Walmart is growing rapidly in the retail media industry. With its ad revenue expected to have crossed the billion-dollar mark in 2022, the retail giant will rank only second to the retail media powerhouse Amazon.
There are many reasons behind Walmart’s rapid success in digital advertising, one of which is its robust advertising ecosystem.
Walmart has designed its advertisement products with the sellers and customers in mind. Taking brands to the right customers, these ads empower platform sellers to maximize their sales and grow their presence on the platform.
However, tapping the powers of Walmart’s ad products requires strong, tailored, and intuitively-built campaigns. In this blog, we will share some best practices to build just that.
Understanding the Walmart Advertising Ecosystem
Walmart allows its sellers to run two types of ads: Sponsored Product Ads and Walmart Display Ads.
There are four types of Sponsored product ads, all of which work on a cost-per-click or CPC model. These ads are keyword targeted and appear in the Walmart SERPs and product pages.
You can run automated and manual Sponsored Product campaigns.
Automated campaigns free you of the hassle of keyword research and bidding. You enter your product details and choose a bid. The Walmart algorithm takes care of the ad placement itself.
The manual campaign involves a bit more work and is better suited for advertisers with little or no PPC experience.
Walmart Display Ads are similar to Amazon Display ads in that they run in a banner format on and off Amazon.
Unlike the keyword-targeted Sponsored Product ads, these ads are taken to a relevant audience based on their interests and past behavior.
Display ads are primarily preferable for top-of-the-funnel campaigns and as a part of a re-engagement strategy.
Best Practices for Advertising on Walmart
A leisure wear brand partnered with Walmart Connect Marketplace team to optimize their Sponsored Product campaigns.
With the knowledge and tools shared by Walmart team, the brand experienced 31% MoM conversion rate increase, 1665% MoM ad-attributed revenue, and 3,061% MoM increase in units sold through their now-optimized Sponsored Product campaigns.
Pairing advertising best practices with
Here are some best practices that can help you leverage their potential and maximize your brand’s growth.
Price Your Products Competitively
As you build your Walmart advertising campaign, you may be inclined to adjust your product’s prices to offset the ad expense through product sales.
This may not be the best idea.
It is essential to keep competitive pricing in mind as you go forward with Walmart ads.
You see, Walmart is driven towards offering the best prices. And so, it prefers that its brands also price their products to reflect the platform’s mission.
More importantly, Walmart customers come to the platform looking for the best prices. Therefore, if you want your ad to get more clicks and wish for your ad spend to drive product exposure (and sales), you will need to price your products reasonably, exactly as the customers expect.
How do you price your products competitively, so they can drive clicks without losing revenue?
Start with identifying your business expenses so you know the margins you must respect to maintain profit.
Next, analyze your competitor’s pricing. How do they vary throughout the year? Then price your products based on this analysis.
Earn More Reviews
Reviews drive sales. 90% of customers read online reviews before buying a product. And sales are pertinent for a successful (read profitable) ads campaign.
Therefore, you need more reviews on your product detail page if you want your conversion-focused ad campaigns to be a success.
The likelihood of your product getting purchased increases by 270% when it gets five reviews.
Walmart automatically sends an email to the buyers a few weeks after the purchase and invites them to leave a review.
You can also request reviews yourself by packing the product with a review request.
Another way to increase the number of reviews on your product page is to offer the buyer a small discount on their next purchase if they review your product.
Walmart also has a spark reviewer program through which the platform sends its best products that could use some more reviews to their top customers in exchange for reviews.
You can consider enrolling your brand in this program so your products have more reviews and your ads can generate more sales.
In the example below, 500+ of this scented candles were sold. The product has over a thousand reviews, which may have influenced the sales.
Balance Automated and Manual PPC Ads
Walmart’s automated and manual ad campaigns have their pros and cons. While automated campaigns allow you to get into PPC without too much experience and gain powerful insights and results, it is not wise to make all your campaigns run on auto all the time.
You need to strike a balance between manual and automated campaigns, so you have some control over your ad placements, bids, and budget.
Having said that, it is also critical that you also keep an eye on your automated campaigns. They offer a set-it-and-forget-it option, but letting your automated campaigns run independently without checking up on them can cost you more than you plan to spend.
So, keep an eye on your automated campaigns to ensure your bids align with your budget and campaign goals.
Test Your Ads
Running tests on your ads allows you to identify the elements that are common in all your successful ads and template a pattern for your future campaigns.
Run tests on everything, from the keywords you use in your campaigns to the ad copy, creatives, and even the landing page that links to the ad. These elements play a vital role in shaping your campaign’s success. Therefore, you need to make sure they are optimized.
A/B testing is perhaps the easiest testing method you can deploy to check the efficacy of your ad elements.
A/B tests require that you create two (or more) variations of the same ad and serve them to different users. Then you can track each ad’s performance and see which one generates better results.
For accurate test results, let the ads run for a few days before tracking their performance. Also, make sure you change only one element each time, so you have clarity on what truly impacts the ad performance.
Optimize Your Product Listing
Conversions happen on the product page. Therefore, if you are running ads to drive sales, you need to ensure that your product listing is optimized to drive conversions.
Optimized listing help drive organic lift in conversions – the sole factor pivotal to the success of your ad campaign.
Keep these points in mind as you optimize your product listing:
Format the listing to include 3 to 10 product features and a detailed description paragraph. Walmart recommends a minimum of 150 words in this description.
Try and state the benefits of your products, not just the features.
Include high-resolution product images that show your product from all sides, as well as in use. Include a product video if you can to maximize conversions.
Use keywords throughout the description, but sparsely. Don’t keyword stuff.
Write a concise title within 50 to 75 characters. Here’s a formula Walmart recommends for writing product titles:
Brand + Style Name (if applicable) + Descriptive Feature (if applicable), Material, Clothing Size + Pack Count
Consider Working with an Ecommerce Agency
Running Walmart ads is easy. But you get the best results when you work with professionals.
If you want to drive tangible ROI using Walmart’s powerful ad products, consider partnering with an ecommerce agency.
Ecommerce agencies deploy professionals on your project. With their years of experience, these marketplace and ecommerce experts help brands build tailored strategies to tap into the platform’s potential and drive growth.
At Accrue, we help our clients explore newer and better avenues that can help them drive brand success.
Talk with our ecommerce strategists and advertising experts to discuss your Walmart advertising plans and get going with powerful campaigns.