Finding overseas customers for windows and doors

1. Inbound and outbound are different disciplines

Inbound compounds through content and search: slow to start, but it accumulates. Outbound depends on people and reach: faster to show movement, but it stops when you stop. Mature operations run both rather than choosing.

• Inbound: search, your own site, B2B marketplaces, social content. Buyers arrive with a need already formed, so intent is usually clearer.
• Outbound: LinkedIn, email, trade shows, industry directories. You choose who to approach, but it demands stronger messaging and better product material.

2. Inbound: hold the search entries

A buyer's first move is usually a search for a specific product term. In this industry those searches have a distinctive shape — buyers rarely search brands. They search a product type plus a qualifier: an opening type, a material, or an application.

So search work isn't about stuffing keywords. It's about having a page that genuinely answers each of those searches:

• A page per opening type, rather than every product piled into one "Products" page
• Pages by application — residential retrofit, commercial projects, villas — because search intent often carries a setting
• Project pages, which double as strong landing pages, especially for searches with a location in them

3. Outbound: find out who actually decides

Who signs off on a window purchase depends entirely on the buyer type. Approaching the wrong person is the main reason outbound produces so little.

• Projects: it may be the main contractor's buyer, the technical lead at the façade subcontractor, or a procurement manager on site. The technical proposal is often read before the price.
• Distribution and wholesale: the owner or head of purchasing decides directly, weighing price band, payment terms and supply reliability.
• Installers and remodellers: usually the owner. They care whether it installs cleanly, whether the parts are complete, and who answers when something goes wrong.

In outreach, the first line decides whether the rest gets read. A generic company introduction earns nothing. What works is naming something specific they might care about — similar work you've delivered, a large size you can achieve in an opening type they use, or the drawing support you can provide.

4. Ordering the channels

Don't open five channels at once; spread thin, none of them gets far enough to judge. A workable order:

1. 1Start with what accumulates: your own site and its content. Everything else lands here, and without it ads and outreach have nowhere credible to point.
2. 2Then what validates: a small search budget to find out which product terms and regions actually carry demand.
3. 3Then what scales: put more behind what tested well, or use outbound to reach buyers search can't.
4. 4Last, what costs most: trade shows, directories and local representation — sensible once the direction is settled.

5. Judging whether a channel works

Inquiry counts alone will mislead you. Quality varies enormously — someone pricing two hundred units for a project and someone asking a retail price are not comparable.

Record at least the following, or you have nothing to judge on:

• Source channel and the specific landing page
• Country and buyer type (project, distribution, installation)
• Whether the requirement is specific — sizes, opening types, configuration
• Whether it reached a quote, and what happened after