Dreaming of expanding your business to South Korea? Navigating the intricacies of digital marketing in this vibrant market can be overwhelming.
As a global marketing expert born and raised in South Korea, I’ve witnessed countless myths and misconceptions surrounding Korean marketing.
In this blog post, we’ll tackle 6 frequently asked questions about Korean marketing and equip you with the knowledge to successfully launch marketing campaigns in Korea.
Here you go.
1. What are the key cultural nuances to consider when developing a marketing campaign for the Korean market?
It all starts with “Modesty“. As you might know, we even have registered the term “Nunchi” in the English dictionary, which means “the ability to read people’s mind, a.k.a emotional intelligence”
We value collectivism over individuality. In work, these nuances happen a lot and people can judge you without having proper “Nunchi”.
So without “Nunchi” in your ad creatives or posts or even your copywriting can be really challenging to improve your sales and leads. Such as – we expect the business to understand some of our(customers’) journeys or even thoughts even if we didn’t talk to them. So at this point, I know it’s really hard to understand this on your end, but I prepared great resources to overcome this. so please keep reading this newsletter !!
2. What are the most effective digital marketing channels in South Korea?
We have our own search engine(Naver), as well as our own social channels(such as Kakao), even prefer to use Kakao map, Kakao Subway, and Kakao Bank… that means, it’s really different from just other countries using Google map, or TikTok or Facebook Group.
Imagine, you already spent days, thousands of hours creating a bunch of blog posts just for Google in English but you just found out most Koreans use Naver for their search engine, and also they create their group channel in Kakao or Naver Cafe, not in Facebook or Linkedin. 🤯What a waste of time.
Plus, just a heads up – most Koreans are afraid of using English. which means, that if you’d like to have massive Korean customers, you should better to use Korean copywriting in your marketing materials.
Here is additional information when it comes to what social channels we use in South Korea.
To be short, Instagram and Facebook are popular among the 10’s to 30’s generation, in contrast, from 40’s to 50’s, they prefer to use Naver Band and Kakao Story.
If it’s about a video app used in Korea, YouTube is a great platform to generate content and grow a Korean audience.
3. How can I effectively use localization in terms of language and imagery in Korean advertising?
To kick start off, I do recommend meeting with Korean marketing experts and getting advice on how you can localize your business in terms of language and imagery in Korean advertising. But please use the Korean languagein your advertising if you’d like to increase the chances of getting more leads.
Also If you can look through Meta Ad Library (Spying FB/IG ads), Foreplay(Spying social media ads), or Transparency Center (Spying Google ads) by searching keywords that you’d like to run ads on, you can easily look at your competitors’ ad creatives and get a sense of how they approach. Make sure to change the country to South Korea to check out competitors’ ad creatives!!!
For more strategy on how I piggyback on competitors’ ad creatives
4. What are the popular social media platforms in Korea, and how can I leverage them for marketing purposes?
It really depends on the persona of your target audience, for example, if you are targeting the MZ generation, then TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, or Facebook would be great (please check out #2) OR if you are targeting 40s or 50s, you should strengthen the skillset of using optimized Blog creation by incorporating SEO strategy. Also joining several Naver Cafes, and Naver Band and engaging with them is great.
Additionally, If you haven’t read this article (I wish I knew about this sooner…(Global Marketing Secrets E2)) yet, I highly recommend reading this first to find out your IDEAL target audience. I explained from A to Z in the exact same way that I do day-to-day.
5. How important is localization in Korean marketing, and what are the best practices for it?
It’s really important. There were several cases of failing their marketing efforts in South Korea. For example, we had sort of argument about some body language – specifically hand shape, because it represents specific male parts and it offended some Korean men so when some brands used that one, they had to apologize to citizens and even one of the foreign drink companies failed to sell their whiskey to Korean customers due to mistakenly used the hand shape on their label.
So for those of you looking for "what are the best practices", I would recommend -
- Learn basic Korean
- Make a plan to trip around South Korea for at least a month
- Make Korean friends and experience Korean culture (even if it’s in a virtual way)
- Watch Korean drama, listen to Korean songs, or watch YouTube videos from South Korea
- Dig deeper into your competitors from South Korea – how do they do marketing there, and what ad creatives are they using? what social media channels are they using… etc..
- If you’d like to have fast insight – hire a Korean marketer to get advice on that.
6. What are the unique characteristics of Korean consumer demographics, and how can I target them effectively?
There are several ways that you can check out without tons of research.
Check out trending hashtags in South Korea. Simply click “hashtags” -> select your industry -> set “Last 30 days”. then you can see lots of popular hashtags that are trending now in South Korea.
Write down your keywords there and click ” Period : 3 months” and then set some demographics like sex or age and click the green button to see the metrics. OR if you run e-commerce brands, go to here and then check out your industrial top 500 trending keywords!
Twitter (currently "X")
Additionally when you change the “Explore locations” on Twitter, you can also check out trending topics EVERY DAY!
Want to learn more about Korean marketing?
Please leave a comment belowif you’d like to see more of this. Also, make sure to share this article with like-minded people who are looking for business expansion in South Korea or are struggling to do Korean marketing currently!
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Hyein
I'm an award-winning global marketing expert running HY Marketing in South Korea. We help businesses succeed in South Korea, Japan, and English-speaking markets through SEO, social media, and paid ads.
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