How do I reach Japan?

Need to advertise products in Japan (and China)

[Corey]

Has anyone had any success with PPC or Search Engine Marketing of any sort in Japan?

I have a client that gets occasional orders from Japan that are considerably higher than locally in the US.

We are currently attempting Overture and AdWords campaigns targeting Japan.

Any other ideas would be greatly appreciated.

(We are also looking for UK and China, but primarily Japan.)

[fidibidabah]

PPC has worked very well for me, but GET A NATIVE SPEAKER TO TRANSLATE. Use an American who has been living in Japan 10+ years (there are enough of them). It's very important with the language you get a correct translation, because you don't translate words, but instead ideas. If you use a kid out of school, or a Japanese person (who may not get the correct english meaning before he translates), you're going to get a 0-CTR. And if it's AdWords, google will shut the ad down instantly, their nihongo checkers are top notch ;)

[jo1ene]

It's very important with the language you get a correct translation, because you don't translate words, but instead ideas.

VERY important! I did a lot of resarch on this for an article. There's so much to consider when doing a translation. Even cultural issus with color and whitespace. Don't forgt to redo graphical text! Definately look for someone like fidibidabah mentioned.

[bill]

fidibidabah you say to use a native speaker to translate. I agree 100%. But then you say to get an American who's been living here 10+ years...that's not the same thing. I know several people who own translation companies and the first thing they'll tell you is that you don't use a native English speaker to translate into Japanese. You would use a native English speaker to translate from Japanese to English. I asked an acquaintance who's been running a translation business for close to 20 years in Japan, and he said that he'd never met a native English speaker who could translate professionally into Japanese without requiring a native speaker to proof all the work.

Corey I'd suggest that you look through some of the threads in this forum. We've had a lot of discussions concerning how to best approach the Japanese market, and PPC.

[digitalv]

Perhaps Chevy should have followed your advice before marketing the "Nova" in spanish-speaking countries. Heh.

[fazer600]

On the subject of bad translations the Shogun Pajero was also another mistake on the nova scale.

The best thing is to get the american who's been living there for 10 years to translate as they will correctly get the tone of the piece correct, then get a native japanese person to proof read.

[bill]

Most of the Americans I know who have lived here 10+ years don't posess the Japanese language skills to do the job...FWIW

[digitalv]

A more important question than the actual translation is
Will you be able to SUPPORT YOUR PRODUCT in that language?

Often times people would say they want their pages translated into a dozen different languages, but when you ask them how they are going to communicate with some guy in <whatever non-English-speaking country> who has a pre-sales question about the product or has a support question after they've purchased it, they freeze like a deer in the headlights :P

It's a common mistake among people who want to branch into other countries/languages ... just making sure you remember :)

[bill]

Very true digitalv...some people can be in for quite a shock entering the Japanese market. The levels of customer service expected here are quite a bit higher than other areas. Japanese customers need a lot of hand-holding depending on your product/service. They can also seem overly demanding at times because of this, but that's just the culture here.

You certainly won't be able to use Babel Fish Translation or any of those other machine translators to communicate. You'll need a native speaker or someone quite good with the language who understands the culture in order to get by.

[fallcool]

I am a native Chinese and studied in USA for over 5 years. Based on my experience, It is very hard for a non-native speaker to do professional translation if these two languages have little in common.

Now I lived in Beijing China and I am thinking about doing Chinese Internet Marketing stuff. So if there is anything I can be involved, PM me or email me.