Today, they talked about organizing conferences for B2B business in Japan.
At this article, we will introduce how importance to localize events because of cultural difference, and customer attraction plans.

Video Summary index:
- Localization of b2B events.
- Most of B2B events in Japan offer free.
- Customer attraction plans.

Localize B2B events.

“Localization” is one of the most important things to do in Japan.
In “Digital marketing in Japan”, we talked about how important it is to localize websites. The language problem that always comes with Japanese people. More and more people understand English these days, but many of them do not read English.

For the B2B events, one of the most desirable ways to coordinate the event to suit the Japanese audience and Japanese culture is to localize the event.
Event localization includes but is not limited to the translation of all materials related to the event. Announcements in the venue are also required to made in Japanese. AI or automatic translation is not always natural for Japanese, so we always kind of suggest to do a localized translation.

Also, it is important to understand and coordinate to suit Japanese culture. For example, it might be necessary to operate in an overly friendly and polite manner for visitors, otherwise we will give a bad impression. Japanese people are accustomed to being polite. Therefore, especially at large events, it is necessary to have guide staff and information signs in many locations so that visitors can ask for directions and where to go.

And Japanese people are shy, so they do not raise their hands in short Q&A sessions. In the U.S., they pay attention to the speaker and ask the speaker when they have any questions. So in Japan, we need to hand out questionnaires and then ask people to answer them on the website or listen to what visitors have to say.
Sometimes we use an online streaming platform that has a built in Q&A.

Most of B2B events in Japan offer free.

We have rarely been involved in paid B2B events.
In Japan, attendees who comes to the event are not just the individual, but they represent the company, and the company tells them to participate in certain events. In the US, many people would attend study or for their careers. Please understand that attending in event is part of their job in Japan.

There is another reason why there is no charge to attend. Attendees are kind of selling their own personal information in charge of paying the attendance fee. On the other hand, organizers and event sponsors can obtain individual information of attendees, making participation in B2B events a lead generation activity.

If you do an event with charges, we guess, that Japanese people won't participate because we're all used to participating in events that are free.

Customer attraction plans

When you need a plan to attract customers using media and advertising, you will want to know how much it will cost and be guaranteed. What is the current situation in Japan?

We are not aware of any guaranteed customer attraction plan offered by media right now.
It used to be offered by some media, however many companies participated in that plan and many email newsletters were published.
Now, most media outlets offer or try to create a target number, but they do not guarantee the number of registrations or customers they will attract.

It doesn’t mean that plans offered by the media to attract customers are no longer effective. A lot of registrants see some contents or advertising (like banner ads or text ads) published in medias. Registrants would be interested in that content that is targeted to them, and they would make a move to register for that event.

We can develop multiple plans for seminars, conferences, and other events ranging from 400 people to 5000 people, depending on the target audience and what you want to achieve. We can also mix media plans, social media plans, creative design plans, and event localization plans. We have many staff members who are experienced in many physical and online or hybrid events as marketing communication activities. We can offer suggestions and support for this.