Startup Japan Biz

Ways of opening up a market.

There are several ways to open up a market. You can refer to the ones provided below and select the one that suits your company best to make the best of it.

1) Using your existing connections/ network

Obtaining new clients is a very difficult task. Upon going independent, express your vision to your friends, acquaintance, colleagues and boss from your previous workplace, business partners, and relatives. It might not be immediate, but they could introduce you to new clients in the future. However, do not have too many expectations from the beginning. If you do not believe yourself that you can start your own business, people surrounding you will not either.

2) Participating in exhibitions/business meeting

To obtain publicity for new products, new services, exhibitions and business meetings can be very effective. However, because they require time and money, you need to be very well prepared to make the most out of exhibitions.

• Plan budget and schedule carefully.
• Take a look at previous years’ exhibition data (exhibitors, numbers of visitors, reputation, etc.)
• Decide products line up and prices、stationery contracts, etc.

3) Using management consultant, company alumni

By welcoming experienced professionals with large networks as consultants in your company, you give yourself the opportunity to profit from that network and their management skills. In Japan, 65 years is the retiring age, but they are a lot of seniors who choose to continue working past that age, and they can be a very valuable asset.

4) Participating in exchange events

A very smart way to exchange with people from the same industry or from a different one is to join public assistance organizations such as the Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Preparing sales promotion tools

1) Creating a homepage

It is always a good idea to create a homepage for your company with all useful information. Beyond that, also consider listing ads, SNS networking, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), blogs, short movies and other forms of promotion through the internet. Regarding WEB marketing, see next section.

2) Creating proposals

Have products and services proposals ready so that you can easily describe their merits to customers.

3) Printing flyers

You should also some print flyers because they are very versatile. They can be inserted ad in newspapers, sent out as direct mails, distributed at seminars.

Mindset to have when opening a market

1) Be up for a challenge

Being someone who likes a challenge and won’t give up even if the business does not go according to plan is very important. It is not rare that the profits do not grow in the beginning. It takes strong faith in that business idea and the minimal income to not give up and push through. You should be willing to work part-time at times when enough income is not made from the business.

2) Headwork, footwork, network

To think well, to work hard, to expand connections. Those are the three key works that need to be done for your business to be successful. Humans are the core of business. Value each of your encounters, and build trusting relationship with them.

3) A Win-Win Structure

You should not constantly only think about yourself. Keep in mind the other parties involved, the customers, clients, your partners. It is crucial that your business is build up with the goal of satisfying them as well.

Web Marketing

Creating a website alone is not enough. With a clear vision of the purpose of the website, you need to tailor it to the target users.

Users’ activities on a website can be broken down into four steps:
visit à browsing à purchase à repeat.

Measures to be taken at each stage are different but first let’s look at the visit stage.

Visit refers to the numbers of people who visit your page. However do not use any customers gathering tools that you have to pay for just yet. Instead you can use free ones like SEO. The only thing is that, as explained previously, for SEO to really work, you need to have a very clear target and narrow down your keywords. In other words, a solid marketing strategy will be necessary

Once you have secured a certain number of visitors, using free Access Analysis tools such as Google Analytics can help determine the points that need to be improved for better browsing. Hence why it is important to increase the number of visits first.

（Search Engine Optimization）

SEO is an engine search measure. The basic concept is to find out the potential keywords and title that the users will search for, and to strategically include them at the front of your page. Setting up the right keywords is where marketing ideology plays a very important part. Renewal being also very important, whether blogs and newspapers are getting regularly updated becomes important.

Listing ads

These are another type of internet ads also called search ads. Whenever a user searches a certain word, ads related to it will appear on his screen either in the form of images, or messages. The most usual ones are pay-per-click ads, where money is generated only once the user has clicked on the link and not just by appearing on the screen. Being charged means that the users are most certainly visiting your website, so it means you can somehow pay for access. You should decide if that is a strategy that works for you upon weighing the costs and the benefits.

Visits via SNS

Social Networks Services help building social connections by facilitating exchanging with others via the internet. Users can build intimate connection with others and form communities around same interest, through which they could be recommended and led to your website.