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"Walmart deserves its own strategy. It has its own algorithm. It has its own shopper profile, as well, and your success will be limited by the extent that you customize this channel." — Kiri Masters, Head of Retail Marketplace Strategy, Acadia
When it comes to retail media marketplaces, Amazon has long been the industry leader, but more brands are finding growth opportunities with Walmart.
Not every retail media platform is created equal. Walmart has distinct differences from Amazon that brands must understand to be successful on the platform. Copying and pasting their Amazon product content and advertising strategy won’t work. Instead, they’ll need to optimize their digital shelf strategy specifically for the Walmart Marketplace.
To explore how brands can drive better results with Walmart, the Digital Shelf Institute (DSI) recently held a webinar, "The Walmart Marketplace: 'Copy & Paste' Is a Waste!"
During the webinar, Kiri Masters, head of retail marketplace strategy at Acadia, a digital agency that works with challenger brands, and Tom Spaven, VP of marketing at Good Wipes, shared what they’ve learned about Walmart’s platform. Here’s their playbook for success.
Many brands already engage with Walmart on some level, including on a wholesale basis. Many brands that are currently marketplace sellers on Amazon are also thinking about integrating Walmart Marketplace into their digital shelf strategy, Masters says.
There’s a compelling reason why.
Recent data from the MikMak Shopping Index indicates Walmart is the highest driver of in-market traffic across all categories, with 32.8% of purchase intent clicks compared to the top 10 other retailers, per LinkedIn.
Masters says Walmart’s focus on value may contribute to this number, especially during a time when consumers are more cost-conscious because of inflation.
Walmart is attractive for brands looking for their next source of ecommerce growth. Though JungleScout reports that Amazon is still much bigger than Walmart in terms of gross merchandise value, Walmart is growing rapidly.
As of 2022, Walmart experienced nearly 12% year-over-year ecommerce sales growth compared to a decline of nearly 5% at Amazon. In 2019, there were about 23,000 sellers on Walmart’s platform. By 2022, that number had ballooned to just under 152,000 sellers.
"For a lot of brands who feel like they've not necessarily maxed out of Amazon, but they've put all the best practices in place and are looking for the next growth avenue, Walmart across a lot of categories in the mass market is attractive because it’s growing very quickly." — Kiri Masters, Head of Retail Marketplace Strategy, Acadia
However, selling on Walmart is a completely different beast than selling on Amazon. Several capabilities and requirements separate Walmart Marketplace from other retail media networks.
Walmart Marketplace represents a great selling opportunity for brands that want to eventually graduate from a third-party selling relationship to a first-party, wholesale relationship with Walmart.
Walmart Marketplace is distinct in three ways:
Good Wipes, one of the fastest-growing consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies in the Southeast, has made this transition successfully. Masters and Spaven say other brands that want to do the same need to thoroughly understand the platform’s unique requirements and how they affect performance on this channel.
"The whole world is Amazon and Walmart is just Walmart," Spaven says about Amazon’s strong foothold in ecommerce. "I always just try to think about why people are behaving differently [on each channel] and how that should inform your brand’s presence and sponsored work."
Walmart has a very different approach to algorithms and organic search compared to Amazon. A product listing quality score drives the Walmart algorithm’s preferences.
A product listing quality score on Walmart Marketplace factors in:
Masters says that if a brand just copied and pasted its content from Amazon to Walmart, it might get a listing quality score of 70% — in other words, a C-grade. This level of performance could have a big impact on the brand’s future conversion rate, and its ability to get a seller badge and participate in Walmart’s marketing programs.
Content quality is a crucial part of driving better performance on Walmart Marketplace. There’s more browsing activity on Walmart than Amazon, so brands have to pay even closer attention to their product descriptions, imagery, and keyword choices.
They can’t just transfer the same backend metadata from Amazon, otherwise their product listings could underperform. They also can’t assume consumers search for products the same way on Walmart as they do on Amazon (hint: they don’t).
"We have to be in tune with the way people are communicating organically around the category to get ahead of it," Spaven says.
Walmart also has distinct content guidelines. For example, Walmart prefers shorter, more concise titles. Straying from this preference could negatively affect a brand’s search visibility. Good Wipes has worked with Acadia to improve its performance in all these areas, increasing its quality score to 98%.
During the webinar, Masters shared that in many product categories, such as flushable wipes, less than 10% of brands use videos and less than 5% use feature sets, the Walmart equivalent of an Amazon A+ page.
"A lot of the time, these tools are not being used," Masters says. "I see this as an advantage for brands [that] are willing to lean in."
Walmart is also rolling out more immersive experiences in the form of “collection pages.” The pages act as mini digital storefronts Walmart has designed to target specific audiences and highlight specific product collections.
Product reviews are also important for engagement and discoverability on the platform. Getting product reviews is still far more challenging on Amazon and there’s no way to integrate reviews from other sites onto its product pages.
However, brands can overcome this challenge on Walmart through product review syndication via third-party providers like Yotpo and Bazaarvoice. One of Acadia’s clients, AlgaeGel, adopted this strategy and saw its quality score increase from 70% to 97%.
Good Wipes also relies on this approach and pulls in reviews from its direct-to-consumer (D2C) site. Still, Spaven admits Good Wipes has some work to do in this area.
"This is probably the gap we have [before] getting a perfect quality score on the Walmart platform," he says. "It's been a little bit challenging. We're going to give it another shot. I think we know how to make it work. I think Yotpo is obviously the place to bring the syndication in."
Advertising on Walmart Marketplace is also unique. Unlike Amazon, competitor conquesting isn’t allowed on Walmart, which means brands don't have to spend as much of their ad budget on brand defense and can put it toward other marketing activities that improve ecommerce performance, Masters says.
On Walmart, product search terms must directly relate to that product’s attributes. Some ad types, such as sponsored display ads, don’t yet exist on the platform. Walmart's Phrase Match feature also doesn't allow brands to block specific words or phrases from their ads in search results. Even with these limitations, Masters says Walmart still offers so many features that drive full-funnel activation, such as display ads and sponsored brand ads.
For brands that want to capitalize on all Walmart has to offer, Masters and Spaven also shared several best practices during the webinar.
Brands can lay the groundwork for digital shelf success with Walmart by making sure their media budget allocation evolves to fit the channel.
Though Walmart doesn’t yet offer robust retail media data on par with Amazon, it is focused on growing its data capabilities through Walmart Connect, which could give brands proof of performance that encourages them to spend more ad dollars with Walmart if they’re currently seeing good results.
Spaven adds that brands need to revisit their approach to media planning and start by thinking about who their consumer is, where they spend their time, and how their behavior differs from channel to channel.
Brands also need to think about their marketing objectives, whether they’re trying to increase awareness or profitability. Spaven admits this strategic shift will require a lot of change management internally, but the potential rewards are worth it.
"At the end of the day, it all comes back to how siloed your marketing and commercial organization is when it comes to planning," he says. "Because realistically, a huge percentage of people's screen time is spent on apps and on the Walmart app. So, you've got to think of it as a genuine media platform for driving not just conversion, but driving consideration."
Masters adds that brands can harness Walmart Marketplace to boost ecommerce growth — as long as their strategy doesn’t just rest on copying and pasting.
"Walmart deserves its own strategy," she says. "It has its own algorithm. It has its own shopper profile as well, and your success will be limited by the extent that you customize this channel."
To hear more Walmart Marketplace insights, listen to the full episode.
