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#MarketingExcellenceAwards SG spills: Shopee remains bullish on growth plans as borders start to open

#MarketingExcellenceAwards SG spills: Shopee remains bullish on growth plans as borders start to open

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Shopee is now one of the leading marketplaces across Southeast Asia. In the past two years of the pandemic, Shopee Mall saw an eight times increase in the number of users shopping online at least once a month, and to further ride this wave, the eCommerce platform unveiled new marketing initiatives to grow brand awareness and build deeper brand affinity for its partner merchants.

To increase brand awareness through broader marketing efforts, just this month, Shopee held its latest mega shopping event.

Moreover, there will also be four new Shopee Premium regional campaigns to help premium brands cater to the increasing demand for premium and luxury products online.

Since its launch, the eCommerce brand said Shopee Premium has scaled efforts in reaching digital luxury shoppers, achieving eight times growth in traffic, and shoppers outside tier-one cities, contributing to more than 50% of purchases.

All of its initiatives has seen the brand win several awards at MARKETING-INTERACTIVE’s Marketing Excellence awards.

Shopee took home gold in Excellence in Mobile Marketing; silver in Excellence in Communications/Public Relations, and Excellence in eCommerce Marketing; bronze in Excellence in Sponsorship Activation; and was a finalist for Excellence in Integrated Marketing, and Excellence in Social Media Marketing.

We speak to Pan Huiyan, regional marketing lead at Shopee, on the brand’s plans for 2022. 

This interview was done as part of MARKETING-INTERACTIVE’s winners’ and finalists’ interview series for Marketing Excellence Awards Singapore 2021. To find out more about the awards click here.

With borders and markets now opening up, how are you leveraging this to your advantage?

As pandemic restrictions across the region ease, platforms must remember that value, variety, and convenience continue to be what drives consumers to shop online.

The pandemic has cultivated strong digital-first habits among consumers, including turning to eCommerce for all their shopping needs. In fact, in the past two years, we saw that Shopee Mall had an eight times increase in the number of users shopping online at least once a month, demonstrating how eCommerce has become more integrated into our lifestyles. We believe these behaviours will stick around even as we move into the new normal.

Shopee will continue to strengthen its ecosystem to provide better and more engaging experiences for consumers while supporting more businesses to scale online.

One of the ways we are doing this is helping businesses in industries such as travel, transportation, and F&B to expand their businesses online so they can better engage consumers both offline and online moving forward. This also enables them to sell nationwide, and beyond, offering more opportunities for growth.

We believe there is still strong headroom for eCommerce to grow in this region, helping more consumers and businesses benefit from buying and selling online.

What was one shift in the marketing space that caught you by surprise, and how did your team pivot?

One key trend we observed that was interesting, though not really a surprise, was the continued rise of social selling in eCommerce, and the shift towards more real-time online engagements between brands, sellers and shoppers.

This has resulted in heavier investment by brands not just onto social media platforms, but also into tools such as live-stream. On Shopee Live, we have seen strong growth in live-stream adoption across the board by both younger and more mature users.

As such, we have to really understand the different needs of users, and then adapt the types of content we create, as well as live-stream the talent and KOLs we engage to better serve all our shoppers.

In 2021, we saw a 2.5x growth in viewership on Shopee Live.

With live-streaming becoming quintessential to the Shopee experience for both sellers and shoppers, we are continuing to upgrade Shopee Live features to make them even more engaging in real-time.

We launched the in-stream call function recently, which allows viewers to get up close and personal with live-streamers to ask questions, and participate in contests and events, helping them to build a deeper understanding and affinity with brands and sellers. This in turn helps businesses to convert more viewers into shoppers and fans.

To support more brands who are keen on expanding their usage of live-stream, we have started to train and develop more live-stream talent in-house who are flexible at adapting their styles to suit various brand personalities. This gives brands a greater variety of live-stream talent to tap on to more effectively connect with their target audience.

On social media, we also tap on a range of influencers that create content to inspire shoppers through our #ShopeeHaul UGC programme, where shoppers review the products they bought on Shopee on their social media platforms.

What are your marketing priorities to support the growth of brands for 2022?

At our Shopee Brands Summit 2022, we shared how Shopee will support the growth of brands by bringing on more new users to Shopee and launching new initiatives and tools to elevate brand experiences online.

To attract more new users to Shopee, we are boosting online and offline marketing efforts. Consumers nowadays have become familiarised with mega shopping events and are savvier about hunting for deals. As such we are always looking for new ways to deliver a satisfying shopping experience. One of which is introducing 3.15, our first mega shopping event of the year to offer them the best deals all-year-round.

We are also adding four more regional campaigns on Shopee Premium to cater to increasing demand. These efforts will give brands more opportunities to build their presence and maximise sales.

Second, we will continue to increase user stickiness in-app by strengthening our engagement features and cultivating our entertainment ecosystem across channels.

We will focus on understanding our users’ behaviours and preferences on the various channels and tailor our content to deepen connections. As more people shop and work from home during the pandemic, we have increased our entertainment content in-app, including live TV performances and real-time interactions with celebrities through Shopee Live. We will ramp these up so brands can leverage these tools within our ecosystem to deliver fun and exciting experiences.

Last, we are also helping brands to scale and optimise their eCommerce performance with innovative marketing solutions. We will be offering new Shopee Display Ads where brands can reserve impressions on Shopee’s home page banner, giving them the highest in-app visibility and exposure to drive awareness and traffic.

We have also deepened our collaboration with leading partners such as Meta to integrate Facebook Ads onto Shopee Seller Centre, offering a one-stop access to conveniently manage and measure their Facebook ad campaigns and grow their business.

What is one trend you are excited about which you think will carry on into the new year?

I think eCommerce is increasingly about delivering an immersive, personalised, and entertaining experience that goes beyond transactions. Platforms and brands must continue to adapt and look into ways to better serve consumers.

Consumers today are bombarded with ads and messages, making it hard for brands to stand out in a cluttered online space, and to build deeper and more loyal customer relationships.

As such, we are deepening the use of data, AR, and AI technologies to help brands make their marketing more targeted and personalised.

An example is our new customer intelligence dashboard developed to provide brands with more data insights on shopper demographics and segmentation. Brands can customise their eCommerce and marketing strategies in a timely manner to deliver more personalised experiences in-app. For instance, customising their in-app chat broadcast messages to target specific shoppers who have left items in their carts, but are waiting for an extra voucher to checkout.

This also applies to the way we engage with customers through content such as live-stream. We are utilising AI to provide more personalised recommendations on live-stream content and deals based on user shopping behaviour and interests.

Ultimately, the platforms and brands that know and serve their customers best will reap rewards in building deeper brand affinity and loyalty.

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