Earlier this week I covered the topic on why established local FMCG brands are losing on Shopee. If you are a brand manager or business owner at an established Malaysian FMCG company, here is how you can start fixing this tomorrow.
Step 1: Kill 70% of Your SKUs Online
This will be the hardest conversation. Your offline strength is your range. Your online strength is your focus.
Select the five to seven hero SKUs that represent your brand’s core value proposition. These will be the products you build your entire Shopee presence around. They will accumulate reviews. They will build search ranking. They will feature in your livestreams and affiliate content. The remaining SKUs can be available, but they are not the focus of your content or advertising spend.
The platform’s search algorithm rewards products with sustained, stable performance. A concentrated portfolio of hero SKUs—each with strong conversion rates, review velocity, and content support—will outperform a fragmented portfolio of 47 silent listings every time.
Step 2: Build Your Content Engine (Start Small, Start Today)
You do not need a production studio, a celebrity host, and a 12-month content calendar. You need to start.
- Choose one day a week for a Shopee Live session. Have a real person—a product developer, a chef, a passionate team member—cook with your product, talk about its origins, and answer questions in real time.
- Equip your affiliates. Provide samples to Shopee affiliates in your category and let them create honest content. The authenticity of peer-driven recommendation outperforms polished brand content.
- Create three short Shopee Videos each week. Demonstrate use cases. Show behind-the-scenes production. Compare your product to alternatives. Keep it real, not polished.
The brands winning on Shopee are not the ones with the biggest production budgets. They are the ones showing up consistently.
Step 3: Use Brand Membership as Your Loyalty Lever
If your brand is on Shopee Mall and you have not activated Brand Memberships, you are leaving money on the table.
Set up membership tiers with escalating benefits: exclusive vouchers, early access to new products, bonus points for repeat purchases. When a shopper joins your Brand Membership program, you gain visibility into their purchasing patterns—frequency, basket size, category preferences—that you would never get from a physical supermarket transaction.
This is the closest thing to a DTC email list you can build inside Shopee’s walled garden. Use it.
Step 4: Design Channel-Specific Packs and Offers
Your offline channel partner is not threatened by a 100ml trial size that only exists online. Your offline distributors do not care about a “Shopee Exclusive” bundle that combines two SKUs at a special price with free shipping.
Design for the platform. The consumer who discovers you through a Shopee Live session or an affiliate video may be buying your brand for the first time. Give them a low-risk entry point. Give them a reason to buy now rather than “next time I’m at the store.”
Step 5: Track Discovery Metrics, Not Just Distribution Metrics
Your current dashboard probably tracks:
- Total online revenue
- Number of SKUs listed
- Monthly campaign participation
Start tracking instead:
- Content engagement: How many viewers on Shopee Live? How many Shopee Video views?
- Search ranking movement: Are your hero SKUs climbing or falling for key category terms?
- Affiliate-driven orders: What percentage of sales are coming through affiliate content?
- Brand Membership enrollment: How many shoppers have joined? What is the repeat purchase rate of members versus non-members?
If a product page gets zero content support, zero affiliate mentions, and zero membership engagement, it is a silent shelf. And silent shelves get delisted—by the algorithm, if not by the category manager.
