Understanding the key differences for each individual market is vital to success in regional SEM in Asia.

The North Asian Triumvirate of Japan, Korea and China are all distinctly unique and important Top 10 global economic powerhouses. Apart from the obvious differences of language and culture, which are significant in themselves, Japan, Korea and China are also quite unique globally in the search marketing space.

This primarily is due to the dominance of unique, local search engine players and the resultant customised approaches to search marketing that these demand. In addition to the players and their market share, the North Asian markets also differ distinctly in number of other key areas including; layout of search engine results; the role of natural listings; end user search behaviour; approaches to integration of search in mass media & emergence of mobile search. All of which represent a significant departure from search globally, where search marketing has become quite standardised on the ubiquitous Google dominance and U.S. search marketing standards.

As advertisers and agencies alike start to increase their focus on centralization of regional search marketing campaigns within Asia, understanding the key differences and unique approaches required in approaching search in the North Asian markets is critical to achieving success. This article aims to outline and address some of the factors that marketers will need to consider when planning for these campaigns.

Japanese Search Marketing

• The second biggest search market in the world, Yahoo! Japan commands a 62 percent share of the search in Japan, Google's is second at 29 percent. Importantly, Yahoo Japan is independent of Yahoo Internationally and has a huge brand presence in Japan, this means that it has evolved its own approach and operates quite differently from Yahoo in other markets.

• Operationally you will find the engines in Japan are not as helpful as other markets in campaign planning and optimization and you will also find they are very stringent in both operations and processes. Allow plenty of time to navigate these when you are setting-up and planning to support a campaign.
  
• From an end user perspective, Yahoo Japan users tend to be more general consumer and read much deeper down the top 10 search results, whereas Google users are more business focused and concentrate in more detail on the top few positions. This means that your strategy needs to be customized in terms of both engine and approach. Japanese users as a general rule read copy in detail, so professional copy loaded with the right value propositions and benefits is critical.
  
• Because the Japanese language consists of three types of character alphabets, keyword development of combinations and variations is a lot more complex than direct translation, all variations plus their mistypes need to be carefully considered.

• Integrating search with mass media or Cross Media has also quickly become a norm in Japan, effectively replacing the URL as a virtual address. These days every print, train, outdoor or TV advertisement features a search box and the "keyword" consumers should enter to easily find the advertiser. As a standard, factoring this into your offline campaigns and careful keyword planning and buying, offers important search marketing opportunities.
  
• From a natural search perspective, both Google and Yahoo Japan do align with global results structures and thus SEO represents a very important component to any search program. Importantly to note though, the Yahoo Japan algorithm is significantly different to that of Yahoo globally, requiring a more customized SEO approach to be able achieve high rankings.
  
• Uniquely in Japan, the Mobile internet space is very mature and really leads the rest of the world. This mean that Mobile search has become a powerful marketing tool and very important to consider when targeting youth and female user demographics.

Korea Search Marketing

• Korea has by far the highest ratio of search to online spending in the world, with just under 70 percent of total online marketing spending allocated to search. This has resulted in a very sophisticated, competitive search environment requiring marketers to have a strong understanding of the subtleties of the space in order to successful.
  
• Naver is Korea's number one search engine and controls approximately 72 percent of search traffic. Daum the second largest engine, has a 10 percent market share with Yahoo and Google quite minor players.
  
• The Korean engines do feature much more complex search structures than other markets and in most cases natural search results appear towards the bottom of a results page, this means SEO efforts have a more limited value in terms of traffic potential.

• Both Overture (Yahoo) and Google do provide some search ad listings to Naver and Daum respectively, while this does not provide a comprehensive solution, it does present an easier path to implementing a campaign and supports the use of global standard technologies and management.
  
• However, almost three quarters of a search result usually consist of various forms of sponsored or paid search results. Naver for example, in addition to showing Overture paid listings, also sells multiple listing products at both CPM and CPC. So a results page on Naver will feature all three sets of listings. Being able to understand the context, position and relative value of these beyond just buying Overture listings, is essential to being to successfully balance a Korean paid search program.
  
• Similar to Japan, the Korea market also features widespread use of cross-media search campaigns in the mainstream media and is also very active in mobile search marketing.

Chinese Search Marketing

• Baidu dominates the search space in China accounting for approximately 70 percent of all searches while Google is a distant second at 20 percent, followed by Yahoo, Sina and a range of other local engines.
  
• Significantly though, Baidu is dominated by more entertainment and MP3 related searches and its users are typically younger and often students. Google does attract an important business and academic user demographic.

• Engine preference also differs significantly based on location, so understanding which city or region you are targeting will also help guide your spending and search engine allocations.
  
• Uniquely in China, the local engines often provide discounts to you or your agency based on volume and longer term commitments. Being able to commit a budget over a 12 month period can help you negotiate better rates and ROI.
  
• For Baidu especially, natural results are often blended with paid or sponsored results and you will find SEO to be less effective than paid search in terms of traffic and results vs other markets.

• On the operations side, while Google operates similarly to most other markets, Baidu will take more time. Currently Baidu's administration panel is only available in Chinese and do not provide impression data like all the other engines. This can be a challenge in managing campaigns and understanding real performance. Baidu also as manual keyword review, approval and upload processes and you need to plan to allocate an extra week to any launch schedule to accommodate this. 
  

Japan, Korea and China represent key search markets in both Asia and globally. A one size fits all approach will not work when running campaigns there. While this article is only scraping the surface of some of things to consider, knowing what makes them different from a market, operations, technical, and service level will allow you to signficantly improve your chances of a successful search program.

Andy Radovic is senior online marketing and SEO consultant of Sozon.