Learning to grow and adapt is the best thing that we got out of Alibaba.com

Hello, I'm Jung Eun-Gyeong, in charge of overall overseas sales and marketing at the SNJ.

SNJ Co., LTD is a manufacturer of medical and aesthetic equipment. Founded in 1998 and was certified in 1999 by KFDA, a medical device manufacturer. We manufacture and sell medical laser systems and export our products to 40 countries around the world. Korea's CO2 laser system is recognized by hospitals and doctors at the highest level in Korea. Over the past 24 years, we have focused on ultra-pulse technology for use in cosmetic skin procedures. Although the company is lean, we have become a powerful global brand providing new medical and aesthetic solutions through continued clinical research, technical developments, and a streamlined production experience.

What inspired you to sell on Alibaba.com?

Before selling on Alibaba.com, SNJ didn’t have in-house marketing personnel, and it only carried out a few basic campaigns to increase exports. Even after setting up our store on Alibaba.com, staff continued to prioritize participating in overseas tradeshows over generating traffic and inquiries on Alibaba.com.

We started using Alibaba.com with the aim of sourcing consumer goods, medical device components, and beauty products to sell on this large e-commerce platform. As the reputation of our products and brand grew, just posting promotional content on Facebook was simply not enough; we needed a dedicated marketing plan. Therefore, in 2012, our goal became utilizing Alibaba.com the fullest extent with the goal of being matched with meaningful customers.

In the beginning, we were sourcing parts for laser devices along with cosmetic and consumer goods for skin care and selling them on Alibaba.com. Later, we made some technological advancements and were able to release our own product line and began exporting to different markets.

What difficulties did you face when selling on Alibaba.com, and how did you overcome them?

When I first signed up, there was a lot of content on the system; it was difficult to find the menu or the functions I wanted to use. But it was easy to understand after receiving some training on how to use the menus and functions from the official Channel partners of Alibaba.com, CK Bridge Inc.

When we began operations, it wasn’t easy to get exposure for the products. Due to the nature of online marketplaces, we were competing for buyer traffic with many other products. In order to secure B2B buyers, you must upload as many products as possible, and use similar keywords across the whole product line. Utilizing keyword advertisements can be helpful if you want a lot of traffic to the same product quickly. We decided to use keyword ads because our product line is rather small, but we really didn't know how to properly operate it back then.

We are currently getting training on how to operate Key Word Advertisements together with our partner service personnel, analyzing impressions and platform metrics in real time, and getting advice on how to revise our bids of the keywords. In order to keep increasing the efficiency of our KWA, we have been increasing the amount of keywords we use. Audiovisual content is becoming more important in marketing, so we created highly detailed pages with a lot of video content for each product, then gradually increased the number of posts to maximize exposure and traffic.

Through this 1-on-1 tailored consulting service and the help with keyword advertisements, we learned that bidding needs to be constantly revised hourly by according to the traffic numbers, clicks, and overall exposure ranking chart. As a result, the amount of exposure increased by about 5,000 over the past two weeks since we started this campaign.

What kind of changes or achievements did you make after using Alibaba.com?

Since COVID-19 broke out, participating in tradeshows is pretty much impossible. So, we pivoted to promoting our business by making fresh proposals for products and began distributing them to the interested buyers that we met at Alibaba.com.

In the beauty laser and medical device industries, there are far more buyers (hospital doctors, clinic owners, etc.) than dealers or agencies. So, even if many inquiries don’t lead to a purchase, you gain a lot of useful information through interacting with users. These insights can be used to identify trends in dermatological treatments or growing market demand. All in all, SNJ managed to achieve a total overseas sales value of $5 million in 2021 just by selling on Alibaba.com.

What is the strength of Alibaba.com?

The biggest strength seems to be that the official partner company really makes everything as easy as possible to set up and they are dedicated to making sure you understand the best tips on how to succeed on the platform. The designated service representative provides educational support to make sure you are steadily improving throughout the onboarding period. Alibaba.com’s greatest strength is opening a door for us to the possibility of entering entirely new markets for us, like the South American continent.