God called the nation of Israel to be "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" (Ex 19:6), bringing blessing to the whole world (Ge 12:3). The Bible describes some different phases in their missionary work.
Through the Exodus, God proclaimed the Gospel through his mighty works of salvation. The miracles of the Exodus caught the attention of the people in that region. When they encountered the Israelites, they reacted in different ways.
(1) Some were hostile, like the Amalekites (Ex 17).
(2) Some ran away in fright. This reaction is described in Exodus 23:27-28: "I will send my terror before you and will throw into confusion all the people against whom you shall come, and I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. And I will send hornets before you, which shall drive out the Hivites, the Canaanties, and the Hittites from before you."
(Incidentally, the "hornets" in this passage may be metaphorical; they aren't necessarily actual insects. At any rate, we see here that the Canaanites were to be scared away and not necessarily put to death.)
(3) Some were attracted to God, like the "mixed multitude" (Ex 12:38), Jethro (Ex 18) and Rahab (Joshua 2). One part of Israel's ministry was to this group of people; the Israelites were instructed in the Torah to love them (Ex 23:9; Lev 19:33-34) and make them part of Israelite society.
A second phase of their mission involved building a just society in the Promised Land. To enable that to happen, the Israelites were to destroy all traces of Canaanite religion when they arrived (Ex 23:13, 24). This would give them a chance to establish an identity in the land as God's people. Then when other nations observed Israelite society, they would be impressed and attracted to God (Dt 4:1-8; 1 Ki 10:1-10).
A good source on this topic is Walter Kaiser's Mission in the Old Testament: Israel as a Light to the Nations.
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