Christian Klepp  00:00

South Korea is a country situated in East Asia that has a highly developed, export driven economy that ranks among the world’s largest so what should B2B marketers operating in North America or Europe take into account when they expand into markets like South Korea? What cultural and linguistic nuances should they consider? Welcome to this episode of the B2B Marketers in the Mission podcast, and I’m your host, Christian Klepp. Today I’ll be talking to Hyein Yoon, who will be answering these questions. She’s the founder of HY marketing with proven expertise in the Korean market. Tune in to find out more about what this B2B marketers mission is.

Christian Klepp  00:41

Okay. Hyein Yoon. Annyeonghaseyo (Hello), welcome to the show.

Hyein Yoon  00:49

Yeah. Thank you for having me here.

Christian Klepp  00:52

It’s a great pleasure to have you on. I think you get an award for being the first person that I’m interviewing from South Korea.

Hyein Yoon  01:01

So much pleasure.

Christian Klepp  01:03

Very, very, very exciting, very exciting. And I really appreciate you taking the time to be on the show, because I know it’s a little bit late on your side of the world, and it’s so interesting. You know, when we have podcasts like this and conversations like these in these so called Modern Times, because, you know, we can be talking to anybody around the world at different times, and it’s and I think it makes it it makes it interesting, but I think also what makes it very interesting, and we’re going to get into that in today’s conversation, is that we’re all B2B marketers working in different markets, and it’s very important for us also to understand, especially here in North America where I’m based, it’s very important for marketers to understand that what may have been successful in this market might be a completely different situation than them in another market, right? So I guess we’re going to get into that today. So let’s dive in. I’m really looking forward to this conversation. 

Hyein Yoon  02:03

Yeah, I’m so excited about this. Let’s do this. 

Christian Klepp  02:05

Okay, fantastic. So Hyein, you’re, you’re on a mission to help companies scale their brands through strategic marketing in Korea, so in South Korea. So for this conversation, as I just said, We, we’d like to focus on the following topic, which is how B2B companies can build a successful content strategy for the Korean market. So I’d like to kick off this conversation with two questions, and I’m happy to repeat them. Okay, so first question is, wow, and we can talk about this one for hours, but just give us some top level answers. What are some of the key differences between B2B marketing in the west and Korea? So that’s the first question. And the second question is, what are some misconceptions that B2B companies have about doing business in Korea?

Hyein Yoon  02:58

All right, that’s actually great questions, and I’m ready to answer everything possible to answer for the first question, actually, you have to understand that we have very difference between individuality and then collectiveness. And actually, when I visited the US for the first time, I realized so many things that we can actually make our customized plan, even at the restaurant, like you can make your customized burger sauce, the bun, bread or ingredients possible. But whereas in Korea, we don’t really prefer that option, it’s really uncomfortable to choose everything possible. For example, the subway, the sub sandwiches, they actually entered Korea, and they didn’t even realize that things like giving the options possible is really making uncomfortable customers. So they have to make the options to have the set menu combo. So you actually choose the numbers and then you get the all of the things ready made for you. You don’t have to choose. That was actually interesting story. So if I can go into more about the B2B market, we actually have some key factors, like hierarchical system and then result trust focused and the relationship driven. 

Hyein Yoon  04:19

So actually, when I had a conversation with one of our guests on our podcast, he actually once mentioned this, and then this is kind of like overview that you can think of Korea really easily. So for example, when he have a conversation and then have a meeting for the first time, he maybe can share about the whole pictures about the companies or services or products, but after the first meeting, he will really not mention about the product or being salesy all the time until the prospect mentioned about what was your product you are talking about before. Can you talk about them more like because. We really value building a relationship first, not about really directness or, you know, being salesy or saving time. So it’s important to building the trust signal in the beginning, and then also in B2B market. When I had another conversation with someone specializing in sales and marketing from IBM, Korea, which is the biggest company in the world. She also mentioned that even if the company suggested you have to do everything online, but she didn’t agree with that, because she understand this, you know, hierarchical system, relationship driven system, so once you actually have a cold call or cold email, first she will be present offline, and then setting up meeting offline, so that you can actually make a relationship first, and then report. And then, you know, saving energy to have, you know, more meetings further for from the get go. So it’s important to have your presence offline. And then, of course, international business sometimes doesn’t have presence in Korea, so that’s why, maybe we can talk about later, having the local partner is important. 

Hyein Yoon  06:11

And second question was about, yeah, the misconceptions that B2B companies have about. So this is actually also related to the key factors, for sure. And maybe you can think about online meetings are just fine, and then, you know, cold calls or cold emails, and then you set up the meetings all the time just online. But when you think about ROI (Return on Investment), actually, it makes sense just doing online. Maybe that’s the cost effective that you can approach. But if we just don’t know you at all, like you don’t have any presence in Korea, we had to research about your companies all the time, like case studies or like website all of that, only to realize it just would, you know translations? Ye