B2B Marketing Trend in Japan

Jun 18, 2022 | B2B Marketing

In line with European and other global trends, the implementation of basic online marketing is a prerequisite, and more and more companies are doing measures such as free material downloads, webinars and follow-up emails.

Of course, depending on a company’s financial capacity and reserves, there are many cases where sales can still be maintained with traditional sales styles and without online marketing, or where the decision-makers are traditionalists and have not embarked on new marketing methods.

However, the overall fact is that companies that take the above-mentioned online marketing measures for granted are growing. In addition, there is a bias in the industry, with recruiting, SaaS, credit cards or real estate-related sectors being flooded with information on the internet such as blogs, and resulting in a state of information overload.

On the other hand, it is undeniable that for example manufacturers of components or those in niche industries where technological strength is a key factor are a little behind.

In this article, you will learn the latest trends in B2B online marketing in Japan different from free material download, Email-marketing, webinars and so on.

How to differentiate from conventional measures?

Where competitors already have basic online marketing initiatives in place, it is crucial to know what additional value can be created for your company. This is where diagnostic tools have recently been focused on as a differentiator.

  • “Diagnostic tools that show the benefits of using your service in 10 seconds”
  • “Quotation in 10-second”
  • A document provision system that can be used for approval (Ringi in JPN)

The latest trend in Japan is to include these appealing points on landing pages to lower the cost per lead acquisition. Especially the third idea is matching to Japanese corporate culture as you may know the decision-making process is very long here which comes from the approval structure. The subordinate usually has to prepare well-researched and summarized documentation to his boss even though it is not efficient.

So if this task can be reduced through your websites’ tool, they will willingly share their email address and phone number.

B2B marketing

What customer information should be obtained from leads?

In your country, what customer information do you want to get from leads? Name and company information, but above all, do you give priority to email addresses?

Email marketing has become a global trend, as many surveys show. However, focusing on the Japanese market, we need to be a little more careful. Japan has its own messaging application called LINE, with data showing that 82% of smartphone owners use it.

LINE

The advantage for the customer of using LINE is that they can easily contact the company from their smartphone, such as while on the move. And while emails require typical Japanese greeting-like sentences, which take time to compose, LINE allows a certain degree of casual writing, making it easier to contact for the leads.

LINE marketing

There are also advantages on the company side: with email, the disadvantage is that the people involved cannot track emails unless they are put in cc, but with a LINE business account, everyone who has been invited can share the same administration screen, which saves time and effort in sharing information.

Examples of measures to increase CVR

The first basic premise is that advertising optimization should increase CVRs by targeting the right people. To think what can be done additionally from here makes a difference. Here are some ideas that have been particularly effective.

  • “Diagnose which materials are right for you”
  • “Just answer five questions to find out what your company’s issues are”

The point of this question is that if you introduce light diagnostic content into your landing page that says you can easily get some idea of your company’s ‘issues’ and ‘solutions’, the CVR for lead generation will increase.

How effective are listing ads in B2B marketing?

Listing advertisements are inherently strong in appealing to the apparent leads.

This is because these leads already have a clear understanding of what information they want, because they have already entered keywords in search engine.

In other words, it can be hypothesized that these people already have a clear idea of the issue and are coming only for a solution.

If this is the case, it is not best to direct people who have entered the landing page from a listing advertisement to a diagnostic tool to find the issues. This is because they do not want to know the issues, they want to know the solutions.

This means that, in principle, the landing page for listing ads should be a document that directly leads to an answer or solution, or a contact button that is easy to understand.

Conversion button

However, in order not to lose the lighter leads who still find it troublesome to request information, a conversion button to the diagnostic tool can be placed in just the right place to increase the overall CVR.

Case study


Cost reduction simulator (in case of SaaS)

Q1: What is the monthly salary of your HR manager?
Q2: Approximately how many employees do you have?
Q3: Approximately how many people join the company each year?
Q4: Approximately how many people leave your company annually?


It is important to note that, in principle, the two objectives of SaaS implementation are to increase sales or reduce costs. The first sentence clearly indicates the word ‘cost reduction’.

And to be honest, an exact simulation is not necessary at this stage, it is more important to reduce the number of questions and give a simulation, even if it is only roughly. In this case, it was narrowed it down to four questions.

In fact, as long as you can get leads, it doesn’t matter if you ask one question or not. However, from the user’s point of view, one question is obviously fishy and shady, so the number of questions should be neither too many nor too few.

In terms of CPA, one lead costed around 5,000 yen (36 eur). If 1 in 10 leads can be contracted, the cost per acquisition is calculated to be 50,000 yen (360 eur).

Remember that this simulation example is only for the potential customers segment. For the apparent leads, we should lead them directly to the enquiry.

What if it is difficult to differentiate between the potential and apparent customers

Depending on the keywords, industry and product, it may not be easy to separate the potential and apparent customers segments. In such cases, the highest priority is naturally given to the apparent segment, so the LP is designed so as not to lose them.

However, if this is the case, the potential customers that actually needs to be nurtured, will all leave the LP, so in order to prevent this, a link should be placed beside the contact button, saying ‘Click here if you would like a quick 10-second quotation’.

It is normal for an LP to have a single conversion button to avoid splitting attention. However, this means that you have to give up either the potential or apparent customers. Therefore, it is actually best to create two conversion buttons on a single LP, so that you don’t miss either of the two groups.