Are you looking to find customers for your
No matter, what your export-import business is exporting or selling, you need to know, how to get clients and how to keep them.
In the import-export business, finding clients and getting orders is not difficult if
What you need to do is to reach and approach potential clients, so they know you have the product they want to buy.
This article will give you ideas, how to get more clients and orders for your export import business or any other kind of business.
The article contains 2 parts.
At first, we will look how to determine your potential customers, create their personas and how to interact with them. Secondly, we will look, how to find them.
Related reading: Why foreign customers wont buy from you?
Get more ideas, what you can export and how: Best export import business ideas.
Who are your potential clients
You may have a very good products, you are sure a lot of people will need, but it is not enough.
Clients wont find you or your website just because you have started selling a product. In some cases, people can even use some of your products, but they may never use it again as they want to find another company which offers more personal or more suitable products for them. In the worst case cenario, they may even ask a refund from you.
So what is the problem which causes these unpleasant situations?
It is actually very simple, it is about not knowing to whom you are selling your products.
You can’t guess who will buy your products, nor can’t you default that everyone will be satisfied with your product, this is very normal.
However, if you prepare a few things before selling and promoting your products, you will certainly minimize the risk of refunding the payments, and you will get many more clients and orders.
The first step is to determine who will be your potential clients.
Potential clients are those who are willing to buy and would use the products you provide.
Unlike loyal customers who have purchased products and maintained a love of the products for a while, potential clients need time to interact first. They need experience and put trust in the products they’re looking into. So potential clients must become your customers first.
How to identify your clients
To understand who will be your potential clients, you can follow these tips.
Create client descriptions or customer personas
You can use questions like:
- Are your clients old, or young, male or female, urban or rural?
- Which channels do they usually choose to
search information about products?
- Why exactly they need your product?
- Which habits or hobbies do they have?
- How much is their average monthly income?
- What is their education?
Those previous questions are just the example. The answers to the questions will give you ideas and insights when interacting with people asking about your products. The target of making client descriptions or client personas is to make you understand, for what kind of people your products would be suitable and how to present your product to them in such a way, it would be personal to them.
You can try other descriptions or criterias if it is suitable your kind of Export – Import business. In business, understanding clients first is a smart step to achieve sustainable sales. If you only focus on sales, without knowing who exactly is your client, you will lose potential clients.
Determine your export – import business target market
Knowing who are your potential clients, is usually not enough, when you sell globally. Clients from different regions, countries will have different habits and behaviors, expectations. Sometimes if you understand where your clients are from, you will be able to predict their reactions that only in that area exist. From that, you can give your clients the best advice to select the right products.
If your company has its own website, (You can create your website here with low cost). Then you can connect google analytics with your website and this will give you exact overview, where people come to your website and what search phrases they use.
Now, after you have determined your clients and where they are from, it is time to prepare for approaching and interacting them.
Learn also: Export marketing- step-by step system to get export orders
Things need to do before and after meeting clients
Prepare to introduce your export import business/products.
Prepare the necessary information that you need to share when meeting your customers. Write down answers to clients’ questions about products and business activities they may ask. A careful preparation will help create a professional image for customers about your business. Client appreciation will help you easily get cooperation with them.
Check your company email, phone number, name cards to be always available so your clients can contact
Always have your phone available, so customers can contact you anytime. Prepare a professional email and don’t forget to check and reply to emails regularly, this will make customers feel secure that at any time, you can support them to solve the problems.
Prepare for presentations, check the suitable products, invitation letters (if have)
It’s always good to be on time when you’re meeting with customers, or a little earlier. Be prepared for products that are suitable for each customer segment, for example, for high-end customers, the product must be more special, style, more elaborate packaging.
You can compose e-mails or regular letters to schedule product launches. Eye-catching form and attractive content will make customers interested in learning about your products.
Organize your customer list
Always manage the list of customers, including name, phone numbers or emails, relevant information, so you can contact and recommend products to them. The longer the list, the more orders will be done. In direct calling, you can estimate about 5-10% of the prospects you approach will become your customers.
Include in your list the old, new and potential clients and regularly interact with them (keep your list warm).
Now, after you know who are your customers, where they from and you are prepared to approach and interact them, it is time to reach them!
There are many ways and methods to find clients, here we focus on 10 basic ways you can use:
9 – ways to get clients for your export import business
Internet gives you a plenty of options for finding clients for your export-import business.
If you are accustomed to using social networks or have at least one or two social media accounts then why not take advantage of these to find clients? Not only is it low cost, but the internet is also a fast distribution channel. Besides, there are many choices how you can use the internet for find customers.
1.Use digital marketing
Digital Marketing or online marketing is the perfect medium, which allows you reaching clients in a digital environment globally, and interacting with them.
It can be Digital marketing can be through interactive-forms, banners or adds on import-export service
Digital marketing is using internet, google, facebook, linkedin, youtube or other platforms paid adds and marketing services to reach to your target segments of people.
Digital marketing is still new and underestimated, and currently, still local businesses don’t use this method enough.
The cost of doing digital marketing is much lower, compared to traditional marketing.
To get best out from digital marketing, you should have a solid knowledge of the internet, SEO, copywriting, webdesign, creating appropriate content, google analytics etc.
2. Use social networks
Industry-related groups are places to get customers for your busines
Many free B2B and B2C groups are on LinkedIn, for all kinds of products and industries. Every company wishes to find a way to make a high-value connection without too much effort, then social networking is a great way to do that.
You can post a related photo showing your products and areas of business professionally on social networking sites to help increase the number of customers who know your website.
Try to connect with as many people as possible. The more connections you have, the wider your network coverage.
3. Create helpful content
This means creating and sharing information via your own blogs or in other platforms in the forms of: news, videos, photos, newspapers, ebooks, infographics, case studies, answering questions, etc. This is a great way to find customers trough providing helpful information to your potential clients first..
Blogging is the perfect to keep readers coming back often and it helps boost your ranking on the search engines. Google and other search engines appreciate websites that update frequently.
First choose a suitable platforms that best fits your business. Whether it’s your own blog, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, youtube, Pinterest or Quora, etc. This is a longterm strategy, it wont give you immediate effects, but it will certainly help you promote your brand, and bring you a sales in the long run
4. Leverage direct marketing
Nowadays, the SMS and phone marketing is
The phone numbers, where you are sending the addvertisments, must have been collected in the legal way. Also the persons shall have been giving their consent of sharing their cell nr,s for advertising purpose!!
Best way is to collect interested prospects cell nr,s and emails on your website, using an interactive form for it.
The content of SMS, email you send, needs to be concise so that clients are most receptive.
You need to present the information of the product or service you are providing to clients, in a impressive and engaging way. It will increase the percentage of clients reading your message content carefully.
Offers shall be as personal as possible.
In this type of direct marketing, to get clients for your import-export or any other type business, a proper segmentation of your list is crucial. It means, your list must be organized and segmented so, that you can send customized and personal messages to the different segments.
5. Meet clients in personal (for selected prospects only)
Before talking to business, win the trust of your potential clients. Old style business meetings are still best for this. This is most effective, but not scaleable, so this approach you can use for big potential prospect only.
To do this effectively, before meeting, you shall find out are there some common things between you and your potential client? Learn, does their company recently appeared in the newspaper or not? Are their business values, priorities similar to you or not?
Sometimes salespeople who talk constantly when meeting clients are not only annoying to clients but also easy to lose orders. Therefore, you should listen to your clients for at least half of the talk time.
That’s why, before meeting and discussions, you should do “homework”. One should know what is really important to your customer, what are their biggest obstacles, fears. But sometimes these insights you can only discover during discussion and listeing of your potential customer. It means listening and understanding your clients are crucially important.
You can improve your listening skills by taking notes, observing your clients’ gestures, attitudes, not making hasty conclusions and focusing on what your clients are saying. Basic understanding about behavioral psyhology is also important.
6. Arrange seminars
Instead of meeting with few prospects in person, good alternative is arranging the seminars.
This is an opportunity for you to develop beneficial relationships, thereby building the image of your businesses in the community. It can be said that the workshops are an opportunity to attract clients and the public’s attention to the business.
Important for arranging the traditional seminar successfully as follows:
– Information/profile of attendees
– Workshop space
– Speakers, presentation content
– Invite reporters or journalists
– Designing invitation cards for guests
– Print documents and basic items
– Guest gifts, games for events and gift giver assignments
In nowadays, it is easy and cheap arrange the online seminars – webinars. It is not same effective than offline seminars but still highly effective, as they allow participants to interact with you, ask questions.
7. Service your old clients
This is exactly what you need to do to create loyal clients for your business who are also reffering your business to the new potential clients.
Ex-clients are extremely beneficial for your business. Research shows that the cost to retain old clients is only 1/7 to 1/6 compared to the cost of having new clients. The average repeat clients will spend 67% more. So at least your business will grow 25% only with old clients.
So always show caring in clients who have used your product. Implement a few simple methods of keeping in touch with clients, such as email, monthly phone calls, it will ensure clients do not feel abandoned after purchase.
If you have lost some clients, you can send email indicating that the business is sorry that they have stopped buying and offer them a discount. Sometimes you should limit the number to 5-7 messages if clients do not give positive feedback.
8. Build more relationships
In life you known many people, old classmates, acquaintances of acquaintances, friends of friends, friends of colleagues in the old and current companies … this is a very useful customer base that you can exploit.
You can take advantage of line-marketing. For example, a person who buys a car, he or she could be a middle-class, upper-class person or a car buyer for the business, they might have relationships with many of people who have the same level to them.
So why don’t you take advantage of building relationships? Maybe next time they will invite their friends to try your products.
9. Travel overseas to collect information and overseas clients
Travel today is not difficult, there are many forms of travel you can choose, independent or via delegation under some trade organization.
Going abroad, in addition to taking time to rest after hard working days, you also have the opportunity to learn many things in a new environment, how people live their lives in other countries, thereby helping you to have many new ideas for your business.
I would advise visiting your business-industry trade fares and expos, to create more connections and get potential clients.
During each trip you will always meet new prospects, they also love to interact with people from other places. Take advantage of the opportunity to introduce your business and its products or services – you will get many international orders.
To get more ideas, how to get more clients for your export-import business, read: how to find international buyers for goods to export.
Conclusion
To be successful with potential, old and present customers, you need to always learn and practice new skills. Skills related to online marketing, behavioral psychology, public speaking, communication are very important. Especially, nowadays anyone looking to run and grow any kind of business, one needs to stay constantly updated with the digital technologies and ways for marketing your business online. Any way, professionalism, and prestige will always be the key to keeping your clients and getting new ones.
We have online courses and training programs, where we teach you, how to get clients and orders, based on our own experiences. You can check our export-import training programs.