The best marketing strategies in South Korea

If you are new to the Korean market, you probably are very interested in how to set up the right marketing strategy for your company. You may be interested in Korean customers’ behaviors, marketing platforms, and Korean advertising style. In this blog post, we will help you to get a sense of the Korean market and its customers based on our previous and current marketing campaigns.

This blog post consists of the following parts:

• Tips to set up your digital marketing strategies
• Understand your perspective Korean customers
• Recommended platforms for different industries

Tips to set up your digital marketing strategies

1. Do market research to understand your customers: If you don’t know who your prospective customers are, you can’t set up the proper strategies.
2. Check what your Korean and global competitors are doing in Korea: Knowing what your competitors are doing (well) always makes of how you should calibrate your strategy.
3. Choose the right partners and translators for you and your company. Because of the language barrier, you would need to hire someone who could speak Korean to work on marketing campaigns in Korea. Check if your partners and translators have enough experience for your marketing campaign.
4. Choose the best platform based on your product and industry: Korean consumers prefer to use different platforms for different products. Choose the platforms based on your company’s product.

Understand your prospective Korean customers

Read about its history and cultures

If you want to set up converting marketing strategies, the first thing that you need to do is understanding your customers. Therefore, we would suggest you take a look at the Korean history and culture. You might know K-Pop, K-Drama, and Korean movies. These media could be a good source of getting to know Korean culture, but it is not enough. Because Korea has a distinguished history, and culture of over 4,000 years, and Korea used to be a homogeneous country for a long time. To understand Korean customers, reading about its history and cultures could be the best first step. Please check the recommended websites to read about them from the links below:

1. Korea.net http://www.korea.net/
2. Korea Tourism Organization http://www.visitkorea.or.kr/intro.html

Understand the cultural background of modern Korean people

During the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910), Confucianism ruled the country, and remnants of Confucianism (or Buddhism and even Taoism) still exist in modern (business) Korea. Korean people mostly like to show respect to their customers and partners. And they use very formal expressions to anyone who they meet for the first time also. That’s why customer service centers always are very careful to use formal expressions to their customers. You would work with different translators/interpreters if you can’t speak Korean. Always ask your partners if it is a proper formal expression.

Understand typical behaviors of modern Korean consumers

These are typical behaviors :

1. Korean consumers like to try new products. According to research, Korean people change their smartphones within 2 years.
2. Korean consumers like to follow current trends especially for fashion items, electronics (smartphones), and even baby stuff.
3. Even before the Coronavirus pandemic, online shopping, and home TV shopping became a daily routine for many Koreans. The mobile shopping rate is among the highest in the world.
4. Korean consumers always check reviews of other people before they purchase something online. That’s why Korean companies like to use influencer marketing for products, such as cosmetics, baby stuff, groceries, daily necessaries, and even food.

Recommended platforms for different industries

Naver, the most popular portal platform in Korea
http://www.naver.com
According to recent research, Naver’s search engine market share is about 54%. Korean people always use Naver to search for something online. Now it became the most popular e-commerce platform as well.
Recommended industries: All industries related to search engine keyword marketing, SEO, and blog service.

Kakao-Daum, the most popular messenger platform in Korea
https://www.kakaocorp.com/
Kakao started their business as a messenger app but now they expanded to different fields, such as portal service by Daum, Kakao Bank, Kakao Pay, Kakao Map, Kakao Taxi, and more.
Recommended industries: All industries related to search engine keyword marketing, SEO, and SNS marketing.

Instagram, the most popular platform for consumer products reviews and photos
Another SNS, such as Facebook’s popularity has been decreased while Instagram became the most popular platform. Many companies are now paying Instagram influencers for reviews of their products.
Recommended industries: Consumer-based products, such as restaurants, food, cosmetics, electronics, daily necessities, and more.

Hwahae app, the most popular app for cosmetics
https://www.hwahae.co.kr/
Hwahae encouraged people to write all different kinds of cosmetics reviews on their platform. And now the ranking on their products on the app even influences the sales in offline shops.
Recommended industries: Cosmetics