your strategy for Japan. Firstly, localizing your content to fit Japanese cultural norms and understanding is very important. If you are not bilingual and bicultural yourself, it will pay off to hire a digital media agency who specializes in the Japanese market. Important parts of your social media strategy like social media listening or keeping an eye on your competition are sometimes only possible if you have a native-level understanding of Japanese.

Moreover, it is good to realize that different social media platforms have different popularity here and are used in different ways. It is much easier to set up an effective strategy when you know how social media channels are used in Japan. Other questions you may want to have answered for your brand specifically are which influencers are popular in Japan, and which ones could be a good fit for your brand.

Your Digital Media Partner in Japan

Hashi Media is Japan’s go-to content marketing and social media company. If you are planning on entering the Japanese market and don’t know where to start, we’ve got you covered.

• Content creation
• Social media management
• Digital marketing strategy
• Brand localization

If you enjoyed what you read today and found it valuable, contact us today and let’s talk about your project.