TGIF, Tolulope!

Have you also been annoyingly chased around the internet by Temu?

People have been complaining lately about it; you’d see people posting on X and WhatsApp status: “Temu leave me alone”.

They are everywhere, shoving down our throats ads for their Chinese shoes, clothes, kitchen and home products and almost any product you can think of, especially on Instagram and Facebook.

It can be annoying to others, but you, as a business owner or marketer, should not find it annoying. You should instead learn from it. There are a lot of lessons you can learn from Temu, but I intend to discuss one major one with you. Before I go ahead though, let’s talk a bit about the company Temu.

Temu is an online marketplace (like Amazon, Aliexpress, Jumia, etc), owned by big Chinese e-commerce companies, that offers huge discounts on products (mainly consumer goods) that are shipped to consumers directly from China.

So what makes Temu special and different from other sites? And what is giving them all these hype and success?

Temu operates a unique model: a combination of C2M (consumer to manufacturing) and D2C (direct to consumer) models.

I already spent most of the week discussing C2M with you so by now you not just know what it is but also how to leverage it for your business, on a budget.

D2C on the other hand is also nothing new; just another fancy name for something most people already do. It means selling directly to consumers instead of using middlemen for distribution.

So if you make beard oil for example, and instead of putting it on the shelves of supermarkets like Ebeano or calling for independent distributors nationwide, you market it online, maybe through your own ecommerce website and then ship it directly to the people who order from you.

Sounds too familiar, right? That’s because it’s the model most physical product sellers online in Nigeria employ.

But it’s a big deal when big companies (like Temu and Fashion Nova) do it at scale. 

Note that unlike sites like AliExpress who majorly host manufacturers of all kind who then ship to you when you order, Temu and even Fashion Nova are the manufacturers — or rather, act like it. Of course they work with several suppliers and just brand some of these products in their name.

Temu is planning to have other manufacturers on their platform too, but they need a way to make these manufacturers comply with their number one strategy: heavy discounts. Aka dirt cheap prices.

Cheap deals has been Temu’s main strategy from the onset. In fact they came into the market with the slogan: “shop like a billionaire”.

But as a small business owner, it’s not a strategy you should even think of employing.

You know I’ve always preached against doing any price war with any competitor. I’d rather you increase your prices than lower your prices. But if you have huge budget like Temu and can sacrifice billions in discounts just to first become a household name, then go ahead.

I’m however guessing you don’t have such excess funds. So let’s ditch this strategy.

Another strategy Temu is using in their D2C approach is handling their own shipping.

Instead of using third party logistics (like DHL), Temu personally ships and flies their orders abroad and that’s why it might take time for orders to get to customers — but I doubt they’d mind the time it takes to wait if they aren’t paying for shipping.

They must either own a logistic company or partner closely with one. Whatever; not our business.

The third major strategy Temu is using to take over the market is MASSIVE ADVERTISING!

Temu entered the market with a freaking huge advertising budget.

As you’re seeing them everywhere, you probably think it’s one Chinese company targeting African countries like Nigeria with their low quality products. No…they just came to Nigeria recently. They’ve been around for way longer, in countries like the US and European countries. 

But this Chinese company took the US by storm.

The 58th Super Bowl that was held in February 2024 is the most watched Super Bowl in American history with over 123m viewers in the US — of course, thanks to Taylor Swift.

But that’s not the point that concerns us: Temu spent $21m on ads during the game.

Yes, you saw that right Twenty-One Million Dollars to advertise in the Super Bowl.

They became the #1 app on both Apple and Android stores with 338million downloads after their Super Bowl ad. And at a point boasted 52million *active* users in America.

Crazy, yea?

But no, that wasn’t the only time they advertised in the US. Their ads were already following everyone around, just as it’s now following you around. Temu became the Biggest advertiser in the US last year, spending billions of dollars on ads generally.

So what they brought to Nigeria is a proven framework. In the short period of time that Temu entered the Nigerian market, they became the #2 most used app in Nigeria, after Opay. That’s massive!

I’m only showing you all these stats to see how aggressive Temu are in advertising their brand all over the world. I even saw a video about how Temu is now beating down existing giant ecommerce brands in Germany. So yea, we aren’t their major market.

So the question is: do you have that kind of budget to advertise aggressively like Temu? I’m sure your answer is No! That’s why you should pay attention to what I’m about to say next.

There’s one marketing strategy Temu uses that you can employ and apply to your business even on a low budget. It’s one of the reasons we see Temu everywhere.

Even though Temu is advertising aggressively, their ad becomes more aggressive for you personally when you do something: take action. When you check out their ads, view their videos, click on their ad, visit their site, or take any action from their ad, they start retargeting you with ads. 

This kind of ad is cheaper and also more effective, because it’s only targeting people who already showed some interest in the brand.

Good thing is that running retargeting ads is not limited to brands with big budget. You can do it at any level, with any budget. 

Retargeting ads is however just one of the strategies of the overall concept of Remarketing.

And that’s what I intended to discuss here. It’s one strategy you can use as a small business to capture your own small share of the market, even when competing against big-budget brands like Temu.

So what is Remarketing?

You can easily tell the meaning even from the name. It’s when you re-market or market again to a prospect you already marketed to before.

Here’s why Remarketing is important: it’s been studied and proven that generally, only about 3% of those who check out your product or service are ready to buy. Just 3%. In context: if 100 people see your product, only about 2 to 4 people would buy it — and that’s even if your product is great and your marketing (and sales) is very good.

Wahala!

But all hope is not lost. Why? Next in the stat says: about 47% might buy later and 50% won’t buy from you at all.

This is good news because it means you have hope that at least half of the people who see your stuff *might* buy from you. “Might!”

You’re probably wondering why then you aren’t getting so much sales yea?

“Might buy” doesn’t mean they will ever buy from you, because whether they’ll end up buying from you or not depends on several factors.

Unfortunately, when someone visits your site or sees your product and doesn’t buy immediately, there’s a very slim chance that they’ll come back. They’ll most likely never come back. 

It’s crazy yea? They *might* buy, but they will most likely never see you again.

This is why remarketing is important.

Unfortunately, most business owners focus on the 3% that are most likely to buy and miss out on all that remaining 47% that might still buy someday. And that’s because they don’t have a system to remarket to these 47%.

There are many remarketing strategies you can apply to your business but there are two major ones that are not just proven to work, but that you can start to apply to your business immediately (Temu and other giants use them both):

1. List building

2. Retargeting ads

This email is already long, so I’ll continue in my next newsletter. I’ll give you strategies for applying these two remarketing methods, and I might even give you extra remarketing strategies outside these two. I’ll even show you how you can combine both.

I however hope you’ve picked up a few lessons from Temu’s story and you’re already thinking of ways to generate sales from those other 47% that might still buy from you.

Have a great weekend!.....