General

The top priority for all foreign trade enterprises to do a good job in foreign trade exports is to quickly find high-quality foreign trade customers and orders. Without the achievement of orders, all efforts are for the sake of labor, and there is a possibility of falling into a false prosperity. They are busy every day, but have no results. Today, the editor will share 9 methods for foreign trade to find customers?

1. Entering B2B for foreign trade and operating customer traffic in foreign trade public domain

There are only a few large B2B platforms in China, with overall traffic declining. Enterprises and platforms need to make more efforts and expenses to maintain their original traffic. The advantages and disadvantages of using foreign trade B2B to find customers are very obvious. The advantage is that B2B platforms have no time and space limitations, and can display their promotion pages to customers all day long for brand and product promotion; The drawbacks are also obvious, which are customer resource sharing, customer comparison of goods, severe bargaining, and high conversion costs.

2. Discovering foreign trade customers during overseas exhibitions and domestic export-oriented exhibitions

If you want to find customers for foreign trade and receive orders, you can participate in various industry exhibitions and international exhibitions, and have face-to-face communication with customers. It is efficient, easy to establish trust, and efficient in receiving orders. It is also a reflection of the strength of the enterprise, but the disadvantage is that the number of overseas foreign trade enterprises participating is limited, usually with a majority of foreign trade customers in local countries and surrounding regions; There are restrictions on the exhibition's holding cycle, usually 1 or 2 years, and some even hold once every 3 years. It is not recommended to use it as a single order receiving channel.

3. Using Big Data Precision Marketing Platform to Find Foreign Trade Customers

Using the big data precision marketing platform for foreign trade to find customers can accurately, directly, quickly and efficiently identify precise buyers who are in demand and are purchasing target products. At the same time, transaction chain analysis can be conducted on the target buyers to evaluate their purchase price range, procurement channels, procurement regions, procurement product structure, procurement scale, etc. In the post pandemic era, some stable procurement can be efficiently discovered, Foreign trade customers with strong risk resistance.

If we manually analyze the raw data and then send development letters one by one, the efficiency is relatively low and the order issuance cycle is relatively long.

4. Using a group of independent foreign trade stations to find foreign trade customers

Brand independent station group marketing can integrate B2B platform customer acquisition and traffic customer acquisition. In theory, long-term promotion will have better results than B2B. But this requires you to have the ability to do it, as it requires a high technical threshold and requires technical personnel who are proficient in SEO website maintenance. Because building a website alone is not very effective, it requires long-term maintenance, optimization, and drainage to be effective. So if the company has talent in this area, this approach is also a great way to develop, and the return is also high, with sustainability.

5. Finding Foreign Trade Customers through Social Media Marketing

Tiktok Overseas is a typical example of the popular short video marketing. For short video websites with large global traffic, the influence of video is very good. Of course, the basic operation of short video is necessary. It is best to have a team to operate, with professional personnel to operate from script, design, shooting, editing, and placement. Nowadays, there are also many outsourcing service teams doing short video marketing. The core part of this is content marketing, content output, and continuous themed original creation, which will be popular on the platform and will receive more traffic push.

Social media marketing is one of the few marketing methods that can achieve one-to-many goals. However, social media accounts need to be managed and gradually cultivated, resulting in better results. Therefore, it is recommended that foreign trade salespeople operate their own methods of finding customers for foreign trade. If they persist for a long time, the results will gradually show.

6. National Industry Associations

Through industry associations, China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, and trade center meetings in various countries, foreign trade personnel can search for information about some buyers, as well as understand the situation of manufacturers and distributors in the industry, which is greatly helpful for enterprises to further understand the regional market. At the same time, some overseas buyers who are not familiar with the situation of domestic suppliers will entrust these industry associations and others to recommend suppliers. In the early stages of our reform and opening up, This is a very important way for foreign trade to find customers.

7. Searching for foreign trade customers through brand merchants

At the beginning of the reform and opening up, there were many export modes of "three processing and one compensation". Now there are still a large number of domestic manufacturers carrying out OEM original equipment manufacturer for overseas brand names. If we find out the brand owners behind them through brand names, we can directly communicate with brand names and accept their OEM orders, which is also a proactive way to find customers in foreign trade.

8. Search for foreign trade customers through industry leading websites

Industry leading customers or customers at the same level in the industry have the potential to transform into our customers. So, if foreign trade enterprises want to accept more foreign trade orders and dig into the "corner" of industry leaders, it is a good choice. Of course, we advocate more for healthy competition, so that our Chinese enterprises can better navigate the international market with ease.

Many industry leading enterprises will publicly disclose their distributors or agents on their websites. If their products have a competitive advantage in price or quality, they can contact these agents or distributors to recommend their products or develop distribution channels.

9. Identify foreign trade customers through large traders

There are two ways to develop foreign trade customers through large traders. The first way is for large trade associations to connect with orders from some foreign trade factories. In reality, there are many large factories with a large number of foreign trade orders and orders, and relying solely on their own production capacity, they cannot complete the delivery time on time. They often outsource some of their production, which is the opportunity for many small factories to survive. The second method is to discover the end customers of traders, who will sell their products again after purchasing them. Their original buyers are also your buyer buyers, and you can abandon intermediaries. This method is equivalent to changing the mindset of accepting foreign trade orders, but the disadvantage is also obvious. It will also face competition from domestic and foreign peers, which is more suitable for enterprises with high product quality, but can control costs, and large shipments.