The Walmart Marketplace: "Copy & Paste" is a Waste, with Kiri Masters, Head of Retail Marketplace Strategy at Acadia and Tom Spaven, VP of Marketing at Good Wipes

Transcript

Our transcripts are generated by AI. Please excuse any typos and if you have any specific questions please email info@digitalshelfinstitute.org.

Peter Crosby (00:00):

Welcome to Unpacking the Digital Shelf where we explore brand manufacturing in the digital age.

Peter Crosby (00:16):

Hey everyone. Peter Crosby here from the Digital Shelf Institute. walmart.com has become an attractive marketplace channel for brands to consider, but the trap that many brands fall into, however, is to simply copy and paste their Amazon product, content and advertising strategy. But Walmart's platform is different in several fundamental ways such as how products are ranked in organic search. This podcast is an audio version of a recent DSI webinar featuring Kiri Masters head of Retail marketplace strategy at Acadia. And Tom Spaven, VP of Marketing at Good Wipes, sharing with Lauren Livak Gilbert, their Walmart Playbook for Success, and how your brand can utilize Walmart better in your digital shelf strategy.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (00:57):

Right. Hello everyone, and welcome to today's Digital Shelf Institute webinar. We are going to be talking about Walmart, and specifically we're going to be talking about a Walmart strategy and how to build out your content strategy differently than other retailers. And I am very excited to have Tom and Kiri with me today, both experts talking about their experience, building out content strategies on Walmart. But before I get started, just some quick housekeeping. If you have a question, please feel free to throw it either in the chat or the q and a. We will either get to it during the webinar or at the end of the webinar and any other questions you have, feel free to throw them in the chat and I will get to them. For those of you who do not know me, my name is Lauren Levek and I lead the Digital Shelf Institute. If you are a member of the DSI thank you for being a member and thank you for being here on the webinar today. And I am actually going to pass it over to Kiri so she can give an intro about herself.

Kiri Masters (01:56):

Great. Hi everyone. So happy to be here. I'm Kiri Masters. I'm the head of retail marketplace strategy at Acadia. Acadia is a digital agency that works with challenger brands and retail media and marketplaces is one of our key practice areas among other modalities like SEO and paid and analytics and social. So we do a lot of work with brands like Good Wipes on Amazon, Walmart, Instacart, target, and Chewy. So great to be here. Excited to jump in.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (02:32):

Awesome. Thanks Kiri. And then Tom, how about you?

Tom Spaven (02:36):

Hello everybody. Tom Spaven. My current role is head of marketing at Good Wipes, which I'll get into shortly. You'll see a little bit on the brand and what we're about. My background, I'm a Londoner transplanted to Miami during my Bacardi days and then now find myself in Atlanta working with Kiri and the team at Arcadia. I'm very excited to say so. Yeah, pleased to be here.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (03:01):

Awesome, thanks Tom. And I know you want to give some context around the brand so that people know good wipes and some of your strategies, so go for it.

Tom Spaven (03:10):

Well, I just thought I'd put some of our best imagery up on the screen and let that do the Talking Good Wipes is one of the fastest growing CPG companies in the Southeast. We actually been around 10 years, I've been here two. So the founders, Charlie and Sam are on a mission to just help people feel good every day. We mean that very literally. We are purveyors of the finest flushable wipes, body wipes, feminine care. It's a fun brand. We don't take it, we take our jobs in the business very seriously, but the brand I think doesn't take itself too seriously. As you probably see, we're on a mission to move away from clinical sanitization that is really what's in the category right now and bring in an element of sensory self-care. We talk about bringing beauty to your booty, and it really is our North Star in terms of how we operate and how we can help bring a better experience to people. So that's a little bit about good wipes.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (04:13):

Love it. Some of the best slogans you'll hear in this webinar today. Yeah, thanks so much, Tom. And just a quick kind of set the stage of what we're going to talk about, we're really going to get in why brands are getting really excited about Walmart. There's a lot going on. There's a lot of growth. So how to think about your Walmart strategy, the unique structure of Walmart, because not a little, it's a lot different than Amazon and other retailers, and you need to know how to use the marketplace, who's shopping there, what Walmart requires in its strategy. And we'll also talk a bit about product reviews. So really diving deep about Walmart and knowing that you can't just lift and shift your strategy from other retailers. So I will actually pass it off to Keri to kick us off.

Kiri Masters (04:59):

Great. All right. So first we're going to talk a little bit about Walmart from a macro standpoint and why it's interesting for brands to consider. I think it's a channel that a lot of brands already sell to on a wholesale basis, and many more brands who are marketplace sellers on Amazon are thinking about Walmart. And here is some very recent data actually from Mik Mac, the MikMak Shopping Index. And they found recently that 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. And Amazon is a little further behind that. So this is looking at purchase intent rather than actual transaction volume, but quite interesting to see Walmart taking the lead there this year.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (05:56):

Kiri, do you think some of that has changed because of the economy and kind of the pricing kind of strategy that they have at Walmart, the best value around the corner kind of thing?

Kiri Masters (06:08):

That's a really good question. I think that maybe part of it, I think that I've also noticed as a consumer much bigger push with Walmart plus I, Walmart plus member as well as a Prime member, and they've really built that program out to be much more attractive over time. So I think that that might also be driving some adoption there as well.

(06:35):

Here's some side by side. This is quite interesting to look at and it's a question that we get all the time is, well, how does Walmart compare to Amazon in terms of volume? And this data is from 2022, it would be great to update this, but we can see that from a gross merchandise value standpoint, Amazon still is much larger than Walmart, but Walmart is growing very quickly, and that's quite exciting. It's still, it's on that trajectory and 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, looking for a next growth avenue. Walmart across a lot of categories in the mass market is attractive because it's growing fairly quickly. And we can see that translate into the number of retail sellers. So back in 2019, only 23,000 sellers on walmart.com, and this was actually back when it was quite a restrictive platform platform to access. You needed to be a US company only. Over time, they have changed their approach to marketplace sellers and we've seen a big spiking growth over the last couple of years as more sellers come onto the Walmart platform and look to take advantage of that growth.

(08:11):

So I want to just start with some sort of just a foundational discussion of the Walmart marketplace structure because it is different to Amazon and it is important to understand what does it mean to be a three P versus a one P in terms of your total sales opportunity. So here we can see this is, I took a screenshot of my cart the other day. I had six things in my cart. And as a customer it can be a little bit confusing because some things could be delivered that day or free pickup and some things could only be sent to me via shipping. And so we have, obviously with warmup, you have the store, some items are delivered from the store, some things can be picked up in the store, but if you are three P, you are only selling online and I can't get those items the same day, I can't go and do that, that bopus fulfillment method.

(09:17):

So that translates into a schism of opportunity for a one P brand versus a three P brand. The three P brands really can only take advantage of those app and online sales, whereas one P vendors do have that advantage in that a customer on the app could go to the store and pick it up. They could have that item delivered the same day and it could be fulfilled in a box a couple of days later. So Tom, I'd love to hear from you. I know that you at Good wipes, you've gone through a little bit of an evolution here in terms of your relationship to Walmart. Would you like to speak to that and what that has looked like over time?

Tom Spaven (10:06):

Sure. Yeah. I mean, I'll probably start by just saying we're relatively new in Walmart in terms of a major supply. I say that, I mean full distribution supplier probably wouldn't classify us as major just yet, but what we've done is we've actually tracked that journey from being a three P supplier and obviously being a little restricted with that to having full distribution across the country with part of our range. And we've benefited from having that one P relationship. So obviously that allows Bopus, which has been obviously huge, and that behavior seems to have continued coming out of Covid. I think people are happy to not get out of their cars. I think I saw something yesterday that drive-through restaurants are having a massive boot. People just don't want to interact with anybody. So there's this whole drive-through shopping, which has evolved, and that's a huge thing for us as well. A lot of our sales come from pickup. So yeah, essentially we're there. We're still growing, we're still learning, but we're really, really happy to go into that one P relationship and to start building out that media presence. So we'll get into that a little more, but that's the history of our presence at warmup.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (11:22):

Tom, just a quick question. How has the transition from three P to one p for any brands that are on the call that are thinking maybe to make that transition? Do you have any one piece of advice that you can say, Ooh, I wish I knew this when I was making the transition?

Tom Spaven (11:35):

So transparently. It happened before I joined, so I was fortunate enough to, so in terms of the actual mechanics of the transition, I do think it was a little bumpy, but I can't give you a specific anecdote around that. Thankfully I didn't have to go through it, but

Lauren Livak Gilbert (11:51):

Totally fine. You got to come in once it was

Tom Spaven (11:52):

Done. Amazing. Yeah, that's fine. And then, yeah, I mean, look, we've grabbed a couple of images here, which we want to talk about the opportunity with online, and I don't think I need to persuade anyone on this call, the benefits of it, but clearly when you just take a step back and look at a small brand's presence on shelf, it can be difficult. There's very limited control about what you can do in terms of facings visibility, branded presence. I've given our friends across the competitive landscape here of Geek. Nice shout out because dude wipes have a great presence in Walmart. It's a huge customer for them, but online you can essentially kind of outperform yourself. So the way to think about it, and I always think about it, is it's the biggest shop you have and it's the one where you have the most control.

(12:49):

So the great thing is that Walmart have done such a phenomenal job at building out the online platform that they want brands to invest in it. They want brands to invest in content, not just PDPs, but we're talking about video, we're talking about below the fold and assets that you can deliver the best of your brand and communicate it exactly as you want. So I love what's written here. You're limited only by your skill, and yes, obviously to some extent to your muscle and firepower and budget, but you can deliver the best of your brand, which of course is almost impossible in store. So yeah, all about it.

Kiri Masters (13:27):

And I think just to add to that as well, for brands who are in emerging categories like the good wipes category, and then also brands who are challenges and emerging brands, they may not get even the opportunity, opportunity to have an end cap at Walmart, even if they had the budget to do so. But with an online presence that is, as Tom mentioned in that slide, sort of limited only by your own creativity skill and to an extent your budget as well.

Tom Spaven (14:04):

Yeah, I mean on that, there are brands that would do anything to get an end cap at Walmart, but they will literally not get the opportunity because they're in a category that isn't productive enough to warrant that space. It almost has no price, right? Because it's such a huge, it's better than a billboard I would say, because you can think of the traffic you're stopping and who are in a consideration shopping mindset, but it's just not even an option to your point. So yeah, it's tough,

Kiri Masters (14:34):

But on the online landscape, it is more of an even playing field for sure. So one thing that, an observation that I have, and this is my personal observation, is as Walmart has been going out and drumming up not only customers with their plus program and advertising and really ramping up shopping activity online, they've also been recruiting brands and bringing them onto the platform. And one message I have noticed is talking about if you do a great job as a three P marketplace seller, maybe we will invite you to become a Walmart vendor. And that is a very attractive proposition for a lot of brands. If you're a mass market brand, getting into a Walmart store is like Tom said, just an invaluable part of being able to access that mass customer. So this is quite interesting, and I bring this up not because I have a lot of great data on how often this happens or lots of examples here, have not heard of a ton of examples. But in order to be in a position to be invited to be a one p, if this is a route that you want to go by, what we understand from Walmart is leveraging all of these content capabilities and best practices is an important way to get on the radar of that category manager and get on the path to becoming a one P. That is what we have heard so far.

(16:19):

So another reason why the in-store, sorry, the online optimization is so important, is that this number here, 69%, this is the percentage of US consumers who'd rather review a product on their phone than speak with an in-store associate. And to Tom's point about, hey, everyone just wants to do drive-through, now you go to a store and half the time there's not a store associate there, but a lot of people want to just get on and read the reviews or look at the product information on the app to make a buying decision. And so this is why if you are selling in stores at Walmart, it's really important to back that up with a great online presence because people are seeking out information on the Walmart app while they are in store.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (17:17):

I love that metric. That's such a great connection to convenience too and ease of shopping. So you're giving the consumer the information they need when they need it, the way that they want it, and it's a compliment of in-store and online. So that's just a really great stat to share. Thanks Kiri.

Kiri Masters (17:34):

And so this sort of gets to the meat and potatoes of the session today, which is Walmart deserves its own strategy, it has its own algorithm, it has its own shopper profile as well, and your success will sort of be limited by the extent that you customize this channel. So at a really high level, we'll get into most of these in a bit more detail in the upcoming slides, but apples and oranges, right? Walmart has a very different approach to its algorithm and visibility organically of search results compared to Amazon where everyone on this call will be familiar with a nine. The algorithm Amazon uses, Walmart's algorithm is very different. The ad platform is quite different too. Amazon has been building its self-serve ad platform for a long time. It's quite mature, lots of different options. Walmart is newer to the game, and then finally product reviews, quite a different environment there as well, which we'll get into as well. Tom, I wanted to throw it over to you as well, since Good Wipes has a really strong Amazon channel as well, just observations that you have once you started to dip into the walmart.com world.

Tom Spaven (19:01):

Yeah, I mean, to your point, we've built out a strong Amazon business for much longer. So in a sense it's kind of mature on our side as well. And we have more learnings, probably a bit more sophistication there. And I think with Walmart we're still learning, but I always come back to the consumer and try and find some insight. So at the end of the day, Walmart is just one retailer. Now, yes, Amazon is a retailer, but it's kind of bigger than that. It's become a search engine. It's kind of the world we talk about. The whole world is Amazon and Walmart is just Walmart. So I always just try and think about why people are behaving differently and how that should inform your branded presence and your sponsored work because it's different number of trips. Your purchase on Walmart is likely to be wrapped into your total shopping basket, which could have a totally different cadence and therefore different spend levels, different pack formats.

(20:00):

I think there's opportunities to do a lot of cross marketing basket building on Walmart because you're just thinking about someone in their habitual shopping trip as opposed to Amazon, which is in an exciting way, but it also in a more daunting way, it's, it could be anything at any time. So yeah, we're still learning, but we're seeing quite different behaviors and quite different results in terms of our assortment and basket size, number of trips, purchase frequency, et cetera. So it really is not a copy paste strategy. And I think you'll get into, there's some sections later where we talk about some examples of how consumers behave very differently on the platform. So it's really

Kiri Masters (20:45):

Absolutely, well, let's talk about algorithm aspect first. So the product listing score is a big driver of the Walmart algorithm preference essentially. So a high quality listing score has talks about content offer and seller performance, whereas if we simply copied and pasted our content straight from Amazon over to Walmart, we might get a listing quality score of 70%, which is going to have a really big impact on conversion rate down the road. Having a high quality listing score is also an essential requirement to get a seller badge and be in having your naming the hat for Walmart marketing programs as well. So it's sort of like you either have a, there's a cutoff in terms of quality here and you just won't get access to certain perks without a high quality listing score, high listing quality score. So within listing quality score, there are three main elements.

(22:03):

There is the offer itself, and that includes item price, shipping price, speed in stock rates. So these sort of hygiene factors. And I think one thing that we've noticed and understand about Walmart is that item price matters a lot more than on Amazon. So Amazon has really made the best man win in terms of who has the most popular product. Walmart does prioritize products that are lower in price essentially. So that is something just an inherent difference in the way that they have set up their search algorithm. Seller performance is another important part. So order defect rate, policy adherence, prompt customer response, so they want customers to have a really good experience and that is the seller has a big part of that. And then finally, the part that's blown up here because it's really, really important is the content quality score. And this has changed recently.

(23:08):

So it used to be content quality used to be 40% and attribution used to be 60% and they've flipped that recently, which is actually really great for brands because we have more control over or it is sort of easier to update this product name short and long description and images. And the attribution side is all the backend content where it goes on the shelf essentially. And so they brought that from the in-store environment into an online context and making sure that when someone searches Walmart, but they're finding things in the same place that they would in the store planogram essentially. So this is something that is very unique to Walmart. On Amazon, there's a lot of backend metadata about, I don't know, if you're selling a shoe, what's the heel height and what's all this stuff that seems fairly arbitrary, whether you fill it out or not on Amazon, it won't really make a lot of difference, whereas on warmup there is a lot more browsing activity going. It's not just about searching behavior, but it's about browsing. And so if those fields are not filled out, Walmart essentially sort of grades you down a little bit. So this is a really substantial difference and a big thing that we see a lot of brands kind of skipping through is copying what we've got elsewhere, but Walmart requires this extra metadata to be filled out in order for it for brands to really get the best visibility that is available.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (24:49):

I'll never forget having to fill out an Amazon sell sheet for shampoo and saying that there were no batteries included. So they definitely do have a lot of questions that are not necessarily relevant to the product. But Carrie, I have a question about content quality. Have you seen with the new changes that any elements stick out more than others in terms of importance? Are images more important than titles or descriptions or is it pretty universal that you just have to have a built out PDP from a content perspective?

Kiri Masters (25:20):

Yeah, that's a really good question. I think that some, it's not analysis that we have done, but I think that there are some providers out there, software providers who look at what that breakdown is around images or use of video and things like that. There are some stats that we have a little later about how many brands actually take advantage of video and feature sets, which is one piece of it. But

Tom Spaven (25:50):

I would add one thing I think just on that we've found recently that the big shiny stuff is important, but there are some really detailed small things that might not be immediately obvious that can enhance your quality score and it's specific attributes that need to be listed for a certain category, and it just, not everyone might be aware of that. I mean, that's just something to dig into perhaps with your agency or just make sure that you're talking to the merchant or a broker just to make sure you've checked all the boxes on the small details as well, because that counts towards your score and it is eventually to your organic performance. So yeah, it's just something to look at.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (26:31):

That's a great point.

Kiri Masters (26:32):

That's a great point. And to build on that, those sell sheets have changed recently too. So they rolled out these changes in, I think it was in August in the second part of this year, and when they changed the weighting of content quality and attribution, they also updated some of these sell sheets. So if you're not using the latest and greatest one, to Tom's point, there might be some attribute on there that is not filled out and you may be getting penalized for it. So that's another good thing to check using the latest one.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (27:07):

One clarification question, excuse me, we have is around shelving. Can you talk about what that shelving means from an attribution standpoint? What kind of attributes are they looking for from that?

Kiri Masters (27:21):

With Shell? I don't have any

Lauren Livak Gilbert (27:26):

Taxonomy or sections of the store.

Kiri Masters (27:35):

From my understanding, it's more the technical product information that's going to be very category specific.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (27:45):

Okay, thank you.

Kiri Masters (27:49):

So another thing to note here is that Walmart has different guidelines around, to Tom's point, very specific things. So product title Walmart's recommendation is that the title should be clean and concise between 50 and 75 characters. And just to give an example from good wipes here, when we were first looking at the product title, it was lengthy, which is a best practice on Amazon. I mean you want to have your primary keywords in the title, and that is the best practice there. And so it makes a lot of sense when we just copy that over. Whereas on Walmart, the best practice there is actually a shorter, more concise title as well. And it does impact search visibility, whether or not those are adhered to.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (28:47):

I'm sorry, my slides are a little delayed.

Kiri Masters (28:49):

That's all good. So we also understand that Walmart shoppers actually shop differently and they use different search patterns as well. So this is from Profitero looking at different search terms on Amazon versus Walmart. On Amazon, the primary search term is K-Cup coffee on Walmart. So also when you are building the product content, taking into account what is the actual search queries that are being used and using PPC campaigns to harvest those keywords, that research state, using that research stage to identify what keywords are being used and not just assuming that they're going to be the same D two C or Amazon because people are behaving a little bit differently on Walmart. Just before we move on there, Tom, I just curious if there is anything that you are aware of having seen either at good wipes or past life of different kinds of activities between retailers?

Tom Spaven (30:07):

No, I mean I think actually when you step back and look at this, it makes sense because Amazon is everything you could possibly want and you have to qualify it with a little bit more kind of

(30:19):

Structured category language just to sort of help funnel it where you need to get to. Whereas think about it, if you're shopping around Walmart and you're asking someone in store, if it was a physical interaction, you'd be like, oh, where are the K-cups? You would almost speak like that. So it feels like common sense when you take a step back. But I just think it's rare that we would think about that when we're inputting keywords and building, so you just can't map your keyword searches across the two examples. Now it might be similar across mass retail, like me, Walmart and Target might be quite similar. It might be more similar. Obviously bearing in mind they probably have a slightly different shopper. But no, I think we don't have too much data on this one for where we are on good wipes, but it's just really interesting to kind of sit back and see this and there must be so many examples of that.

Kiri Masters (31:16):

What will be interesting as well, and this is slightly off topic as we see retailers move from, we'll see an evolution I believe, of using search, which is like you said, Tom, phrases you'd never use in real life, whereas the K Cup coffee and we moving towards conversational ai, we're asking real questions like ideas for school lunchbox, snacks, like this more natural conversational way of searching. It will be interesting to see how our own keyword research and content optimization is going to play into that. I think that we should be ready for that, or it will be interesting to see out of Walmart and Amazon who gets there first.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (32:05):

I also think good wipes is such a great example because you can call them toilet wipes, bathroom wipes, butt wipes, bum wipes. I feel like there's lots of different keywords that could apply, but what shopper on what channel is searching in what way? And what's that conversational way that you're asking for it? So I just think the way that your titles and your slogans and your keywords line up are really interesting. I think it's more natural to how people are speaking about

Tom Spaven (32:34):

White and we have to be on top of this because as a relatively young category, the language is evolving and it hasn't settled. So it's even officially in a merchant language, it's wet bath tissue, no one's typing that in, but we have to be in tune with the way people are communicating organically around the category to get ahead of it. And I think shortly we'll talk a little bit about ways to be opportunistic in different ways, but absolutely, you've got to look beyond your Google and your Amazon keyword. You've got to just listen to people and you can actually get ahead of it and gain advantages in search just by being in touch with the consumer. So I think that's a really good point, and especially in a young category

Lauren Livak Gilbert (33:21):

And have the people process and technology to be able to update those changes quickly as they change. Quick plug about all the things we talk about at the DSI. So great point there, Tom.

Kiri Masters (33:33):

So this is going to the point of usage of the newer tools that are available on Walmarts, really sort of build the brand and talk about your product and brand in a more immersive way. In many categories, just like Flushable wipes, less than 10% of brands are using videos and less than 5% are using feature sets. So feature sets are basically the Walmart equivalent to an Amazon a plus page, and it will vary by category, but a lot of the time these tools are not being used. So I see this as an advantage that brands who are willing to lean in and yeah, I see lots of comments about how difficult it is to update these product pages and things change, but if you are willing to go to that extra effort and other competitors in your category, then that's going to be an advantage you can take care of.

Tom Spaven (34:33):

I'm going to give Acadia a plug here because I've been reading through these comments and it sucks because I think a lot of people have really put the effort in and they seem to be getting mixed messages or all I'll say is the moment we gave this to Acadia, our quality score has gone to 98%. I don't know exactly how, but they did it and they did it very, very quickly. So yeah, you should probably include your email address at the end of this.

Kiri Masters (35:03):

Well, thank you. I wasn't expecting that and it was interesting. I feel some of these questions coming in are quite technical. This is where I have to shout out the people who are interacting with Walmart on a daily basis, like Logan, who is a good wife's account manager here. There is a lot to keep up with here, and I won't be able to answer all of these technical questions because it is really boots on the ground, hands on keyboard stuff that changes very frequently. And I've seen some questions about, well, Walmart says that this is a best practice, but then we can't actually execute it. What's more important to do? All those questions are really, I guess the benefit of working across lots of different accounts here as we can see some of those trends. But I do apologize in advance if I can't answer all those technical questions. It's because we've got people who really, they're in the platform every day seeing and executing on this stuff.

(36:11):

So there's also something to keep an eye on here is as Walmart rolls out more of an immersive shopping experience, we're seeing more of a focus on these collection pages or these mini storefronts, and that is less of the UI on Amazon when the shopping activity and the way that people interact with Amazon, even though they have introduced Amazon Inspire and things like that, really, you go to Amazon, you search for what you want, you search for, it's either a problem statement or something that you know want or a brand. It's very search driven in comparison, going to the Walmart homepage or the app, their sort of merchandising looks and feels a little bit differently. It does kind of draw you in and encourages more browsing activity. So this is just an important thing to note. You do need to be checking all the boxes to be featured in these collection pages.

(37:20):

It's a hygiene factor and then the insert placement as well. This is quite interesting as well. So still even with that browsing behavior, a lot of activities happening from the search bar and if we can get brands into that search bar there, it's going to really, really help with discovery. I, all right, well, let's talk about Walmart reviews. And this is an area that is, we will hear mixed success stories here, but I do want to say that getting product reviews on Amazon is very challenging. It's a system that has been demonstrated to be abused heavily if there's not very significant guardrails in place. And so as a result, Amazon's review ecosystem has evolved over time to be very restrictive, very challenging to get reviews, and there's no way to sync in reviews from other platforms. They have to all be native, and it's a perennial challenge that brands have.

(38:37):

My sales are not that great. I don't have reviews and I don't have reviews because I don't have sales. It's very difficult to get out of that catch 22 situation with Walmart. There are a number of different ways to get reviews in. There are some native programs and then we have some integration with third party programs like YoPo and Bazaar Voice who you may already use, and those product reviews from your D two C site can be syndicated in. So that can be extremely helpful and solve that cold start problem that a lot of brands have on Amazon. So just to share a little example here from a brand on the next slide that was able to successfully use Yacht PO to sync up their product reviews from their D two C site. And you can see from this screenshot here, it says below the review written by an alga cal.com customer. So that is a syndicated review that's come in, and their quality score went from 70 to 97% just from getting a bigger number of products reviews in. This was before the August changes, whether the algorithm was changed slightly. But yeah, Tom, you've got something to share about products review syndication?

Tom Spaven (40:06):

Yeah, a little bit. I mean, we've struggled a little bit here. I'm not going to go into the gory details of what was horrible and what wasn't. But I will say I think it's just an example of the tech stack logically being valid and making sense, but in the mix of the swirl that every brand has to deal with on a daily basis, it is not always as straightforward and it can get pushed down the priority list. This is probably the gap we have to getting a perfect quality score on the Walmart platform. So all I'll say is 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 YoPo is obviously the place to bring the syndication in and I think we obviously have a phenomenal volume of reviews on our D two C. So yeah, we're going to get back into it. It's just been caught up in the priority list and push down. But yeah, it's not always as straightforward as these tech platforms like to tell you. So honestly, if anyone here on the panel or who's listening in has a great example or some tips, I would love to hear it. Please get in touch and help us out. Struggled a little bit here. That's all I'm going to say.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (41:29):

I think reviews are challenging across every retailer and whether you have a D two C or not, it's figuring out how to get them, how to syndicate them and how to make sure that they appear accurately on each of your products. So agree with Tom there. If anyone has any insight, please share your experiences.

Kiri Masters (41:52):

And then we're sort of rounding things out here with advertising. So a few things here that are different to Amazon with advertising, I'll just run through them fairly quickly. So no competitor conquesting, so if we're good wipes, we can't conquest dude wipes. I know it's a tragic situation, but we've seen, our ad team has seen some, we're not sure if they were glitches, but temporarily we were able to conquest. So I'm not sure if that was a test or a glitch, but for the time being, we're not able to conquest. So that is a double-edged sword. We can't go on conquest dude wipes or cottonelle, but they can't conquest us, which means we don't have to spend so much of our ad budget on brand defense and we can put it towards acquiring people, building an awareness campaign or something like that. So that ultimately helps keep the costs a little lower than it would be on Amazon where it's a cost of doing business to defend your brand term or to defend your main product search terms.

(43:07):

We don't have that on Walmart. Another important thing here is that the keywords that we're using in keyword campaigns must relate back to attributes. So going back to the item, sell sheets and set up new items set up, we can't advertise against terms that are not in the attributes due to Walmart just simply sort of being a little coming to the advertising game a little later than Amazon. There are just some things that don't exist like sponsored display. And then finally, we don't have a negative keyword capability on phrase match. So those are quite technical things towards the end, but it's just important to know that not everything works the same on Walmart and a different approach required there, but no competitor Conquesting can be a bonus. Having said that, we still really love that Walmart has all the components of a full funnel activation. We have display ads, we have sponsored brand ads. We can choose to be really aggressive at the top of search, like this ad for search for non-stick pans. towl is right up there with the sponsored brand placement. And then the sponsored product adds below that as well. So we're still able to have all the full funnel awareness, consideration purchase journey that we would on an Amazon.

(44:44):

And then finally something I don't think so many brands tap into is using Walmart display. So this goes beyond just the keyword targeting, but we're actually starting to now, well, we are able with Walmart display to target different types of audiences, people who are in market for certain products, different lifestyle groups, affinities interests, people who have already bought my brand, people who have not bought my brand. So this is moving up the funnel into more awareness capabilities. We can hone in on certain lifestyles and segments there.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (45:25):

And Kiri, when it comes to the data that you receive from Walmart, from an advertising perspective, can you speak a little bit to that and what kind of data Walmart is providing, what opportunities there are for brands to kind of get that data on the retail media side of things that can help them better understand their consumer?

Kiri Masters (45:43):

So I think it's contextual, right? So Amazon has just created an expectation of a huge volume of data and the ability to tie it all together. Walmart is not at that point, that's the long and short of it. So we have less capabilities there. We're not able to do quite as much as we would in Amazon Marketing Cloud, for example, to tie everything together. But it is a huge priority for Walmart, Walmart Connect and making that a more robust solution that more brands can tap into and ultimately spend more ad dollars because seeing good results.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (46:28):

And the one thing I'll add to that because I'm having a lot of conversations with brands now is in your joint business planning with Walmart, ask for the data because the more the brands are asking for the transparency and asking for the data, the more the retailers will hear that and then figure out ways to collaborate with the brands to be able to provide that transparency. So as a brand, build it into your joint business planning, ask Walmart for the data and ask what you need, ask for what you need and why you need it. So just a big plug for making sure that's included in JVP.

Kiri Masters (47:04):

Tom, I know that as a Omni-channel brand, you have a lot of thoughts on this topic of how do you allocate across different channels and there's new ones coming online all the time. Love to hear your thoughts on this.

Tom Spaven (47:19):

So this is quite a big topic, and I think this might hit hard with some of the audience, but I think that a lot of companies, particularly larger ones, are still essentially going through the same steps in planning that they were 10 years ago with sort of minor changes and more buzzwords thrown in, but little material change in terms of how budgets are allocated towards marketing objectives. So I've been there, I've experienced that frustration and I'm lucky enough now to work in a company that's small enough to have to just put common sense at the beginning of planning and think about the number one thing, which is who is our consumer and where are they and where do they spend their time? You have to start there. You don't just fill in the blanks on the numbers compared to the previous year without thinking about that.

(48:08):

So when it comes to retail media, it has to come back to what are your marketing objectives, which typically will be, there'll be two main ones, right? There'll be one around awareness and relevance or desire, the brand building aspect, which maybe is 20, 30% of your funding. And then probably the majority of a brand, particularly with retail footprint will have 70% of its budget towards essentially performing, delivering the number, et cetera. So the question is how much of that needs to be put into these retail platforms? We know it's been increasing. We know with some companies it's starting to become the first thing that gets budgeted, which I think is quite exciting because it opens up the conversation towards, okay, well now once we've maxed out the sponsored product search, what else can we do on the platform knowing that people are there and then you get into the feature sets and the videos and all the rest of it.

(49:06):

But at the end of the day, it all comes back to how siloed your marketing and commercial organization is when it comes to planning. Because realistically, a huge percentage of people's screen time is spent on apps on the Walmart app now there's just people spending a lot of time there. So you've got to think of it as a genuine media platform for driving, not just conversion, but driving consideration if they're outside the category. Obviously if you have the spending ability, you can intercept on homepages and then do takeovers of category homepages. So I would take a very fluid approach to it and try and get the e-commerce voice in the big room if you can, and start pitching for real dollars as opposed to just having a siloed awareness budget somewhere else that might go to out of home and tv, which are great channels. I'm not saying that that's not a good place to invest, but I think that this needs to be considered now as a level priority with your awareness budget and go from there. Missing brands are missing the opportunity to intercept and convert customers. It's just so clear.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (50:19):

And I think that stat that Kiri shared, the 69% of consumers would rather interact on the app than with a person to ask a question. I mean, that's a very influential stat. The stat from Forrester around digitally influenced sales. I think it's going to be over 70% by 2027. So really using stats like that in the big room, I liked that Tom, with your leaders to try and explain why these interconnected pieces of in-store and online need to come together. And you really need to think about the consumer. So I know a lot of you who are listening are the ones that are trying to convince people for more budget, trying to talk to the leadership and explain why it's important. Those stats are really, really important to do that. And stories like this will be super helpful. So thank you for sharing that, Tom. So ki you want to close us out and tell us a little bit more about Acadia,

Kiri Masters (51:15):

Just really briefly, especially for anyone who missed the intro. So I am at Acadia. We are a full service digital marketing agency. All the way on the right there is the marketplaces in retail channel, which is my end of town. But that is a very strong part of our remit as an agency is looking at retail media, not even just for retail brands. I mean now we have lots of non-endemic opportunities with Thursday night football and you go to Walmart or you go to Amazon, you see ads for insurance and college savings funds and things like that. So retail media is even becoming bigger than a CPG activation. But if we've got a QR code a couple of slides away, you can find us online to learn more about our Walmart and retail media practice.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (52:14):

And I encourage everyone to follow Kiri on LinkedIn because she shared some really awesome content. So definitely do that as well. Thank you. And then Tom, the best slogan of the webinar,

Tom Spaven (52:25):

Yes, I get a moment to talk about good wipes again, which is great. You can also follow me on LinkedIn if you want random, pointless anecdotes at the weekend. So that's also an option for everybody. No, look, I think as it comes to retail, we've found that this is a very powerful proposition, right? Because we're not coming in stealing share from another category, we're essentially adding to it when it comes to usage. Most people like to combine wet and dry. It's a very compelling proposition, value proposition for the customer. So really it is enabling us to gain more shelf space to gain visibility. Obviously it helps to be a premium brand in the category as well to get that value up. So that's it. There's a beautiful shot of our four fantastic scents. Give it a try. If you want to give them a shot, maybe try the variety pack, which is available on Amazon. But yeah, hit me up in Walmart. Walmart. We would love to have a variety pack in Walmart, but hopefully that'll happen soon. But yeah, that's a little bit about us.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (53:33):

Awesome, thanks Tom. And here's the QR code that Kiri was mentioning, and if you are not a member of the DSI encourage you to become a member of the DSI, so you can hear more about all of the great content that we produce. So I'll leave this up on the screen. I know that some of the questions came in that were a bit technical, but I want to try and maybe cover one or two at a higher level and then kiri, Tom, let me know if it's too technical, we can skip it. The one question that came in about Walmart groceries, so I just want to cover that at a high level if you have any thoughts on it. I know grocery is a really challenging space when it comes to e-commerce just because of the breadth of the products that you're selling and Walmart is really focusing in on grocery. Has there been a really big growth in that category? Are there any trends you're seeing with Walmart Grocery that maybe you could share?

Kiri Masters (54:26):

Candidly, we don't split it out that way as a practice. And I think even the categorization of grocery could be challenging as well. I mean, even good wipes would, that could even be considered grocery, right?

Tom Spaven (54:42):

We wouldn't mind that because if you think about, we'd love to be paired with a coffee brand, for example, because it going to be relevant. But no, we are in health and beauty right now and it's definitely in home. So it's not considered grocery. I think, I don't quote me on this, but I think Walmart has been trying to push beauty more. I think there's more margins there. They're trying to premiumize their offering. But the grocery I think has been a bit of a challenge and it's very volume driven, but I think it also depends on which subcategory.

Kiri Masters (55:14):

Yeah, well, I mean competitively as well. It's an area that Amazon has really struggled with. So just from a competitive landscape perspective, it makes all the sense in the world for Walmart to be doubling down on grocery, so difficult to get right.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (55:32):

And then the other question was around Walmart, Luminate. Do you have any experience working when Walmart illuminate or any thoughts on the data that they share?

Kiri Masters (55:45):

What I have heard more anecdotally is that it is comparing Walmart and Amazon. Again, the data that we get natively from Amazon and through Amazon Marketing Cloud with the DSP now is really accessible and affordable. And Walmart, Luminate, it costs money to access that data. And so it's out of reach for a lot of brands, candidly is what we have found.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (56:19):

Awesome. All right. I think from a question, if there's any other questions, please connect with Kiri or Tom on LinkedIn and thank you all for joining. Feel free to scan these QR codes before we end for the day. But Kiri, Tom, really appreciate your time and for sharing all your insights.

Kiri Masters (56:37):

Thank you so much.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (56:39):

Thanks everyone.

Peter Crosby (56:41):

Thanks to Kiri and Tom for all their wisdom and data. There's more where that's coming from at our upcoming DSI Digital Shelf Summit in Nashville in April. Go to digitalshelfsummit.com for more info and to register. Thanks for being part of our community.