How to Search Customs Data Like an Expert Part 1: Finding International Buyers
![How to search customs data](https://www.gotchafast.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/How-to-Search-Customs-Data-1.png)
Customs Data is the import/export records of shipments into and out of a country. If you’re not familiar with what customs data is, please see this earlier article, and then come back here and continue reading. There are many uses of customs data, and different use cases call for different methods of searching. That said, the most common uses of customs data are finding international buyers, finding suppliers, and following competitors.
Figuring out how to search customs data can be a challenge, therefore to better understand how to use customs data search, we’ve created a three part series to teach users who to use customs data to achieve business objectives. This article is part one, which focuses on how to search customs data to find international buyers.
Table of Contents
Use Case: Finding International Buyers
For companies who are in the export business, it’s essential to constantly prospect the market in order to find new buyers of their products. There are many methods of doing this such as attending trade fairs, using free platforms like Linkedin or Google Maps, and many more. However, one negative of each of these ways is that it’s hard to determine how accurate and serious a potential buyer may be. For example, if you find a potential client on Linkedin, there’s no way to know how big the company is, how often they purchase your product, or if they really purchase it at all. This fact is what gives an advantage to the use of customs data for prospecting clients. When viewing customs data records, every single company that has imported the product that you sell is undeniably a potential client, as they have a proven history of importing the very goods you sell.
That said, it’s essential for you to perform the search accurately in order to retrieve data. If you enter incorrect search criteria, the trade records that you retrieve via your search will be inaccurate, and the data you retrieve will be a waste of your time. Knowing how to search customs data accurately is critical. That’s why you must follow a logical approach to searching customs data, which we’ll outline now.
The process for finding clients with customs data:
Step 1: Identify your product’s HS Code
The first step in learning how to search customs data is to understand HS Codes. HS Code stands for “harmonized system”, and is a numbering system for the classification of goods. Each type of good that is imported/exported will have a corresponding HS Code, which identifies what that good is.
For example, the HS Code for a smartphone is 851713, and is the description of this HS Code is, “Telephone sets; smartphones for cellular or other wireless networks”. If you’re in the business of exporting smartphones and you fill out a bill of lading, you’d need to write this code in your bill of lading.
![A visual demonstration of how HS Codes work, illustrating the different components as the progress from left to right.](https://www.gotchafast.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/HS-Code-Component-visual-description.png)
This HS Code itself consist of several parts, progressing from left to right. The first two digits 85, represent all electrical machinery. The next two digits further narrow down of electrical machinery. For example, 8516 represents electric heaters, while 8518 represents microphones. However, our product (smartphones), belongs to the subset 8517, which is for telephone sets. The next two digits in the 6 digit HS code represent a further narrowing down of telephone sets. For example, 851711 represents line telephone sets while 851713 represents smartphones.
The first six digits of an HS code, which we’ve just gone over, are standardized for every country, but HS Codes also often have subsequent digits may by different in different countries. For example, in the United States, a smartphones HS code (which is called HTS in the USA), is 8517130020, while in the European Union the HS code (which is called TARIC in the EU) is 8517130010. Because of these varieties in HS Codes from country to country, when searching for customs data, it’s generally best to stick to the six digit standardized HS Code, as opposed to the much more narrow national varieties.
To search and find your HS Code, you can use GotchaFast’s free HS Code search tool.
Step 2: Identify common product names used in bills of lading
Once you’ve identified the proper HS Code for the product you would like to export, it’s also a good idea to find out what names are commonly used in the product description section of Bills of Lading for your product. This is a much harder task than finding your HS Code because unlike HS Codes, there is no standardized language used for different products. For example, if we’re exporting smartphones, someone may use any of the terms, “Cell Phone”, “Mobile Phone”, or “Smartphone”, each of which accurately describe the product.
To make things more complicated, there are many countries that do not use English as the language for customs data. This leaves us with two problems to solve:
- Figuring out what common terms are used to describe the product, and
- Figuring out which language to search in
Fortunately, both of these problems are generally solved with a simple broad customs search. For the problem of figuring out what common terms are used, simply perform a search with only your product’s HS code, then collect the various product descriptions used to describe your product. From there, you can narrow down the correct terms that are commonly used.
![A demonstration of how to perform an HS Code search using only the HS Code parameter.](https://www.gotchafast.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/HS-Code-Search-to-narrow-down-product-names-1024x395.png)
If you’re wanting to develop clients from a country that doesn’t use English in their customs data, you’ll need to also make a search using HS Code + Destination Country, while selecting the destination country where you’d like to develop clients. From these results, you’ll be able to ascertain what language is used in this country’s HS Code. You’ll also need to check the product descriptions to find common terms used to describe your product. If you’re not comfortable with the language being used in the customs data, many tools such as ChatGPT can help you parse and understand it efficiently.
![An illustration of how to find common product names for your product by looking through the search results in a customs data search.](https://www.gotchafast.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/HS-Code-Search-Results-1.png)
Step 3: Start the search loop to collect a client list
Once you’ve identified both the HS Code of your product as well as the common terms used in the product description, you’re ready to start searching and finding potential clients. If your product is a more common product, and your HS Code perfectly accurate, then searching with only the HS Code will lead to the best results. A good example of this type of product would be raw materials such as coal or copper. These products are generally homogeneous, so just searching their HS Code will lead to accurate results.
That said, if your product is a little more specialized, then you’d need to also include some common keywords that show up in the product description for your product.
For our previous example of smartphones, let’s say we’re trying to export a specific kind of phone such as the “Realme”, a newer, low-budget smartphone (A random example chosen for the purpose of this educational article). In this instance, just searching the HS Code will lead to a list of all importers of smartphones, which would include Iphones, Samsung phones, and all of the other popular brands. These importers, however, may not be interested in our “Realme” phones. For this reason, we should also add the term “Realme” to our product description to get more accurate search results.
The search results from this search will yield much more accurate clients, since they will all be proven importers of the “Realme” smartphones.
![An illustration of how to use a combination of product name and HS Code to find a client on GotchaFast Customs Data search.](https://www.gotchafast.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Search-using-both-product-description-and-HS-Code-1024x471.png)
What if there are no results?
The vast majority of of the time when a user’s search returns nothing, it’s due to user error. For this reason, if you find that you’re unable to find accurate search results, please read and follow the troubleshooting steps below:
- Troubleshooting Step 1: Are you searching customs data? GotchaFast has several different search functions such as company search, business search, contacts search, and customs search. If you’re trying to search customs data, make sure you’re using the GotchaFast customs data search tool.
- Troubleshooting Step 2: Did we make a mistake with the HS Code? Double check your HS Code to ensure that it’s a proper 6 digit HS Code that was found in the HS Code lookup tool on GotchaFast.
- Troubleshooting Step 3: Did we have a spelling mistake in a product description or are we searching the wrong language? It’s essential that your search term in the product description field contains correctly spelled language.
- Troubleshooting Step 4: Is our product description overly descriptive? When adding keywords to the “product description” field, it’s important to add only commonly used terms for your product, and nothing more. For example, if you’re exporting silk from china, you’d only want to put in the term “silk”, not “luxurious silk from china”. All of the extra words in this term do not actually add any value to our search term, but increase the chances of filtering out good data.
- Troubleshooting Step 5: Should we broaden our search? For example, if we’ve included three search criteria: country, product description, and HS Code, and we have no results, remove one of the search criteria to find your market, then narrow back down based on the broad results.
Step 4: Research potential clients.
Once you’ve found accurate search results, you’ll need to analyze and select potential clients to develop. When determining which importers to focus on, there are several factors that should be considered, the most important factor is certainly whether they import your product, but if you’ve followed the steps outlined in the section above, this won’t be an issue.
That said, other criteria are also important, such as an importer’s location, their purchasing quantity, and what type of company they are. You’ll want to find companies that fit your business best; Companies that are the most willing to switch from their current supplier to you. For instance, an importing company such as “Best Phones, USA” importing from “Best Phones, China” is not likely going to be interested in changing to a different supplier, as they are their own supplier.
![An example of a customs data trade record, and how to examine the HS Code and Product Description to determine if the buyer is a possible client.](https://www.gotchafast.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Potential-Client-1024x293.png)
Once you’ve found a potential client, click the trade record to open the details page for the trade record. From the details page, you can see detailed information for the trade with data such as product description, imported quantity, buyer address, supplier address, and more.
There are several very important parts of the record details:
![The buyers details section of a trade record on GotchaFast, illustrating the main benefits of the section.](https://www.gotchafast.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Customs-Data-Trade-Record-Details-Page-Buyer-Information-1024x587.png)
![An illustration of the Possible Contacts section of the customs data section.](https://www.gotchafast.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Customs-Data-Possible-Contacts-1024x236.png)
Once you’ve decided a buyer is an accurate buyer for your business, and that they’re one you’d like to develop, save the page, so you can come back later.
Saved pages can be found in Saved Pages section of your account, and can be accessed anytime in the future.
You can also export data to excel if that’s more convenient for you.
![](https://www.gotchafast.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Customs-Data-Save-Page-1.png)
Step 5: Contact and develop potential clients.
The last step in using customs data to find buyers for your product is the process of contacting them and introducing your product and advantages to them. To do this, you should follow a logical approach that maximizes the chance of conversion.
Organize a list of potential contacts and their contact information
The first thing you should do for each potential client is organize the contacts of the client. It’s best to not rely on just one method. Start with Contacts Search, and add all the employees of the company on Linkedin.
Other sources of contact information can also be valuable, such as the google maps widget embedded into the trade details page, and other third-party contact details websites.
Initiate contact with each client through multiple channels
Once you’ve gathered a large list of contacts for a company, you’ll want to initiate contact. For cold emails, if you need assistance with English writing, GotchaFast’s WriteFast Letter can generate accurate sales letters instantly.
Do not rely on one method of contact, contact the potential client with each possible method, and try to work your way to a decision maker.
Additionally, it’s important to follow up on leads. Do not just send one email and be done with it. Instead, be sure to follow up with every lead several times until contact is established. There are many online tools that can help with this such as GMASS.
Make a sale!
Once contact has been established, you need to do what you do best, which is display the advantages of your company’s product and make a sale. Best of luck and happy hunting!