What Is Walmart Advertising
A business that wishes to expand has only one goal in mind; to target more and more customers. Aside from logistical issues, there are several aspects that restrict businesses from having customers all around the country, if not the world. This is where E-Commerce Retail Advertising fills the gap. Walmart is a key segment of this rapidly growing market, and a healthy portion of any competent retail ads manager’s portfolio
Through Walmart advertising, businesses and sellers get a chance to increase sales and revenue through one of the largest retailers in the world. Walmart.com advertising helps thousands of eager shoppers discover the products your business offers. In 2020 Walmart had the second most ecommerce net sales with over $40 billion.
But, hold on. To become a part of the Walmart.com marketplace, it’s important to first analyze why Walmart advertising might be suitable for your business, how it works, and how you can benefit most from it.
Why Should You Advertise on Walmart Marketplace?
Whether it’s for gifts, necessities, or just everyday items, shopping online is now the first preference for millions of shoppers. Online marketplaces like Amazon and Walmart have demonstrated this with a rapidly expanding customer base.
In 2021, Walmart U.S. had eCommerce sales amounting to 43 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of over 70 percent in comparison to 2020’s figure.
It would be an unwise decision on part of the seller to choose not to target these shoppers who wait to click on anything that catches their eye. There’s a plethora of online retailers, let’s look at benefits to having Walmart Advertising as part of your marketing strategy.
What Is Unique About Advertising on Walmart Marketplace?
Emerging as one of the fastest-growing online retailers in the world, between 2017 and 2019, Walmart Marketplace experienced a staggering growth of 207%. Even in the year 2020, Walmart’s website attracted 256 million users from all over the world. Walmart has also done a great job with their placements and device sliders making the shopping experience even easier for the user.
Benefits of Advertising on Walmart Marketplace
Firstly, as a seller, the best marketplace is one where there are more chances of your business being discovered by the customer. Due to having a considerably lower number of sellers compared to bigger marketplaces such as Amazon, Walmart makes this easier. Compared to Amazon’s approximately 8 million sellers globally, there are less than 100,000 sellers competing in the Walmart marketplace. For this reason, the Walmart marketplace attracts a significantly higher number of 27000 monthly unique views per seller as compared to only 2100 monthly views that each seller gets on Amazon. With fewer businesses fighting to be noticed by the customer, and more views, the chances of your business making the sale increase. This decreased competition also translates to lower CPC (Cost-per-click).
Secondly, through selling on Walmart’s marketplace, your business benefits from the pre-existing brand loyalty the retailer has built. As a seller on the platform, your brand becomes an extension of Walmart and shares its credibility with an already loyal customer base.
Moreover, selling on Walmart marketplace will not only allow you to target new audiences but also, different types of audiences. Increasing in popularity, more and more people choose to shop at Walmart online every day. Amongst these are those that reportedly spend an annual of $300 billion on online shopping. These “millennials” make up approximately 35% of Walmart’s total sales online. Thus, they have the potential of creating the most loyal customer base for your business.
Lastly, another significant benefit is that Walmart advertising is easy for third-party sellers. Unlike other online retailers, Walmart only charges a referral fee. This fee is a minute percentage of the sales you make depending on the category of the products your business sells. Through an effective advertising strategy, businesses are bound to benefit and expand.
Walmart Ad Types
In broad terms, Walmart Marketplace advertising can be divided into two different types of advertisements. Sponsored Products and Sponsored Display which offers offsite placements. Sponsored Products are ads that work on the CPC (Cost-per-click) model and are the most efficient ads that can be found in the Walmart marketplace.
Walmart Sponsored Products – Search In-Grid Results
This ad type is suitable for you if your product shows up amongst the first 128 organic search results. By using Search In-Grid advertising, you can ensure that your product shows within the first three pages of the search results. This will help you increase the visibility of your product and thus, the chances of purchases being made. The cost of this type of advertising can range anywhere from at least $50 every day or $100 for the entirety of the campaign. However, your true expenditure could be subject to change depending on the variations in the traffic generated.
Walmart Sponsored Products – Carousels
In many cases, your product may not show up in the first 128 results. To increase your product’s visibility and outreach in such a situation, you can use Carousels. There are several places a carousel ad can show up such as the results page after a search, the Featured Items section on Walmart’s homepage, or the Curated Shelf pages. It will also advertise your product to shoppers who have viewed or bought similar items. Carousel ads are one of the most beneficial options to increase product visibility across Walmart’s website.
Walmart Search Brand Amplifier
As the name suggests, Walmart Search Brand Amplifier aims to increase recognition of not only your company’s singular product but rather, of the whole brand itself. Whenever the shopper searches for the relevant keyword, up to three products from the same brand would be shown to them as an advert atop the result page. The ad would also include your business’s logo and a unique eye-catching heading.
Walmart Buy Box Banner
This type of Walmart advertising targets the product detail page. It shows your product as an alternate purchase option to the shopper that is similar to the product they are shopping for, giving them the option of making a last-minute sale. For example, for a customer shopping for whole-wheat bread, this ad could either show whole-wheat bread produced by another company or it could show similar products such as rye bread. It all depends on what product you choose to advertise through this type of Walmart advertising.
Bid strength can be adjusted for all of these different placements – allowing the advertiser to focus ads on where convert best – or based on a host of other metrics
Walmart Offsite Display Advertising
Walmart advertising allows your business to not only target the shoppers on Walmart’s own website or app but on other websites as well. Through offsite display advertising, Walmart will advertise your business’s products on websites such as Facebook or Instagram, ensuring a larger and more diverse audience.
How to Get Started Selling on Walmart Marketplace
Despite being a seemingly daunting experience, the process of selling on the Walmart marketplace is simple and quick. Let’s take a look at the steps you will have to take.
Step 1
In order to begin selling on the Walmart marketplace, you need to register your company on Walmart’s website. This should not take more than 10-15 minutes, however, you should make sure that you have all the important information at hand. Alongside the general details of your company such as the name and website, you must have your US business tax ID, the W8 or W9, and the EIN verification letter. You will also have to give information regarding your operations and your company’s e-commerce experience.
Step 2
After your company’s application is reviewed and approved, you can move on to introducing your product catalog. This is where you list all the products that you wish to sell on Walmart marketplace. However, at this stage, it is extremely important to check if the products you are listing are in compliance with the types of products that Walmart allows. Walmart does not allow the selling of products such as Alcohol or used items amongst several others. Whilst launching your catalog, make sure you mention all the relevant details of all the products including inventory and promotions.
Step 3
In order to invest in Walmart Advertising, you begin by filling out an application to the Walmart Media Group. In this application, you would not only include your company details but also give information about the products you want to advertise, the advertising plan you wish to choose, the audience you want to target. An important part of this application is mentioning the expectations you have about the expenditure and profit from the campaign.
Step 4
This step comes after your Walmart advertising application is accepted. Here, you would have to fulfill the prerequisite of attending Walmart’s online training webinar where you will gain knowledge about how the Walmart marketplace works.
Step 5
After finishing your training, you have finally reached the last step. You can now begin using the Walmart marketplace to increase your products visibility and increasing sales through employing a beneficial advertising strategy.
Walmart advertising strategy
Measure the Effectiveness of Your Performance Ads
The first step to choosing the perfect advertising strategy is understanding how well or how poorly your existing ads are doing. To do this, you should look for answers to two questions; are the ads reaching the maximum number of viewers, and are the ads reaching the right type of viewers.
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) and Share of Voice (SOV)
As we have already established, many types of Walmart ads rely on the CPC model. In other words, you pay for every click that the shopper makes on your ad. Whilst considering this, an effective advertising strategy would encompass striking the perfect balance between the revenue that is generated in comparison to the expenditure of advertising (ROAS) and the visibility of your company’s ads (SOV). This balance would be pivotal when advertising on other retailers such as Amazon as well. Brands with higher budgets may place a significantly higher focus on SOV and visibility, whereas those who need to recoup their spend would focus more on ROAS
Supporting Your Organic Efforts
Over time, Walmart Advertising can help increase the organic relevancy of your company’s product. This happens when an increase in the number of clicks on your ad, and subsequent conversions, increases the likelihood of your product being shown higher up on the results page whenever a specific keyword is searched. To Walmart’s, and many others, organic ranking algorithms, all sales are on a level playing field. This means ad attributed sales drive ranking up the same as organic sales
Gain Visibility for New And/or Low Performing Products
By using Walmart advertising to your benefit, your company will get increased views, and consequently, more potential sales. The best part is how this is not only limited to your company’s best-selling or new products, but also those that don’t perform well in the market. This is especially important for new products, as they often start at or near the bottom of the barrel in regards to organic rankings
Optimizing for Devices
Another smart way Walmart Advertising helps you choose the best advertising strategy is by allowing optimization of the ads according to the device that is being used. This means that the strategy for the Walmart website varies from the one that is employed for the mobile app. The traffic and revenue generated by Walmart’s app and website vary, and this is where you can choose where to target appropriate audiences considering your own company.
Optimize Your Product Listing Content
The description that you give for your listing on the product detail page is one of the most important factors that lead to a sale being made. Whilst not being overly-wordy, it should provide the shopper with an accurate description. Ideally this done both through the copy and pictures. Multiple high resolution images are vital to an effective listing, this is true across online retailers.
How to Maximize Your Potential With Walmart Paid Advertising
It’s simple; if your business is more noticeable for customers, they are more likely to buy something. Walmart advertising provides an easy way for your business to achieve this. However, determining the most effective advertising strategies as well as managing the Walmart ads all on your own may get difficult to handle. This is where Search Nurture can help you. By providing you with the best retail marketing services, we’re here to manage your ad campaigns and develop efficient advertising strategies for your business.
Trust us to manage your Walmart Ads connect with us today to explore the potential you can avail for your business!
