General

How to do foreign trade? How to start foreign trade? How to develop customers?

I have been engaged in foreign trade for 8 years. At present, I have my own foreign trade company. There are only a few dozen people. I can steadily ship 3-5 containers a week. This year, the import business has also started. Looking back on the entrepreneurial process of these years, I have more understanding and understanding of foreign trade.

How to do foreign trade?

I believe that many people want to do foreign trade because of the pressure of domestic competition and the large amount of debt. I heard that so-and-so made a fortune by foreign trade, so I also want to open up my own export channels.

Since I wrote several articles on Zhihu, I have communicated with more than 1000 friends who want to carry out foreign trade and found many problems.

How to do foreign trade? First, the professional preparation for foreign trade is insufficient.

Many people think that doing foreign trade is just like opening a shop on Taobao. Some people consult, and they can deliver goods through negotiation. In fact, foreign trade itself is a comprehensive type of work, which involves all aspects of knowledge. Otherwise, how can a university set up a 4-year international trade major? If it is really so simple, it would be possible for a vegetable seller to open an Alibaba international station.

Secondly, the foreign trade team is not fully prepared.

A friend who has consulted with me usually has only two or three foreign trade teams. One is planned to be a salesperson and the other is to be an operator. It seems that there is no problem. But the threshold for a salesperson is too low. Level 4 English can be a salesperson, and Taobao can be a foreign trade operator. This configuration is a little low. How to deal with some crafty foreign trade swindlers? Doing foreign trade will contact various customers, both reasonable and haggard, and more experienced procurement. Without an experienced foreign trade supervisor to check, it is difficult to earn money from foreigners. Foreign trade operations are usually only responsible for the products and optimization of Alibaba International Station. In fact, the international station is only a small part of the foreign trade channel. Too many people invest a lot of money and time into it and give high hopes, But they never get the expected return. The international station is not an industry company that can enjoy the flow dividend. It is the right solution to open up more foreign trade channels!

Third, lack of foreign trade skills.

Many people only know about Alibaba International Station or make in China when they mention doing foreign trade. It may be that Ali's influence in China is so strong that many people mistakenly believe that only by following Alibaba can they make money. Please, Ali is also an enterprise that needs to make money. Besides, it is the elite team at the top of the pyramid that makes money on any platform. If your strength is not strong enough, don't be an accompanying bookboy. Would it be better to learn some other foreign trade skills, avoid high competition and develop customers that others can't reach?

Finally, the positioning of oneself is not accurate.

Many friends who want to do foreign trade do not know where the target market of their products is, or what the image of their target customers is. They always think that Laozi's products are the best in the world and suitable for any country. This is very fatal. Chairman Mao once said that we should concentrate on solving the main contradictions. As a small company, your promotion budget is so large. You also want to invest the same energy in every country and every market, and the result must be without waves. You must select a country that is most suitable for you according to your existing ammunition, and use it as the entry point to carry out precise attacks, so that it is possible to have influence in local areas and then spread to the surrounding areas. The market of foreigners is also very mature. Don't always think about being fat at one bite.

Then what about foreign trade?

How to do foreign trade? First of all, analyze the market according to your company's products, find the best target market and determine the main promotion direction.

Many people don't know how to find the target market. For example, your product is sofa. If you rely on subjective assumptions, you must think that the United States should be the main market. But in fact, we can find through tool analysis that Brazil is the country with the highest search fever. Brazil has greater demand. So can you avoid the highly competitive American market and explore Brazil and even the United Kingdom, which has less competition and greater demand, What about the German and Indian markets?

Secondly, according to your product attributes, choose the promotion channel, and decide according to your product attributes.

What types of products are suitable for Alibaba International Station and what types are not?

Here's another explanation.

Everyone thought, why should we go to a platform for promotion? It's not that we value the large amount of traffic on the platform. We have the opportunity to obtain a large amount of free traffic through optimization. This can save a lot of money compared to paid click promotion. But what if you have few target customers on this platform and can't meet your needs with free traffic? If the platform is free, such as Taobao, it is just a waste of your labor costs and time costs, which is barely acceptable. But if the platform is paid, such as the platform use fee of nearly 30000 yuan per year, are you cost-effective? With this 30000 yuan to open paid clicks directly, you can get much more traffic on the platform!

So what product is not particularly suitable for Alibaba!

First of all, because of the popularity, your product keywords are rarely searched. Usually, the number of searches for popular products is only hundreds or even dozens of times per month. With such a small amount of traffic, you have to compete with dozens or even hundreds of peers. The result is that you get very little traffic, only single-digit inquiries per month. There are forty or fifty inquiries in a year, including a large number of garbage inquiries and price inquiries. Try to figure out whether your single inquiry cost is very expensive. It may reach the price of thousands of yuan per inquiry. So if you use this money to launch Google promotion, the single click payment is usually a few cents to a few dollars.

If you have a budget of 30000 yuan, think about it. According to the cost of 1 yuan per click, 30000 yuan will get 30000 visitors. Even if your official website is garbage, it has at least 1% of the inquiry conversion rate, which is also 300 inquiries. Besides, the official website adjusted by professional web page optimizer has the possibility of 20% of the inquiry conversion rate, which is 6000 inquiries by 20%. Do you feel terrible immediately.

According to this idea, thousands of products have been issued. Due to different keywords and titles, none of them is a duplicate product. The daily exposure of thousands of products is tens of thousands, and there will be dozens or even dozens of inquiries every day without driving through trains. If your product can have a large number of keywords like tires, then you must use the international station. This method is very convenient!