How to Adapt Customer Acquisition When Selling in Multiple Latin American Markets

Expanding into several Latin American countries does not mean replicating a campaign and changing the destination name. Channels, purchasing habits, and business digital maturity vary across markets; therefore, customer acquisition strategies need to combine a shared foundation with local decisions that can be measured and adjusted.

The Digital Marketing in Latin America 2024 study by NTT DATA and MIT Technology Review offers a reference point on companies in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Peru. According to the published results, 90% of participating organizations had a presence on social networks and websites, and 72% used email marketing. But being present on these channels does not amount to an effective strategy or prove that the same channel will work equally well in every country. The sample includes companies from different sectors and does not necessarily represent all companies or all SMEs in the region.

Start with the country and the customer, not the channel

Before allocating the budget, it is worth precisely defining whom you want to acquire in each market: what need they have, how they look for solutions, what factors they consider when buying, and what obstacles could hinder conversion. This definition should be based on available local information—for example, customer data, sales inquiries, website behavior, and campaign results—and not just regional averages.

Country-level segmentation does not require creating a completely independent strategy for each destination. It does require checking that the segments, offers, and messages make sense locally. The same customer profile may respond to different arguments depending on the market; even vocabulary and commercial expressions can vary. Translating an asset without reviewing these nuances may preserve the words while losing the intent.

Compare channels using a specific hypothesis

Social networks, search, email, and e-commerce serve different purposes. Social networks can help people discover a brand and sustain interaction; search can reach people who are already expressing a need; email is useful for communicating with contacts who have agreed to receive messages. The choice should not be based solely on a channel’s popularity, but on its ability to reach the selected audience and move them toward a verifiable business action.

NTT DATA found that 44% of the companies surveyed used digital commerce as one of their main marketing initiatives. The figure points to adoption that is still uneven in the sample, not to e-commerce being suitable for every company or product. Before driving visits, it is important to check whether the business can serve the market: purchase availability, clear information, customer service, and order and return management.

The Spring GDS article, published in 2024, presents social networks as a relevant channel for social commerce and suggests considering collaborations with local creators, email campaigns, and content adapted to each country. Its figures come from studies different from those conducted by NTT DATA; therefore, they should not be combined as if they described a single comparable survey. For a company, these recommendations work better as hypotheses to validate than as a universal formula.

Adapt the message without fragmenting the brand

A regional strategy can keep the value proposition, identity, and general communication principles consistent while adapting examples, terms, promotions, and calls to action. Local content creators can bring familiarity with their communities, but their selection should be assessed based on their affinity with the target audience and observable results, not just the size of their audience.

In email, personalization can be organized according to a contact’s interests or purchase stage, provided the company has useful data and manages its collection appropriately. The NTT DATA study indicates that 43% of participating organizations had a clear strategy for collecting data and forming segments, while 38% had customer or prospective-customer data that they did not use or used only sporadically. This shows a gap between collecting information and turning it into marketing decisions; more data alone does not guarantee better campaigns.

Test, measure, and decide market by market

A simple cycle makes it possible to learn without assuming that results in one country will be repeated in another:

1. Define an objective for each market, such as acquiring qualified contacts, generating sales, or re-engaging inactive customers.
2. Choose a segment and a channel with an explicit reason for testing them. If several messages are tested at once, it should be possible to distinguish what changed and what result it produced.
3. Adjust the execution locally: language, offer, content, and purchase journey, while keeping the brand’s proposition identifiable.
4. Measure comparable results across periods and campaigns, using indicators tied to the objective. For example, do not focus only on reach if the goal is a sale or a qualified contact.
5. Review operations and data quality before increasing investment. A campaign that attracts interest but cannot fulfill orders or follow up does not, by itself, prove that the channel is ineffective.

Measurement also has limitations. NTT DATA reports that 34% of participating companies had limited capabilities for measuring digital marketing indicators, and that 6% used advanced analytics. These are results from that sample, not an exhaustive description of the capabilities in each country or of SMEs. To compare markets, a company can start with simple, consistent metrics, but it must interpret differences in light of campaign size, the audience reached, and the sales process.

Regional expansion based on local learning

The purpose of comparing countries is not to find a single winning channel for all of Latin America, but to identify which combination works for each audience and under what conditions. Regional data help frame questions; customer information and local tests help answer them. The decision to scale should be based on results observed in the target market, together with the actual ability to meet demand, and not on the automatic extrapolation of a regional figure.