Marketing or International Trading

Many of my friends are involved in 'International Trading'. We call it marketing, here in Canada, plain old selling. While China has a huge population, the market for manufactured products is much larger outside of China.

China itself is a large market for certain products but one has to consider the differences between selling within China and selling outside of China. How do you market things outside of China? From what I see, not many companies know how this is done. Sure, you can try to sell things through a hotmail account or sign up for a website with Alibaba but I don't think you'll have much luck. Certainly not in a business to business situation, and probably not in a retail situation. Retail means selling to a person as opposed to a company. 

Here are some steps that you or your company can use to market your products all over the world. Good luck! For more information, contact me personally. I'm a writer but I've been in sales for most of my adult life. 

1. Get a website of your own. If I am looking for something, I sure don't go to Alibaba and look. I search on Google and go to a website that has information about the product that I'm looking for. Make sure it's a .com site. Make sure it's easy to remember. Make sure your English is perfect on the site and that everything to do with the site is professional, clean and polished. 

2. Answer EVERY email in perfect English. Don't try to figure out what the person wants to know, ask a professional native English speaker. If you speak English with a bit of an accent, use the telephone. International rates are cheap and a personal call goes a long way to making the customer feel secure.

3. Get your product into the hands of the consumer. Spend some money and find a company that will market your products in the North American market or the European market. Look for reliable distributors. If you sell a certain product, make sure that the distributor is familiar with marketing that product. Look for professional reps, not discount reps. 

4. Ensure that everyone that is involved with the customer is proficient in English. If the customer senses that they are dealing with a company that doesn't understand their needs, they will take their business elsewhere. Competition is fierce in China and all over the world. If you stand out, your customer will remember. 

5. Explore the market. Get to know who is doing the same thing that you are doing. Find out how they market their products. Don't assume that you're the first company to do whatever it is that you are doing. 

6. Have one of your trusted employees get a job with your competitor. Let your competitor teach your employee how the business is run. Then, take the employee back into your company as a trainer for your other workers. 

7. There are trade fairs all over North America and Europe. Spend a bit of your advertising budget and get your products into the hands of the people who actually use them.

8. Investigate the give-away or promotion market. There are television sales networks in North America who are looking for products to offer to their customers. Knowing your market in North America will help you sell here. 

Thanks for reading.