Launching in Japan: The Minimum Marketing Kit, With or Without a Local Office

Companies come to Japan from two starting points.

Some open a Japan entity and hire a country manager or a sales lead. On day one, that person has an English website, an English deck and a market that expects to be addressed in Japanese.

Others have no one in Japan yet. They sell from HQ or a regional hub, and for now they'll deal with customers in English. But they still want the website and the lead generation to be in Japanese, because that's how Japanese buyers find and evaluate a supplier.

Both draw on the same small set of materials. This guide covers what they are, which to start with, what changes between the two situations, and what to build next.

1. Which two questions should we answer first?

What is the launch for, and who will handle Japan day to day? The answers change what gets built first.

First: credibility or inquiries? Building credibility and capturing inquiries draw on the same materials, but in a different order of priority.

Most newcomers need credibility first: few people fill out a form for a company they've never heard of. But if you already have demand from Japan, for example inbound requests reaching your global site, start with the inquiry path.

Second: do you have someone in Japan? The materials are the same either way. What changes is who does what.

Selling in English without a Japan office is a workable way to start. Many Japanese buyers can correspond in English but still prefer to read about a supplier in Japanese first. The landing page gets you considered; being upfront about how you'll communicate protects that trust.

Tell your agency your answers to both questions before it writes anything.

2. What do we need first?

Up to three things: somewhere to send people, something to present and something to announce. Start with the one your next step depends on.

• A Japanese landing page and an inquiry page. When you get coverage, or a prospect looks you up after a meeting, they need a Japanese page that explains what you do and a form to reach you. If they land on an English-only site, many of them stop there.
• A localized sales deck. Whoever sells for you in Japan will present it, and it will be forwarded inside the prospect's company afterwards. It has to make sense to people who never met you.
• Press releases for your first announcements. A first customer, a partnership or an entity launch. In Japan, a well-placed announcement is an early source of credibility.

You don't have to have all three before you begin. If the website is what's holding you back, start with the landing page and the inquiry form, and add the deck and the announcements when you need them. If meetings are already booked, start with the deck. The three work best together, but each one is useful on its own.

3. How much of our website needs to be in Japanese?

At a minimum, two pages: a landing page and an inquiry page. The ideal is most of your site.

To be clear about the target: the best outcome is a Japanese version of most of your site, written for Japanese readers and built for search and for AI answers (SEO and GEO). That's what brings buyers to you rather than waiting for them to look you up. Two pages are the floor that makes a launch possible, not the place to stop.

If you're starting with the minimum, here's what it has to do.

The landing page should introduce the company and its core offering for a Japanese business reader. That usually means a different order from your English homepage. Lead with the problem you solve and a concrete use case, then how it works, then proof.

The inquiry page needs a Japanese form that feeds your existing CRM, so leads from Japan arrive in the same place as everyone else's, with a field that identifies them as Japan. If you'll reply in English for now, say so next to the form, along with how quickly people can expect an answer.

A few things foreign teams often miss:

• Company information. Japanese buyers look for a company profile: legal name, address, representative, date established. A page with no profile reads as unfinished. Our guide to buyer trust in Japan covers why.
• A privacy notice in Japanese. If the form collects personal data from people in Japan, link to a Japanese privacy notice. Check the wording with your legal team.
• URL structure and language switching. Decide where the Japanese pages live before you build them. We cover the options in Japanese SEO for Foreign Companies.

You don't need a separate site. In most cases the Japanese pages can be built inside your existing CMS, whether that's Webflow, WordPress or HubSpot. Set it up so more pages can be added later without restructuring: that's what lets the two pages grow into a full Japanese site.

4. Why can't we just translate the sales deck?

Because the order and the emphasis are wrong for the audience, not just the language.

Decks written for US or European buyers tend to open with vision and broad value statements. Japanese business audiences respond better to specifics. When we localize a deck, the changes usually look like this:

• Lead with use cases. Show the situation, what was done and what changed. Move the mission slide back.
• Show how it works in practice. Concrete detail about operations carries more weight than claims about capability.
• Use a measured tone. Superlatives and confident claims that work in English can read as unreliable in Japanese. If a claim can't be backed up, it's better to cut it than to soften it.
• Keep fixed terms fixed. Product and brand names shouldn't be translated or paraphrased. Agree on a glossary first and keep adding to it.

At the sentence level, adapting goes further than choosing better words. In our own work it regularly means:

• Merging sentences. Two short English sentences often read better as one in Japanese, and the reverse is also true.
• Changing the order. The conclusion, the reason and the condition don't sit in the same place in a Japanese business sentence, so we move them.
• Adding a sentence. English copy often leaves a step unstated that a Japanese reader needs to see. Where the intent wouldn't come through, we add the missing line and flag it for your approval.

A good agency will tell you what to change and why, in English, before rewriting anything. More on the difference in Localization vs. Transcreation.

5. How do press releases work in Japan?

They follow Japanese conventions, and they're usually distributed through domestic services.

A Japanese press release isn't a translation of the English one. The structure, the level of detail and the tone are different, and the announcement has to matter to a Japanese reader: who the local customer or partner is, what changes in Japan, and how to get in touch.

On distribution, global wire services can reach Japanese media through local partners. But Japanese companies mostly announce through domestic services, and PR TIMES is the most widely used. Which route fits depends on the announcement, so ask your agency to recommend one for each release, and to say plainly if your current wire service isn't strong in Japan.

6. What should we give the agency, and what should we get back?

Give them your source material and someone who can answer questions. Expect recommendations, not just files.

What to provide:

• Your current English deck and website copy
• Brand guidelines and writing style guide
• A list of terms that must not be translated
• Source material for the announcements
• Time with your Japan lead, or with whoever knows your Japanese customers best

What to expect back:

• Japanese content that has been adapted, with a short English note on what changed and why
• A glossary you can reuse with other vendors
• Written guidance on how to build the pages in your CMS: URL structure, language switching and the basics for Japanese search
• The deck as an editable file in your own template

When you choose an agency, look for native Japanese writers with B2B experience, and a bilingual lead who can work directly with your English-speaking marketing team. If you have no one in Japan, that bilingual lead is also your market check, so ask how they'll explain their choices to you.

7. How long does it take, and who needs to approve?

With us, two to four weeks from kickoff. You may be quoted a month or more elsewhere.

The difference is how the work is staffed. We write, design and build with our own in-house team, so nothing waits in a queue between vendors. That also makes us flexible: if your launch date moves or the scope changes partway through, we can adjust the plan the same week.

A typical sequence:

1. Week 1: Kickoff, source material, glossary and a short call about your market. First drafts of the landing page and deck start right away.
2. Week 2: Drafts delivered, with the recommended changes explained in English. Your review begins.
3. Weeks 3–4: Revisions, final versions, pages built in your CMS and the form tested end to end. Press releases are finalized against your announcement dates.

What we can't compress is your side of the review. Two things keep it on schedule: one person who can approve, and a reviewer with time to read the drafts. If no one on your side reads Japanese, we provide a back-translation or an English summary of each piece, so approval isn't a leap of faith.

8. What should we build next?

The first set gets you started. The rest is what grows your business in Japan.

None of this has to wait if you have the budget and the content ready: starting with a fuller site and with SEO and GEO from day one is the stronger option. If you start with the minimum, the first 10 or 20 conversations will show you which questions come up, which proof points land and which pages are missing, and you can expand from there. Our guides to Japanese SEO and GEO for Japan cover the search side, and the go-to-market playbook covers the wider plan.