semjapanese_meg – Page 2

What’s your KPI?

07/01/201407/01/2014 semjapanese_meg

Here is the basic question when I have an inquiry from a potential client. Do you have any specific KPI? If not, you should stop running SEM. Nothing will happen if you don’t have any KPI. – CPA – Numbers of Conversions – ROI/Efficiency – Sales/Revenue/Profit SEM works when you have your KPI. To reach out the goal, we’re running SEM. Once we reach out the goal, we would aim for a next higher goal. It may be difficult for companies who have never run SEM campaigns. Please let me know, if you don’t know your goals. I can set up a realistic goal based on what you would like

SEM

Not only PPC and SEO

06/01/2014 semjapanese_meg

I met some companies/clients who wanted me to do only ‘SEO’ or ‘PPC’. I’ve thought that most of companies have already understood that you would need comprehensive marketing, but there are some people SEO is the best/only way to get market share on the internet. It does not apply to all products and companies, to be honest. For my past 9+ years SEM career, I worked as a ‘SEM consultant or manager’ who were responsible only for SEM. On the other hand, I always tried to communicate with other marketing divisions although it was not my KPI. Why? We cannot increase our sales, retain your customer and expand your company

SEM

Demographics of Yahoo Japan

28/11/2013 semjapanese_meg google japan, japanese interent market, PPC, sem, yahoo japan, yahoo japan demographics, yahoo japan target

I’m asked how important Yahoo Japan is in Japan. If you were a bit familiar with Japanese internet market, you would know Yahoo Japan is the largest search engine in Japan. Yes, it is true but not 100% true. Yahoo has been dominant since they launch their website in Japan. Simply because Google did not exist at that time. As Japanese like complicated and fancy websites, Yahoo Japan was only website most of people used. As time goes by, a big competitor ‘Google Japan’ has landed in Japan. The market share of Japanese internet is 45% Yahoo Japan and 45% Google Japan and 10% rest of them. First thing you

SEM

A word ‘Search Engine Marketing’

21/11/2013 semjapanese_meg pay per click, PPC, SEA, Search engine marketing, search engine optimization, sem, SEO

When I started working as a SEM associate in 2003, No one knew what was SEM. We translated the word into Japanese, but it still did not make sense for most of people. The word itself were very new which made us difficult to guess the meaning. Then we called its Pay Per Click as PPC, but the word became unpopular and few people called the word. Also another new name is SEA which means Search Engine Advertising. That sounds good, but it seems the word is only in Europe? Then let me rephrase the word ‘Search Engine Marketing’. Since it’s easy to call SEM, many people say SEM means

SEM

Importance of Proper noun

14/11/2013 semjapanese_meg brand, brand name, e-commerce, japanese market, proper noun, revenue

Some destination names have ‘Brand’. A good example is ‘Paris’. When Japanese hear ‘Paris’ or ‘France’, we usually have very positive, fashionaable, popular, luxury and cool images. It doesn’t matter if it were true. (I don’t say it’s not true as I love Paris, too!) Another good example is a beef name. Each beaf has a brand. As you may know, Kobe beef has a big and high reputation not only in Japan but also outside of Japan. Where do you come from? That’s very important of your products what types of images Japanese will have when you launch your products. Based on my experiences, brand name had a big

SEM

Relationship weather and adwords

12/11/2013 semjapanese_meg adwords, contents match, weather

A weather forecast was not so big matter when I was in Japan. Japan has four seasons clearly; Spring, summer, autumn and winter. I love the moment when the seach changes. One good thing in Japan, we can see always sunshine except for rainy season in May and June. Event those months, we can see the sun. One of my changes since I moved to Europe is I care about sunshine. When sun comes up, I go out, try to enjoy the sun and feel the warm. Maybe it’s simply becaues of Berlin 🙁 A weather has a big impact on our schedule. When it rains, people stay at home.

SEM

Is Japanese market too difficult to enter?

11/11/2013 semjapanese_meg chinese market, japanese market, market research japan

If you’ve seen the article, you might be afraid of coming to Japanese market. Tech Asia: Why Y Combinator startup Strikingly skipped China, Japan and headed for Southeast Asia Even Y Combinator avoid to coming to those markets? Don’t worry about it! Simply those markets require “local people”. That’s the main and simple reason. It’s hard to try only by non-Chinese and non-Japanese because they’re too unique. I’ve seen many US and European companies came to Japan and left. Most of the case, they did not change their way to enter the new markets. Again, they’re very unique markets. To get appropriate customers and attention from local people, Ask local

SEM

Can you manage PPC campaigns in other languages?

06/11/201311/11/2013 semjapanese_meg optimization, PPC, sem

I can say YES confidently. If I don’t speak Chinese or Russian, I could manage the Adwords campaigns well. Why? Definitely I need someone who are the native speaker because I cannot create the campaigns from scratch. That’s very true. Only native/very fluent language speakers can create the campaign from scracth. The reason is simple. Your potential customers will be a perfect native speaker. They live their own country and see TV programs, magazines and internet on their own language. Language is alive. There is a certain trend in language. If you left your country at least 1-2 years, you would notice there were some words you cannnot perfectly understand.

SEM

English allergy?

05/11/201311/11/2013 semjapanese_meg ad copies, English, Japanese, Katakana

If you knew something about Japanese market, you might have heard Japanese have an allergy for English. That’s true and false. The truth is that only small percentage of people speak English fluently. We have to study English for 6 years at least from 13 to 18 years old which is mandatory and no excuse. However we cannot speak and use English fluently. We have a big discussion about it. I personally think we have less opportunity to use English and we can get a great job and enough salary without English so far. The situation may change in a few years, but so far we don’t need to use

SEM

Ad copies in Japanese

02/11/2013 semjapanese_meg japanese ad copy, japanese adwords, japanese copies, ryanair, sem japanese

When I worked for an international company, we did a comparison among big 10 countries. How is the difference in terms of ad copies? American like ‘Cheap’ term and British prefer ‘discount’ etc… It was the very interesting comparison. There must be some difference which ad copies are effective to your target customers. Also it depends on your products and services. If you have ever used ‘Ryan air’, you should have seen their advertisement on the seat. ‘FLY CHEAPER’ That’s their ad copy because their target customers are people who want to use cheaper flights. Picture reference: the gurdian ASA bans ‘sexist’ Ryanair ad Then how about in Japanese? The