Khizar Mehmood 15 October 2021

Categories B2B, Customer Experience, Ecommerce

International B2B Trade Platforms: A Better Way of Connecting with Buyers in 2021

When we talk about getting in touch with buyers; local and international are all included. A business that has made its mark within its native country by catering to the needs of the population there begins to think of expanding its operations to international markets. However, it is necessary to realize the limitations imposed by the utilization of conventional methods of finding customers.

The efficiency of traditional trading strategies results in more losses than profits. Therefore, it is time to shift gears while adapting to modernized ways of selling products in bulk internationally. What I am referring to is letting the internet and other technological advancements take your venture to new heights.

You use the web to text your friends and loved ones, order food, buy clothes, pay utility bills, etc. Doesn't it sound like a sensible thing to let digitalization attract buyers while contributing to significant boosts in the company's annual revenues and returns? 

What is Digitalization?

It is vital to learn some basic information before diving into the details so that everyone is on the same page. Digitalization relates to the usage of technology to revamp business practices. This leads to notable spikes in sales and gives birth to exciting opportunities.

Think about it; you can send a message to someone sitting in another corner of the world in the blink of an eye through the internet. In contrast, mail takes time to deliver depending upon the distance. Imagine how quickly you would be able to communicate with a prospective buyer. 

Negotiations with international clients can be completed within a matter of minutes or hours. It may even take a few days, but it is still less compared to the time taken by an offline, traditional trading strategy to finalize a single deal.

Instant messaging is not the only thing a business benefits from, as there is a lot more to learn about a fully digitalized venture. This includes innovative marketing and sales strategies to build an extensively diverse clientele with buyers living in different areas of the world. 

Create a Website for your Business 

Open up a browser on a laptop or smartphone, and search for any product. Numerous websites belonging to different companies will pop up. You will find the required products posted on those sites, along with the prices, information, and the option to place online orders. There's also a feature that allows you to communicate with prospective buyers via instant messaging effectively.

To sum it up, having a website makes the interaction between a business and its target audience relatively efficient. Creating a website to ease the trading process is a crucial part of digitalizing your business. This is where ecommerce (electronic commerce) is incorporated within a venture's selling activities. The online submission of orders of products and completion of deals allows a business to cut down operating costs to a great extent. 

Once you start selling online, buyers living in any country can easily view products on your website, ask relevant queries, and finalize orders while awaiting delivery. However, it is necessary to realize that all of this is not as easy as it seems. Putting out a website is not enough, as generating leads from potential customers takes planning and implementation of adequate marketing strategies. 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) 

SEO is all about boosting your venture's web presence. These measures are aimed at increasing the visibility of your business website. This ensures that it appears among the top links when people search for the products you offer. The higher the website appears, the more chances you have of securing orders from customers across the globe. SEO is considered a valuable lead generation technique within the ecommerce sector. 

Which search engine do you use on a daily basis? People mostly use Google and Bing to surf the web for a variety of purposes. These search engines crawl every page on a website to learn everything about it. After reading each page, it puts them in an index where algorithms perform an in-depth analysis. Pages are comprehended on the basis of several ranking factors. 

All of this determines the order of pages they should turn up when searched by a user. The search bots figure out which website or page would be most useful to the user and ranks them accordingly. Before you ponder upon it, note that it is not possible to pay a search engine to show your website at the top. 

Multiple factors contribute to the higher ranking of your website. These include content quality, speed, keyword research, and more. SEO means optimizing the website to make it user-friendly, informative, and better in every aspect. You would have to hire SEO experts to digitalize your business successfully. 

This may seem like a hectic task at the moment, but the short and long-term returns are beyond anyone's expectations. If you manage to get your ecommerce website to the top, the majority of the buyers within the industry will start purchasing. Annual sales and profits would climb exponentially to an extent where the costs of your endeavors to get there will become negligible.

 

Enterprise Resource Planning Integration 

ERP software integration is all about automating the crucial parts of your business operations. These include sales, marketing, supply chain, etc. It gathers all the data from various departments to show it via a single source. Not only does ERP make it easier for a business to function, but it also enhances the customer experience. 

It looks after the billing process, orders and allows the buyers to track their shipment while in transit. The last time I checked, satisfying customers and improving their experience contributes to making any business successful and compete with others. 

ERP integration gives everyone who's a part of the company access to unified information. This boosts the efficiency of your business to a great extent and promotes collaboration among departments by smoothening the flow of important data. In addition to this, the digital commerce interaction between a business and its buyers becomes highly effective. 

From a business person's perspective, ERP offers interesting modules such as omnichannel commerce, human resource planning (HRP), supply chain management (SCM), customer relationship management (CRM), and electronic data interchange (EDI). All of this proves advantageous for a company that wants to attract, satisfy, and retain buyers from all over the globe. 

ERP provides helpful intelligence insights into the ever-changing demands of buyers worldwide. Businesses can use the information provided by these systems to keep catering to the existing customers as well as attracting new ones.

Consistently learning about your clientele and prospects also allows you to offer personalized experiences, which is a necessity in today's era. Extensive automation simply accelerates the entire business functions, bringing in maximized revenues and returns quickly. 

Social Media Marketing

Social media applications include Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, etc. I am sure you use some of these apps to stay connected with your friends, keep up with the trends, and other personal reasons. However, it is time to incorporate these apps within your business practices. 

It is the perfect way of sharing real-time information with prospective buyers and interacting with them. Furthermore, you get a chance to extend your reach through such digital platforms. You can create social media profiles to represent your business while promoting the products it offers. Numerous benefits of social media marketing include; 

• Attract buyers from various areas of the world.
• Build a loyal clientele and get instant feedback from buyers. 
• Track the progress of your competitors and plan for the future accordingly.
• Stay updated about the recent influential events within your industry.
• Save significant marketing expenses. 
• Market research becomes easy.

Needless to say, enhanced awareness about your brand within the market brings in more buyers while boosting revenues and profits exponentially. You can post images of the products, update prices whenever required, and give new information to buyers without any delays. 

There are a few things you need to be careful of while practicing this strategy. Social media improves your company's web presence but requires daily monitoring. Moreover, you need to have precisely devised social media marketing plans to reap the benefits fully. An online presence makes a business vulnerable to hacks and leaks, so make sure to emply adequate resources for additional security.

Is This all you Need to Make your Business Successful Globally? 

These strategies are undoubtedly going to put your business at the top. However, the additional resources you would need to employ to implement them is another story. You require a website developer, SEO expert, social media specialist, hire a third party for ERP integration, and a lot more. If all of this sounds like a tiresome task with unwanted hikes in operating costs, let me tell you of an alternative. 

You could say that I have been saving the best for last as working within an international B2B trade platform would solve all your troubles. B2B refers to business-to-business dealings, and it is a rapidly evolving branch of ecommerce.

All you have to do is select a B2B firm, visit its website or mobile application, and register your business to adapt to the newer ways of trading. The services and user experience offered by B2B portals vary. Selecting the right one is essential and highly dependent on your research to learn about each firm. 

Everything you Need to Know about Foreign Trade B2B Platforms

Whether you run a manufacturing business or operate as a supplier, exporter, or distributor, working with an international B2B trade platform is the most favorable way of going forward. B2B firms connect businesses across the globe to enable them to indulge in trading activities. This is a better way of connecting with buyers nowadays since it does not operate with the restrictions of time zones and borders. 

You can secure sizeable orders from someone living in America, Germany, China, France, Korea, even a remote area. Similarly, if you want to procure raw materials or any other product, a B2B ecommerce marketplace is where such demands are fulfilled seamlessly. These platforms cater to every industry with no exceptions. 

Collaborating with a renowned B2B platform puts your business on a path to innovation since every strategy discussed above is included in the services these firms provide. You no longer need to pay for additional resources to get things done as a B2B portal will take care of it all. Below is a list of the leading foreign trade B2B platforms in 2021; 

1. Alibaba
2. TradeWheel.com 
3. ECVV
4. GlobalSources 
5. Made-In-China 
6. HKTDC 
7. Dhgate 
8. iOffer 
9. Exporthub 
10. Fibre2Fashion 

Having difficulty in communicating with overseas buyers due to a linguistic barrier? Representatives of B2B portals can negotiate on your behalf or mediate the meetings to bridge such hurdles, contributing to the effective finalization of profitable agreements. Consequently, this leaves no room for misunderstanding or confusion between buyers and sellers. 

Your business enjoys a prestigious position internationally as a firm that has not only an extended reach but also the tools and personnel needed to secure deals with established companies across the globe.

Think about it; on the one hand, you can implement all those strategies yourself while incurring huge costs. While on another, you simply choose a B2B platform, and they'll deploy their resources to make sure your business gets the recognition it deserves. The outcomes of the latter are indeed much better, so what's it going to be?