General

Foreign trade refers to the exchange of goods, services, and technology between one country and another. Simply put, it means selling our local products overseas. The domestic market has gradually become saturated, and it is necessary for an enterprise to achieve better development and access to the foreign trade market. Through the foreign trade market, an enterprise can expand its overseas market and obtain more profits. However, due to the lack of experience in foreign trade seeking customers in many factories, foreign trade exports are not very smooth. So what are the channels for foreign trade to find customers? Below are some recommended methods for finding customers in foreign trade, hoping to be helpful to you.

1. Receiving orders through B2B platform

You can gain exposure through some reliable B2B platforms. It is important to find a large and secure platform, and pay attention to your own identification. You can use webmaster tools to query website details. Generally, larger platforms have high traffic and mature operating models. If your product belongs to the category of small commodities, you can also use a B2B platform for small commodity trading. The operation mode is: publishing sales information → paying attention to procurement information → obtaining good rankings through the website → searching for target customers, increasing exposure, and actively mining customer information to obtain orders.

The disadvantage is that the threshold is relatively high. These platforms have thousands of companies, so whoever can stand out can gain more exposure. Faced with this situation, many companies will invest money in them, and if they don't, they often have to slowly follow the trend and wait for customers.

2. Participating in large-scale exhibitions and seeking customers for foreign trade

In addition to promoting through online businesses, we also need to promote offline. For example, attending more exhibitions in related industries is an excellent opportunity to obtain foreign trade orders. Whether it is a domestic research association or a foreign exhibition, we can choose to participate in heavier ones first. It is relatively easy to achieve cooperation by communicating more with people attending exhibitions.

It is also possible to participate in more activities within the business circle, including gatherings between friends and colleagues before, and introduce each other among friends, which will quickly establish your business circle. If communication is smooth and understanding is deep enough, there is still a greater chance of signing orders now.

The disadvantage is that there are more and more companies engaged in foreign trade, and if you don't have core competitiveness, it will be difficult for you to stand out among many competitors.

3. Purchase software for foreign trade customer search

There are too many software for finding customers in foreign trade on the market, and there is a lot of water in it, many of which are very pitted. You can take a look at another article I wrote about the key points to pay attention to when looking for overseas customer software. This is a rational view.

The disadvantage is that there are many unreliable software, which requires you to take time to carefully consider. Additionally, the price is generally relatively expensive.

4. Social platforms

You can register your own well-known social media accounts such as Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Messenger, and join relevant groups to communicate more. This way, the content is simple and the form is free.

The disadvantage is that relying solely on one's own social platform may not be able to accurately obtain accurate customer contact information. Others may only occasionally participate in a certain topic, and it is difficult to determine whether it is accurate.

5. Google Search

Google is recognized as a widely influential search engine on the Internet, with simple and free operation. Relying on continuous changes in personal thinking often leads to unexpected development outcomes. Google has held up half of the sky, and foreigners mostly search for relevant information through Google, which is equivalent to Baidu in China.

The disadvantage is that Google's information is complex and needs to be filtered out from tens of millions of data, which is both time-consuming and laborious. Moreover, the screened data may not necessarily be effective, and the inefficiency is relatively high.

6. Customs data

It can be used for data analysis to understand the export situation of competitors, who potential buyers are still cooperating with, and which customer groups are in urgent need of procurement. Through email search software, precise contact information for buyers can be found and customers can be developed. Convenient to directly understand customers' needs and demands, which can improve order conversion.