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How to grow your Japanese audience through LINE Japan
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If you are promoting your B2C business in Japan, or on the verge of doing so, then LINE Japan may be the best way for you to grow your audience there. There are many different ways that companies can use the platform to grow their customer base in Japan. Here is a guide on how to use LINE’s paid and organic features to hack the growth of your business. If, instead, you are more interested in a guide to LINE advertising, then please read our article on this here
LINE is Japan’s most popular social media platform, with over 95 million Japanese users1 and has a diverse audience segmentation. It is a messaging app that allows users to chat and make free calls to friends, comparable to WhatsApp or WeChat. Most famous for its animated stickers, this super app also includes services like LINE News, Shopping, Manga, Games, and more. Click here to learn more about LINE Japan!
For some businesses, it will be the first time that they are using LINE Japan to connect with your Japanese audience. Others may have been using LINE for some time. No matter which camp you are in, there is a smart way to grow your audience on LINE through the use of advertising. When creating LINE ads, like with other digital ad platforms, you have the option of setting your campaign objective. One of the options is to “Increase your customer base” which you should select if your main objective is to grow your audience. The ads will optimise your campaign to grow the number of ‘friends’ you have on LINE Japan. See here to find out more on how businesses can use LINE Ads in Japan.
Those of you with eagle eyes will have noticed (in the image above) that to run advertising with this objective, you require a LINE Official Account. A LINE Official Account allows you to have a business profile page in LINE, where you can launch ads to increase your customer base as well as functionality to update ‘friends’ on promotions, make posts in Timeline, increase online engagement with customers, send direct messages for customer support and share coupons for special deals. You can find further details on LINE Official Account here or in the latest LINE Business Guide.
LINE is different from other social media platforms, such as Facebook (find out more on why LINE Ads might be a better digital strategy for your Japanese campaigns over Facebook Ads). As the app’s primary function is messaging, you can use it to broadcast a message to all of your ‘friends’. This could be a campaign, voucher, or coupon, etc. The content is entirely up to you. The ultimate objective, for any business using a broadcast message, is to encourage your ‘friends’ to share it with their ‘friends’. If the content catches their attention then you will be able to grow your Japanese audience on LINE in no time at all and nurture Japanese superfans.
But this is not the only LINE Japan feature that assists you to grow your Japanese audience. Below we detail some of the additional features.
There are many additional LINE Japan features which you can use to grow your audience. We have included the four top features for growing your customer base below:
A customer service function that provides a more personalized service and faster response times via your LINE account.
Connect with your brand’s CMS so customers won’t miss a single notification because they’re all on your brand’s LINE account.
Increase sales by using this integrated purchase plug in. The go-to online store tool.
This Japanese game company successfully used LINE Ads to gain new customers and bring back dormant users. Make sure to read about their tips on how to increase CTR by experimenting with ad creatives.
Cosmetics Industry: L’Occitane
L’Occitane has found an effective way to increase both online sales as well as digital membership cards using LINE Japan. They were able to offset their lower in-store sales with their online campaigns during the COVID-19 pandemic.
1Source: Line Corp.
2Source: https://lineforbusiness.com/th-en/service/line-oa-features
LINE Business Guide Jan-June 2021 (English)
Line Ads Guideline (Japanese)
LINE Ads – Basic Rules for Creative Screening (Japanese)
As you can see, most LINE resources are in Japanese only, and it can be challenging for overseas businesses to open a LINE Ads account – but our agency can help! Do not hesitate to contact our team of bilingual Japanese digital marketing experts for additional information, support, or management of LINE Ads or a LINE Official Account in Japan. We can help you to grow your Japanese audience.
