How to truly engage with new buyers online; 4 learnings from ‘going virtual,’ for the South East Asia Dairy Trade Mission
15th January 2021
David Kennedy, International Markets Manager, Bord Bia - The Irish Food Board
In 2020 the Irish food industry had to demonstrate flexibility and innovation like never demanded before. Retail saw record demand while foodservice came close to closure in some markets. Route to market was challenged with port blockades while new opportunities emerged as retailers and restaurants found new ways of getting products to their customers.
Here in Bord Bia we were subject to new pressures too in how we deliver our services to Irish food producers. One market diversification service under my responsibility, the annual trade mission schedule, was heavily impacted by travel restrictions and lockdowns in key markets.
With the traditional trade mission format of a travelling delegation under the leadership of a Minister physically landing in a market to drive the reputation of Irish food and meeting with prospective customers no longer an option we moved to a virtual offering targeting the 5 South East Asian markets of Indonesia, Malaysia, The Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.
To devise the new format we gathered people from across our organisation together and brainstormed some alternative options with a view to maintaining our support for Irish exporters through this service.
This was new ground for us to break and we learned a lot along the way. Here are a few things to share that may be of interest to those looking to engage with international buyers virtually in 2021:
1. Remember the goal!
Traditional trade missions are structured to achieve three objectives; to deliver market insight for our exporters, to raise Ireland’s profile in the target markets and to deliver new business opportunities through targeting the best buyers in each market for our exporters. Early on in the process of working on the virtual mission we agreed that it was vitally important to retain these key ambitions, not to let the change in format get in the way and look to replicate or improve our service as much as possible.
In-market expeditions were replaced with frontline market intelligence from our South East Asia based team in Bord Bia, complemented with debriefs from international insight experts updating on the latest trade and consumer trends in South East Asia.
5 market specific virtual dairy seminars were arranged in order to land key messages on the positive and sustainable characteristics of Irish dairy to regional buyers.
The Irish dairy industry had to be front and centre in these activities for the events to be truly engaging for the buyers so we worked in collaboration with the companies participating to present their unique selling points through professionally produced introductory videos. To recreate that individual, person-to person, feel of traditional missions the companies were tasked with including messages from the sales representatives scheduled to attend the buyer meetings. This enticed the buyers to request introductory meetings with those they felt could be the best match.
2. Reach!
Going virtual actually enhanced our reach. In a typical physical mission timelines allow for roll out of events in a maximum of 2 countries over 5 days and reach approximately 160 buyers. By going virtual it was possible to target 5 countries and attracted 430 buyers to meet with our 13 participating Irish dairy companies. This far exceeded our initial ambition of 250 buyers in total. We know that over 478 introductory meetings have been concluded to date and feedback from both buyers and exporters has been largely positive.
In a post event survey 93% of the buyers who attended, not currently sourcing direct from Ireland already, considered themselves ‘quite likely,’ or ‘very likely,’ to source dairy ingredients from Ireland in future as a result of the activity.
3. Rely on the experts!
This trade mission was going to ‘live or die,’ on the quality of the virtual engagement. With this in mind we leaned on the expertise of many who wouldn’t have typically been involved in delivering a trade mission. These included colleagues in the Bord Bia IT and marketing events departments, outside experts on filming and broadcasting and a specialist provider of B2B networking software, B2Match. It’s fair to say that this was outside of our comfort zone and utilising this expertise was critical in the successful delivery. We leaned on the experience of colleagues in Enterprise Ireland who had recently used the same networking software for an event and they were kind enough to share their tips and watch-outs. A great ‘Team Ireland,’ effort!
4. Recruiting buyers isn’t easy, keeping them engaged is even harder!
Even with a fantastic platform and expert service providers the traditional hard work of recruiting buyers, getting them signed up and comfortable with the platform and to turn up on the day cannot be solved through technology. Bord Bia Singapore targeted over 1,500 leads for this event before screening for quality and getting to the 430 who attended. The work behind this involved a huge number of hours of calls, emails, wattsaps and data analysis to ensure that all buyers on the events were qualified and high potential.
Even after recruiting the buyers we knew that keeping them engaged would be critical. With this in mind we shortened our seminars to 75 minutes maximum each and used footage provided by our export companies showcasing the farms supplying them, the products they produce and, most importantly, the individuals representing the companies to create an engaging and personable experience for our guest buyers.
Either side of this we incorporated valuable market insight and a visually engaging presentation on Ireland’s dairy industry and the benefits of sourcing from companies using Sustainable Dairy Assurance Scheme milk to produce Origin Green verified ingredients. We know from the data provided that this meant that buyers, largely, attended the full seminars and engaged 1:1 with Irish exporters immediately after.
Conclusion
There’s a steep learning curve in ‘going virtual,’ but necessity is a great motivator. There are experts out there who are happy to share their experience or provide their services to enhance how you engage with buyers in future. It’s critically important to try replicate the person to person aspect of engagement as much as possible as, ultimately, people like to do business with people and ‘webinar fatigue,’ is a real threat.
Virtual activities are here to stay for the foreseeable future but won’t replace traditional in-person activities. In a post mission survey of the Irish exporters who partake in the virtual mission over 80% saw a place for virtual activities even when travel restrictions lift and business travel is permitted again.
Bord Bia will continue to drive business opportunities for Irish exporters in new markets whether through virtual or traditional activity in 2021.