How to successfully launch a product in Shopee

Low ROI and revenue on a product is sometimes the consequence of an ineffective product launch. Some mistakes are easy to correct but there are also others that make it almost impossible to back up once you’ve started. And so, we compiled an easy to follow guide on how to successfully launch a product on Shopee that is guaranteed to provide you the most profit. 

Conduct Market Research

Split Dragon is equipped with a market research feature that lets you do the following:

• Identify your competitors
• Know the pricing of your competitors 

Simply log in to Split Dragon and then select Market Research. Under this menu, click Shopee Sales Database. 

Select your market country and then tick on the product category that you belong to. Click Search. 

The rest of the information in the results section will be more useful in your journey as an online seller. But during your product launching phase, focus on identifying your competitors and how they price their products in the meantime. 

Identify Your Product’s USP (unique selling proposition)

Your USP is basically something that makes your product valuable and unique compared to other competing products. 

It helps your customers decide why they should purchase your product over another product. 

Here is a simple guide that will help you identify your product’s USP

1. Create a buyer persona
This means listing down the possible personality, traits, or problems your potential customer may have. Doing this will help you figure out how your product can help solve the problem of your customers.

For example, if you are selling a video game capture card, you can identify in your buyer persona that your potential customers are most likely gaming video creators.

A common problem gaming video creators face is their PS4 or PS5 console not being processed by their PC streaming software due to copyright issues. In that sense, you can say that one of your product’s USPs is that it is equipped with HDCP support.

Depending on your niche or category, it is recommended that you have three or five buyer personas. 

2. Analyze Your Competitors

You can go back to your market research and click on your competitors’ product URL. Examine the product description and list the pros and cons of the product. You can also check out the reviews section to see the advantages and disadvantages of the product based on the consumer perspective. 

It would also be a good idea to search for them on social media and see how your competitors market or advertise their products.

3. Identify your strengths 

Your strengths can be about the efficacy of the product itself, your competitive pricing, or it could be about the freebies that you give to your customers. 

4. Identify your weaknesses

It is important to also be aware of your weaknesses so that you don’t mention them in your marketing. Alternatively, knowing your product’s weak points will also help you find complementaries. 

5. Compare your strength/weak points to your competitors’

If your product is better in terms of quality, you can market your product in a way that you compare the results of other brand X against your brand. 

For instance, if you are selling whitening soap, you can capture a video washing your hands with brand X soap + its effect vs on the other side, washing your hands using your branded soap + its effects. 

Identify Your Target Audience Segments

You can go back to your buyer personas and use the data you have collected there to create your target audience segments. 

These target audience segments will be useful as you optimize your campaigns and ads for the product launch. 

Since most buyer personas are general, to finalize your target audience segments, you just have to enhance it further. 

Add the following to your buyer persona:

• Demographics
• Different pain points for each target audience
• How your product can resolve them 

Create And Publish The Product Listing 

To optimize your product listing for optimum conversion rate, you need the following:

• Hashtags

Add relevant hashtags to your product description. By doing so, your product can be given more visibility to potential buyers who search for products based on categories. 

For instance, if you’re selling facial masks on Shopee, you can add the hashtags #mask, #skincare or #brandname 

• High-quality images (you should have 5-6 main images)

Make sure that your images are 2000×2000 to avoid having pixelated images in your listing. 

• Keyword research 

You can use Split Dragon’s Keyword Suggestion tool to generate keywords perfect for the Shopee search engine. You will be using these keywords in your product title and product description. 

• Optimized product title and description

For the product title, take note of the following rules:

1. Each letter of the words in your product name should be capitalized
2. Only big brands such as ASUS or ZARA can be written in ALL CAPS
3. Do not include promotional descriptions like “bestseller” or “hot item” 
4. Do not use words that are irrelevant to the product
5. There should be no hashtags or emoji symbols in the product title

Here are some standard formulas that you can use for creating a product title:

1. Brand Name + Product Model + Specifications + Size + Keywords for SEO
2. Gender + Specifications + Product + Keywords for SEO
3. Age + Specifications + Product + Keywords for SEO
4. Age + Gender + Specifications + Product + Keywords for SEO
5. Specification + Product + Keywords for SEO

For the product description, here are some pointers to follow:

• Insert your keyword within the product description
• Write about the benefits, not just the technical features
• Include your USP
• Be specific in what is exactly included in the parcel

Give Customers A Hay Offer

A hay offer is basically an offer that customers cannot refuse. There are three ways you can urge customers to make a purchase with a hay offer. 

1. Price 

Marginal pricing is the most common form of hay offers. This means that you will run a campaign for a certain period which can be for two weeks or a month. During this time, your product will be sold with a massive discount. You will give out 25% or 50% discount. When you market your product, make sure to emphasize how much the customer is actually saving per order. 

2. Urgency 

If it is a new model or new unit, provide sneak peeks of the product to stir up excitement in customers. 

For example, if you sell console games, you can market sneak peeks about the new Spiderman: Miles Morales game to generate demand among potential buyers. 

You can also emphasize that your products have limited stock to encourage customers to complete the purchase as they add the item to their carts. 

Urgency can also pertain to your massive discounts that are only available for a specific time period. 

3. Risk Reversal 

Another way to make an irresistible offer is to minimize the risk related to an online purchase. This means that in your campaign or marketing, you can post social proof that your product is of good-quality and is effective according to statements of some previous customers. 

Social proof can come in two ways. The first one is when a credible figure (a celebrity or politician) gave positive credit to your product. The second are simply reviews and testimonials of regular customers. 

Make Launch Announcements On Social Media And Shopee Feeds

At least six weeks before you launch your product, we recommend that you create a teaser campaign that you can both post on your social media pages, groups, and on your Shopee Feed. 

A teaser campaign can be as simple as a ‘coming soon” post. A post like that will inspire comments and shares will boost awareness for your new product. 

You can also create a countdown post to gradually remind potential customers of the new product and the discounts/vouchers that come along with it. 

Getting potential customers excited about your upcoming product will help you get a lot of attention and profit during the initial launch. 

Tip: If you want to hold a launch event on Shopee Live, you can include the date in your posts so that interested parties can invite friends and family to join

Reach Out To Micro Influencers Or Vloggers

When asking influencers to promote your new product, we recommend contacting micro-influencers or those influencers who have a more specific and narrowed down audience. By doing so, you can select a micro-influencer that is most related to your niche, and therefore you will increase your conversion rate and ROI on your initial launch. 

You can also reach out to vloggers to help you market your new product in video format since the majority of micro-influencers use Instagram as their platform. 

Have A Launch Event (Shopee Live)

A Shopee Live Launch event will enable you to showcase your new product to potential buyers in a more personal manner. 

You can talk to them about the ways this new product is different from your older model or version. Discuss the new features and upgrades. It would also be good to provide a demo so that people can visualize what it is like to use your new product. This will further excite customers and encourage more purchases. 

Emphasize that during the launch you will be providing big discount vouchers that will expire in X days. 

A live event will also enable you to answer any questions potential buyers may have about your new product. 

We wrote a post on Shopee Live Stream – An Overview. You can check it out if you want to use Shopee live as one of your product launch marketing strategies. 

Ask Friends And Relatives To Purchase And Then Leave Reviews

If you are not a big brand, having your first few reviews a few days after your product launch will help you gain the trust of other potential customers. 

Instead of waiting for organic sales to come in and encouraging them to leave reviews, you can take advantage of your own contacts. 

You can encourage them to support you, buy your product, and then leave reviews. Not only is this a factor that boosts your credibility as a seller, you will also increase your search rank on the Shopee algorithm making your new product easier to find on the marketplace. 

Use Shopee Boost And Facebook Ads

At this point, do not run Shopee My Ads yet. We will explain why in the next section. Instead, we recommend that you take advantage of Shopee’s free product boost. 

To access this feature, on the Shopee app, go to your shop and then go to your products. Under all of your verified products, there is a Boost Now button. Upon doing so, your product will be boosted by 4 hours. After the time has spanned, you can boost it again. You can boost up to 4 products at a time. 

When the products are boosted, they will appear on the Daily Discover section of Shopee. 

It will also be a good idea to target potential buyers that are outside of the marketplace. For that, running Facebook ads will come in handy. 

For an in-depth guide on how to run effective Facebook campaigns, you can read our post on Facebook CPAs Optimization Strategies . 

Run Shopee My Ads At The Right Time 

Running your Shopee My Ads at the right time means that your product should have at least 10 to 15 reviews. 

This is because if you run Shopee My Ads and the product does not have reviews yet, product awareness will increase along with clickthrough rates but the conversion rate will remain the same if your product does not have any social proof of a good-quality purchase. 

Once you accumulate enough product reviews, you can read our post on Shopee Advertising – How to Choose Keywords and Optimize Shopee My Ads to get the most ROI out of your campaign. 

When switching from brick and mortar to online selling, the only thing that changed is the platform/medium for selling. The approach for launching a product should still be data-driven. Otherwise, the consequence will be slow sales and low ROI on your products that are supposed to have big potential.