Digital marketing opens the door to a diverse portfolio of strategies and platforms that businesses can employ to promote their products across markets. Food Export’s Branded Program and Marketing & Communications team have put together an overview of selected digital marketing strategies that U.S. suppliers can incorporate in their promotional campaigns.  

Content Marketing and Buyer Personas 

Content marketing refers to a marketing strategy focused on developing content to attract, engage, and retain a targeted audience. Creating a buyer persona may help marketers define their target audience and create content that drives results. A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on real data and informed speculation about customer demographics, behavior patterns, motivations, and goals.  

Marketers can start creating their buyer persona by asking themselves: “Who will benefit from this content?” When building a promotional plan, it is crucial to share content that will resonate with your audience on the channels they’re already on. This will maximize the content performance by getting the right eyes on your content. Therefore, having a buyer persona helps marketers ensure that all activities involved in acquiring and serving customers are tailored to the targeted buyers’ needs. 

Inbound Marketing  

Inbound marketing is a strategy that attracts and retains customers by creating valuable content and tailored experience. It relies on “earning” people’s interest instead of buying it. Inbound marketing is a shift from the more traditional outbound marketing strategies that rely on ads.  

Outbound marketing methods such as cold calling, mail ads or digital adverts on websites tend to be interruptive and can create negative brand awareness. Furthermore, this type of content can be easy to ignore since consumers can avoid outbound marketing messages through ad blockers. 

In other words, inbound marketing is interesting content an audience would like to consume. This is personalized content such as blogs, social media, evolving content and collaborations. Inbound marketing focuses on providing value to target audiences and catering to their needs. 

Email Marketing 

Email marketing is a form of digital marketing that involves sending promotional messages or newsletters to a list of subscribers. Companies can invest their marketing budget in email service providers that facilitate operations with features that include: 

• Email and marketing automation  
• Lead capture forms 
• A/B testing of email subject lines and email content 
• Website tracking 
• Segmentation based on what subscribers are interested in 

Utilizing email marketing is an exceptional strategy to ensure a business remains at the forefront of customers’ minds. 

Google Ads 

Google ads can also be part of a company’s marketing strategy. Google Ads is an online advertising platform developed by Google, where advertisers bid to display brief advertisements to web users in the result pages of search engines. Since about 3.5 billion searches are made on Google Search every day, Google Ads can be an effective venue for a company’s promotions. 

Furthermore, Google Ads offers a variety of tools to optimize ads and get a product to the top of the results page, such as keyword planning, ad extensions, ad ranking, bidding assistance, audience targeting, and performance reporting.  

Google Ads can lead to success, but due to its complex system and high cost, its services are more suitable for companies with larger marketing budgets. 

Social Media Marketing 

In recent years, social media has become a key forum for marketing. Companies can use social networks to build their brand identity, drive website traffic and increase sales. It’s also cost-effective and easy to manage. In an era where 80% of consumers are impacted by social media, this marketing strategy is slowly becoming the norm for a company’s growth. 

Some of the most popular social media networks include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Each of these platforms offer a myriad of ad types and appeal to unique demographics. This allows a company to reach a variety of audiences and tailor content accordingly. 

Other benefits of social media marketing include: 

• Ability to launch products and projects 
• Building rand awareness and loyalty  
• Creation of targeted and dynamic ads 
• Sales generation 
• Customer service features 

International E-Commerce Platforms 

International e-commerce is the practice of selling a product through an e-commerce website to buyers in foreign countries. Before entering a new market, U.S. businesses should consider that market’s e-commerce practices. Different countries have different e-commerce platforms where they promote products and generate sales. For example: 

• China has a variety of social media and e-commerce platforms: 

• Weibo: A microblogging and social media platform in China that allows users to create, share, and discover content. 
• We Chat: Offers instant messaging, social media, and mobile shopping. 
• Little Red Book – A regional version of Instagram 
• Douyin – Video-sharing platform that functions like TikTok. 
• Baidu – Search engine 

• Mercado Libre (MeLi): An online marketplace dedicated to e-commerce and online auctions in Latin America. 
• Lazada: Leading e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia 

• At a global level, businesses can use Telegram, a cloud-based, cross-platform, encrypted instant messaging service app that can be used internationally.