How to Succeed with B2B Marketing in Japan

Here are 5 must-know considerations for B2B marketing in Japan so that you may reach your target audience and, in turn, drive conversions for your business.

Tip #1: Localizing Your Website Requires More Than Just Translation

Many business owners make the mistake of thinking they can conduct business in Japan so long as they have a Japanese mini-site. However, such sites—usually comprising direct translations of content from a brand’s global website to Japanese—tend to lack the subtle but critical nuances in the language and culture to resonate with native Japanese users.

For one, Japanese users strongly value content readability and accuracy and use these to determine a brand’s credibility. So, if any content on your mini-site features broken Japanese, they will likely overlook it and not waste time trying to decipher your messaging.

The localization of your website in Japan is also much more than just translation. Instead, it requires careful consideration of local context and culture to break through to your Japanese target audience and match their needs. This includes tailoring your mini-site to appeal to the Japanese language, payment methods, currencies, unique culture, and more.

SEO is equally important—optimizing your content and headlines according to the most relevant and commonly searched terms in your niche will not only increase your site’s organic traffic but also help it rank higher for related searches. To stand out, also research what content your competitors across Japan are putting out and the search terms they are targeting so that you can one-up them.

Localizing and optimizing your content to serve Japanese audiences will take time.  But if you don’t take this crucial step before kickstarting an advertising campaign, you’ll be spending ad dollars attracting visitors to your site that likely will not convert.

Tip #2: Optimize Your Landing Pages for Lead Generation

Creating landing pages specifically for acquiring leads is a common practice among Japanese B2Bs, particularly when managing search ads. The key here, however, is to design them with a sense of familiarity for local users and serve content that will appeal to their specific business needs.

For instance, when evaluating a product or service, Japanese users tend to prefer reading text over more visual or interactive forms of content preferred among users from English-speaking countries, such as images, videos, or infographics.

This comes from Japanese users’ tendency to avoid risk by gathering as much detailed information as possible before deciding whether to purchase and is reflected in the web design of many Japanese B2B review sites. As such, the lesser known your brand is in the Japanese market, the more critical it is to make your written content as comprehensive as possible.

Japanese websites tend to comprise more text-heavy information

Japanese landing pages tend to be longer

Tip #3: Tailor Your Customer Success Stories for Japanese Audiences

The Japanese commitment to customer service is world-renown—and this could not be truer for B2B marketing in Japan, where success stories play a key role in a customer’s evaluation process. These usually come in the form of case studies and testimonials tailored to a target customer’s specific needs and requirements and outline business solutions for problems or challenges they may encounter.

A good example of a customer success story in Japanese

As mentioned, Japanese users are generally more risk averse, so maintaining a dedicated webpage to showcase your client success stories will help potential customers visiting your site for the first time grasp your brand’s credibility and trustworthiness. So, if you are translating your client success stories from another language into Japanese, remember to localize further by providing Japan-specific examples and use cases.

Manga is also a popular online format in the business world in Japan, considering how prevalent anime and comic culture is in the country to the point of it having its own advertising genre. Google Japan’s support pages even showcase cartoons to explain how its algorithm works.

As such, Japanese users may grow more accustomed to your product or service if you deploy manga—on top of more orthodox visual formats—to illustrate your B2B information or customer success stories.

Manga and anime are popular online formats in Japan, even in a business context