How To Find Japanese Influencers

Using influencer marketing to introduce your brand to the Japanese market can yield great results, as is reflected by the past and projected growth of influencer marketing expenditure in Japan. Employing influencers to find your target audience and creating content that is truly interesting or useful to them can be very cost-effective and launch your brand successfully in the traditionally challenging Japanese market. Your first hurdle to take would be sourcing influencers in Japan to work with. Here are the most common ways of finding Japanese influencers as a foreign company trying to break into the Japanese market.

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Finding Influencers in Japan By Yourself

Your first efforts in your trajectory to find influencers in Japan may be carried out independently. In this case, you will enter search terms in Google or social media search functions to hit influencers who may fit your marketing goals. While it is not impossible to find and collaborate with Japanese influencers by yourself, whether you will be successful or not greatly depends on a few parameters. Here are some factors that can make you more likely to be able to find influencers in Japan by yourself:

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• Already being known in Japan: if your brand is already (a bit) known in Japan, it will be much easier to gain the trust of notoriously cautious Japanese influencers. Unknown foreign companies are deemed too risky to collaborate with for many because influencers can’t do their due diligence on their background for their lack of English language skills
• Understanding of Japanese culture: knowing how to approach a potential new collaborator with cultural sensitivity is paramount if you want to up your chances of a reply to your inquiry
• Japanese market knowledge: companies who have worked in the Japanese market before, also outside of social media marketing or influencer marketing, have an advantage when they design their campaigns. They already know which formats are often a hit and what pitfalls to avoid
• Knowledge of current trends: especially while still in the searching stage, knowing which search terms and hashtags to use is paramount. If you use the right words, you are much more likely to get hits for fitting influencers while using words that aren’t usually used won’t yield you many results
• Japanese language ability: all parts of the process are affected by your level of the Japanese language from searching and inquiring to communicating about the campaign’s content and communication with customers. If your written and spoken level is at least at a business level, your chances of success increase significantly
• Perseverance: as for all business endeavors when you try to break into a new market, perseverance is key. You will get many no’s and influencers who don’t even reply which should not discourage you from keeping going. It only takes 1 or a few nicely fitting influencers to have a great campaign with a high ROI

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Using an Online Database to Find Japanese Influencers

Simply searching Google for ‘Japanese influencers’ won’t get you access to lists of influencers that you can readily contact at your own convenience. Most you will get are lists of Japan’s top 10 or top 20 most famous influencers, who are extremely costly to work with. If you want to make your search easier, you can take a subscription or pay-per-email for an online database without going through an agency. In these lists, you can search in various niches to see if your perfect matches are there.

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The most obvious advantage of using an online database as opposed to going through an agency is the lower cost. However, just like when you go it yourself, while the first hurdle of finding multiple influencers who could fit your brand is out of the way, you still need to be ready for many rejections and non-repliers when using an online database. Also, the same things that give you an edge when flying completely solo, such as being able to communicate in Japanese and understanding marketing in Japan, will make it easier for you to be successful in finding collaborations with Japanese influencers.

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Using a Large Agency to Find Japanese Influencers

If you have the budget, using a large agency for finding influencers in Japan could be an extremely effective way in getting your brand known by a large Japanese audience. Famous influencers such as Rola, Naomi Watanabe, COCO, and Kiko Mizuhara have millions of followers who are often fans of their other work as well. They are likely to at least take note of brands that are endorsed by their idols.

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Working with large influencers who are usually exclusively signed by big agencies requires you to go through the agencies. These agencies can be very picky about who they want to work with, because they have carefully crafted the image of their contracted influencers that can in no way be compromised. This is why it can be challenging to collaborate with famous influencers as a foreign brand that is still (relatively) unknown in Japan. Moreover, precision targeting and longer product introductions are usually not possible when you use very large influencers. So for many foreign brands, going through a boutique agency and smaller influencers might be much more interesting.

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Using a Boutique Agency to Find Japanese Influencers

Depending on your budget and abilities, going through a smaller bilingual influencer agency in Japan who are familiar with working with foreign brands and know the Japanese market in-depth can be the right choice for you. They will use their database to find good influencers who are happy to work with your brand, facilitate easy communication, and can advice you on how to create a campaign that has a good chance to become a hit among your target audience. The agency can also help you track your campaign’s performance.

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Most, if not all, of the barriers to contacting and collaborating with Japanese influencers will be taken away by working with an agency so you can concentrate on what is important: how to present your brand in the most attractive way possible to your potential Japanese customers.

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