Sendbird, a unicorn company from Silicon Valley, USA, develops a marketing communications software used by companies worldwide. The company boasts impressive numbers: 145,000 developers, 6 billion users, and 7 billion messages processed monthly. Sendbird provides APIs/SDKs that simplify the implementation of chat, voice, and video call functions in apps, transforming the typically extensive and costly process of integrating chat features into a matter of a few lines of code.
Shapewin supported Sendbird’s entry into the Japanese market, overseeing the planning and execution of the company’s marketing and PR strategies.
Challenges Sendbird Faced
Entering the Japanese market, despite an existing history in the gaming and e-commerce sectors, presented significant expansion challenges. A major hurdle was localizing the marketing strategy to align with Japan’s unique market environment and culture.
Amid these challenges, aiming to acquire more enterprise customers in Japan, Sendbird engaged ShapeWin in November 2022, recognizing our expertise and extensive experience in the North American market.
Solutions Proposed by Shapewin
ShapeWin’s strategy aimed to increase Sendbird’s presence in the Japanese market by targeting both end-users and the system integrators (SIs) who would implement Sendbird’s offerings.
Moreover, as the communication API/SDK industry is not well-established in Japan with no significant direct competitors, it was crucial to redefine market awareness and identify key target industries. We narrowed down to four industries based on their market presence and needs, launching tailored promotional and marketing activities.
We began our initiative by improving the SEO of the Japanese-language website and creating landing pages tailored to the target industries. We followed this by using various advertising channels such as Google’s search and display ads, and DSPs to test the market. Additionally, we produced short infographic videos to promote Sendbird’s features through YouTube ads.
Given the BtoB nature of the business, establishing credibility was also essential. Our press releases about the service launch in the Japanese market garnered extensive media coverage, enhancing market recognition. This integrated marketing approach was pivotal in establishing Sendbird’s market position, and attracted significant inquiries from major corporations.
Innovative Aspects of the Campaign
A key innovation we made during the campaign was how we adjusted our market segments. Although we initially focused on four segments, it became clear that traditional approaches were ineffective in segments lagging in IT adoption. Because of this, we pivoted to target different industries and company sizes with test marketing.
Our strategy heavily utilized DSP (Demand Side Platform) advertising, which allows for incredibly detailed targeting based on attributes like company IP addresses, size, employee count, revenue, founding year, industry, and job roles. DSP ads, which offer targeting capabilities unachievable through Google searches or social media ads, proved highly effective for a B2B service like ours.
After three months of advertising, we evaluated our channels, reducing our use of less effective Google display ads in favor of search and DSP ads.
Results
Although it is challenging to quantify the specific outcomes of our campaign,ShapeWin’s efforts have successfully laid the foundation for Sendbird in the Japanese market. Our strategies drew significant interest from major Japanese companies, creating vital business opportunities leading to substantial business discussions with major corporations.
Comments from Sendbird
“ShapeWin demonstrated exceptional professionalism in handling PR for the Japanese market! Initially, they were not merely acting as a conceptual advertising agency; instead, they accurately assessed our needs and devised a comprehensive marketing strategy that went beyond mere numbers.”
– Sanghee Lee, Country Manager, Sendbird Japan.
Future Outlook for ShapeWin
At Shapewin, we continue to develop comprehensive communication strategies that integrate PR and marketing. We support not only market entry but also business expansion post-entry through digital marketing, PR, and field marketing (such as trade shows) across multiple channels. We are committed to further enhancing Sendbird’s adoption among Japanese companies.