General

Foreign trade personnel are well aware that by mastering the buyer's resources, they have a powerful weapon to defeat their competitors. How can we obtain buyer information or monitor competitor information? Customs data plays a crucial role. Only by conducting in-depth research on customs data and accurately grasping their dynamics can we truly know ourselves and our opponents, defeat them, and become the ultimate winner. Today, the editor will summarize the advantages and disadvantages of customs data, so that customs data can help foreign trade enterprises achieve maximum benefits.

Customs data is a collective term for bill of lading and customs declaration data. Through these essential import and export documents, one can intuitively understand the purchaser, supplier, and detailed information of each imported goods. And this information is an essential tool and data support to assist international trade.

Foreign trade personnel are well aware that by mastering the buyer's resources, they have a powerful weapon to defeat their competitors. How can I obtain buyer information or monitor competitor information?

Customs data plays a crucial role. Only by conducting in-depth research on customs data and accurately grasping their dynamics can we truly know ourselves and our opponents, defeat them, and become the ultimate winner.

Today, I learned that the editor will summarize the advantages and disadvantages of customs data, so that customs data can help foreign trade enterprises achieve maximum benefits.

1、 Advantages of Customs Data

1. Mastering buyer procurement patterns and quickly identifying customers

The customs bill of lading is a transaction voucher for both the buyer and the seller, and is updated monthly. It not only ensures the authenticity, accuracy, and timeliness of the buyer's information, but also is the current active buyer. By querying and analyzing their transaction records, it is possible to have a clear understanding of the buyer's purchasing products and capabilities, in order to find the most suitable buyer for oneself.

By tracking and analyzing the transaction records of buyers, the relationship between their product quantity, shipping time, and replenishment time can be discovered, and the purchasing patterns of buyers can be identified. Recommend company products to buyers at the best time to increase hit rates.

2. Understand peer export intelligence and monitor competitors

By tracking the transaction records of buyers, we can identify other suppliers of similar products and their share changes in the transaction. At the same time, we can track the transaction records of competitors throughout the process, grasp their buyer information and transaction records, and analyze the background and production and operation status of competitors, truly realizing the goal of knowing oneself and the other, so as to flexibly and targeted adjust our market strategy and put ourselves in a favorable position in competition.

3. Enhance the loyalty of existing buyers and recover customers who are about to suffer losses

There are more and more channels for customers to obtain suppliers, and they may be poached by competitors at any time.

So we need to constantly monitor our old customers, regularly monitor their transaction records, and if the purchaser changes suppliers, we need to understand our competitors,

By comparing and analyzing competitors and oneself, identify the problems with one's own products, make targeted improvements, further consolidate customer relationships, and enhance customer value. According to the abnormal situation of orders, it is also possible to grasp the possible trends of buyers in advance, improve or adjust existing market strategies, and avoid risks.

2、 Disadvantages of customs data

1. Not all buyers are importers

Anyone who has used it knows that there are freight forwarding companies and shipping companies on the customs data. Due to customs transaction information, some importers are indeed not purchasers, and purchasers may have reported through freight forwarders or shipping companies at that time, so the displayed information is freight forwarders or shipping companies.

So after we find the purchaser, we must have a detailed understanding of the customer to determine the true purchaser, and then develop contacts.

2. No contact information available

The original customs data does not have a contact information, why does the data service provider have a contact information?

They usually use other auxiliary tools to gather contact information on the internet. Some of these contact information are available, while others may have expired.

So in the process of developing customers, we cannot completely rely on the existing contact information above. As long as you find the list of buyers, you need to find ways to obtain more information about customers.

3. Limited coverage of customs data in countries

Some friends may think that with customs data, there are global buyers. Customs data is not available in all countries, and there are currently trade intelligence in customs data, with no more than 40 open countries. Mainly there are more customers in the Americas.

3、 How to use customs data?

Many people use customs data to directly search for customers by product, find their contact information, and send emails. As a result, many development letters have been sent, but few replies have been received. If you use customs data to develop customers in this way, being able to develop them can only indicate luck, and not being able to develop them is normal. Don't complain, you should find your own reason. Since you have spent money, you must use the correct method to use it, otherwise it is really a waste of money, It's better to buy a buyer's email directly and send it to the group.

1. Analysis and screening of buyers

The purchasers in customs data are available in various industries. The first step is to find suitable customers and compare the number of times the purchasers purchase and operate related products with the number of times all products are purchased to confirm whether the customers are professional buyers.

After preliminary screening and finding professional buyers, analyze the customer's purchasing habits based on data, and determine whether to match suitable customers based on the specific information of each purchase by the customer.

Judging the customer's preference for the product based on which regions they have previously purchased from, including those who have been purchasing from Europe and those who have been purchasing from India, can also be helpful in understanding whether the customer cares about quality or price.

By analyzing the customer's procurement time, we can predict the next procurement time. Some customers make purchases in the second half of the year, while others make purchases every month. Different customers will definitely have different contact times, and finding the right time to contact will increase the probability of customer response.

2. Focus on competitors

For the matching buyers that have already been analyzed, it is important to focus on their existing suppliers and do some homework before contacting the buyers to identify their strengths.

You can also start looking for customers from competitors and find competitors with comparable strength in the market, especially those with higher prices and similar quality, or those with lower quality and similar prices. Because of their comparable strength, you can definitely do the same for customers that your peers can do, which saves a lot of time and effort for screening.

3. Deep excavation of contacts

Many people directly copy their email and send the data after receiving it, but if you don't find the right person, it's difficult to have any effect.

After the company name is found, the next thing to look for is the relevant person in charge. Small companies usually look for the owner, president or CEO directly. Large companies need to look for the functional heads of relevant departments, such as buyer, purchasing, department or some product engineers. Different customers may have different persons in charge. LinkedIn is a very good channel to directly find the names of personnel in relevant positions, It would be much better to find a contact information with a name, or you can directly go to the customer's official Facebook page and send a message to ask the buyer's email, which is valid for personal testing.