China: Virtual Agricultural Marketing and Business Meetings - Lessons Learned

Virtual business engagements have taken on new importance in 2020. Our initial experiences with food and agricultural trade shows, marketing events, and conferences yielded interesting lessons. While virtual spaces are good alternatives to in-person events for keeping contacts engaged and buyers interested, it remains difficult to engage people’s senses, like tasting samples at a trade show can, or spur the kinds of chance meetings that make conferences so valuable. We suggest that organizers carefully consider their audience when planning a virtual engagement. They should also weigh which virtual platform is best suited for international participants and expect to spend considerable preparation time addressing and mitigating technical difficulties. This report contains a discussion on the lessons learned, additional recommendations, and six-step action plan for virtual engagement.

China: Virtual Agricultural Marketing and Business Meetings - Lessons Learned