5 Reasons Why Shopee Marketing Strategy Works.

Shopee is one of the most popular e-commerce platforms in South-east Asia, becoming more popular than Lazada too. Gaming company SEA owns Shopee and launched Shopee as an e-commerce platform in 2012. It is important to note that at that point of time, Lazada was the leading e-commerce platform. So how is it possible that in just 7 years Shopee took over that title from Lazada and emerged the leading e-commerce platform? A lot of the credit goes to Shopee’s marketing strategy, and here are 5 reasons why their marketing strategy works.

Shopee and Lazada are both fierce competitors in the same market, aiming to capture the attention of the same audience spread across the same region. However, what differentiates Shopee from Lazada is that Shopee understand the market demands and trends in a way that Lazada seems unable to.

That is to say that though both companies come up with similar innovative technology and marketing strategy, Shopee’s tactics seem to become more popular than Lazada’s by a big bracket.

A lot of people now flock to Shopee to purchase products online. In only the first to second quarter duration in 2020, the number of users using Shopee rose by a whopping 82%, which is a gain of nearly 5 million average visitors.

This steep rise can be attributed to the various marketing tactics that Shopee use which speak to their customers and keep them coming back to the platform for purchases, such as collaborations with celebrities, making innovative mobile applications and adding features to them that don’t appear in any other e-commerce platform’s apps as well as having long-term ongoing promotions, or frequent short-term promotions.

One of the most effective and popular marketing tactics for businesses is to have a celebrity act as the brand ambassador and draw in larger audiences. Shopee seem to be succeeding in this arena, seeing as so much of their popularity and demand for their products is based on the brand ambassador they have chosen.

At first, Shopee made the headlines for collaborating with BLACKPINK as their regional brand ambassador, and then a year later, collaborated with Cristiano Renaldo. The ad of the footballer dancing to a remix of viral children’s hit ‘Baby Shark’ drew in a tidal wave of new customers to the e-commerce platforms.

Another reason Shopee is succeeding is because they focus heavily on their mobile app to enhance their customers’ mobile application experience. By introducing features such as Shopee Live wherein sellers and invited hosts can conduct live streams to engage with their audience, an interactive ‘Shopee Quiz’ hosted by local influencers, giving away coins and products from multiple participating brands and introducing an Instagram-like feed called Shopee Feed, Shopee’s mobile application is another experience altogether, and un-replicated too.

Recently, Shopee also announced partnerships with L’Oréal, ModiFace and La Roche-Posay to bring special features to their mobile applications, which make the experience of shopping on their application very individualised to each customer.

Another very effective marketing strategy of Shopee is to have promotions and deals that are very irresistible running all year long. These deals and promotions include free shipping promotions, discounts (low or high rates) and flash sales.

With events that advertised unique concepts and great promotions such as Singles Day or 11.11 which drew in a large audience and Shopee recorded the sale of 200 million items in just one day, Shopee’s marketing strategy is creating waves in the market and makes the e-commerce platform a force to be reckoned with.