General

"At present, building your own independent station or enterprise is the most active and effective way to upgrade the marketing network and go overseas." Li Liyuan, COO of Xiamen Gudao Group, was recently sponsored by the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade. The 2022 RCEP Policy Interpretation and Utilization Training Seminar held that under the epidemic, it has become more difficult for enterprises to develop customers and obtain orders through offline exhibitions; the impact of the epidemic continues, and offline enterprises have joined well-known B2B platforms at home and abroad. As the entry team becomes larger and larger, the traffic of the B2B platform has entered a saturated state, and there has been a situation of "more monks and less porridge", which has led to very fierce competition on the entire platform, and the cost of platform traffic has continued to rise.

Li Liyuan said that for small and medium-sized enterprises that have only joined the B2B platform now, the cost-effectiveness of their cost investment will be very low. Therefore, more and more small and medium-sized enterprises are beginning to explore new paths, build their own independent websites, manage their own private domain traffic, and develop their own potential customers.

An independent website, as the name suggests, is a website with an independent domain name, which refers to an independent website established by a foreign trade enterprise to carry out e-commerce business such as commodity sales, payment, and after-sales. Last year, the General Office of the State Council issued the "Opinions on Accelerating the Development of New Formats and New Models of Foreign Trade", which proposed to support the development and growth of foreign trade subdivision service platforms. These include "encouraging foreign trade enterprises to build their own independent stations, and supporting professional website building platforms to optimize and improve service capabilities."

What are the advantages of building an independent website for enterprises? Li Liyuan said that the first is to build a corporate brand. Through the independent website, the enterprise creates an independent domain name and homepage, establishes the corporate brand image, allows overseas buyers to understand the company's strength, service ability and responsibility after contract performance, and enhances the trust of overseas buyers.

The second is data security and stability. The independent station is built by the enterprise around its own server address and content. All data belongs to the enterprise itself, the information is 100% privatized, and the private domain traffic of the enterprise can also be accumulated. At the same time, by operating independent stations, enterprises can obtain the latest global business opportunities and market conditions in a timely manner, and grasp the changes in the global supply and demand relationship, so as to give full play to the continuous value of big data.

The third is marketing and promotion. Enterprises can build independent stations according to their own methods and styles. All marketing promotions are made by themselves. The degree of liberalization is very high. At the same time, it can save a lot of costs and increase the space for product premiums.

Fourth, the cost is predictable and controllable. The technology of building an independent station is relatively mature, so the threshold for building a website is low, and the cost is high.

The purpose of being an independent station is to allow more overseas buyers to see their own products, corporate advantages and characteristics, and to allow domestic and foreign trade companies to achieve their brands overseas. Li Liyuan emphasized that after the independent website is established, it is necessary to make good use of search engines, social media and other promotion and drainage platforms. How to obtain and convert these traffic into private domain traffic of independent websites is the key to whether the enterprise can successfully build a brand.

Building an independent foreign trade station requires four major links. Li Liyuan introduced that, first, the marketing establishment, analysis of major regions, countries, languages, industry market conditions, equipment used, and product keywords, positioning the website layout and website style according to the analysis results, and completing the basic construction of English main website and minor language websites. Second, marketing promotion, optimize and upgrade the website, carry out double optimization and promotion of on-site and off-site SEO (search engine optimization) + SEM (search engine marketing), and improve the quality of the website. Third, inquiry conversion. After the website starts to operate, it will track the details of website visitors, understand the browsing behavior of visitors, track inquiries customers on social media, and enhance the order conversion rate through multiple channels. Fourth, after-sales management should standardize customers, order management, and business processes, form existing customer profiles, deeply mine procurement data and transaction data, and develop new customers.