Digital Marketing in Colombia

Digital Marketing is one way that entrepreneurs and producers across the globe can reach new markets and increase sales. But what is digital marketing and how can a small Colombian business use it to maximize the number of people who come across its brand? These are the questions that Zen Naturals was asking itself.

Zen Naturals is a natural cosmetic manufacturing company based in Cali, Colombia. Zen Naturals develops natural cosmetics made from exotic ingredients from Colombia’s outstanding biodiversity. Through ethical manufacturing and fair trade practices, they are also taking a leadership role in re-investing in the communities that grow the ingredients used in their products. Currently, Zen Naturals supports more than 95 Colombian quinoa farming communities through Fair-Trade Practices and technical assistance on their production.

Zen Naturals is preparing to launch their quinoa facial care products in Whole Foods Markets in the mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. in 2017. As U.S. retail business is unexplored territory for the company, they reached out to Partners of the Americas' Farmer-to-Farmer program to request a digital marketing specialist to assist them in properly promoting and positioning their brand for the U.S. market.

In July 2016, F2F volunteer Nicole Opie, who has over 20 years of experience working in marketing, traveled to Cali, Colombia to work with Zen Naturals on their digital marketing strategies. “In just over two weeks,” Ms. Opie shared, “we were able to cover digital marketing in general and in great detail. We successfully completed tutorials for all of the major social media channels which had to also be translated into Spanish in real time. . . We also had classes and practiced continuity marketing: content marketing that actually leverages audience interaction in one channel to generate content for other channels.”

Zen Naturals website home page

Zen Naturals's new Facebook page

Some key tools for digital marketing are website, social media, and email outreach. So, Ms. Opie also helped Zen Naturals develop and refine their Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Google My Business and Bing for Business pages. She trained the Zen Naturals staff on how to ensure that the image shared on digital marketing matches Zue's business model, goals and resources. Ms. Opie said, “This was all facilitated by the fact that [Zen Naturals] is an avid user of social media, and they had done their homework. They were well aware of the terminology, the acronyms, the differences and the likenesses of the channels. They were always prepared with questions and eager to ask for examples. All in all, they were great students.”

As a result of Ms. Opie's work, Zen Naturals now has a new and improved website as well as several new social media accounts. Zen Naturals continues to work on optimizing the navigation, font sizes, email capture, and social plugins of their different social media accounts. They also have started to discuss how often they should post and what type of content they will share to interact with their audiences. Ms. Opie discussed content management with the team at Zen Naturals at length and the importance of monitoring and analyzing what is published. Through their new digital market strategies, Zen Naturals hopes to be able to start building a relationship with its clients and further telling the world about the amazing products they are creating and the wonderful work they are doing to support Colombian communities.

Visit Zen Naturals' website here: http://www.zenaturals.co/