Making the Most of the Retail Media explosion
Multi-marketplace advertising is easily one of the best ways to scale your income as a business in 2022. In fact, in a recent study by Business Insider, 87% of consumers said that they want “a personalized and consistent shopping experience” across all shopping channels when browsing through a brand’s inventory.
So, it comes as no surprise that hundreds of thousands of brands have made the choice to be present on the eCommerce platform Walmart. Retail media is a multi-billion-dollar industry on the rise, and platforms like Walmart have been able to grab this opportunity to see massive growth in the last year.
According to Statista, Walmart grossed over $555 billion in net sales worldwide in 2021 alone. It’s safe to say that the best time for your brand to sell on Walmart is today.
In this blog, you’ll learn how to get started with Walmart advertising, the best ways to craft a strategy that improves sales, and high-level tips to optimize your campaign structure for Walmart.
Signs Your Business is Ready to Profit from Walmart Advertising
Walmart advertising can be daunting to advertisers who aren’t familiar with the platform, but with the right strategy and knowledge of everything Walmart has to offer, you can scale your business easily.
Being the world’s largest omnichannel innovative retailer, Walmart offers its sellers a plethora of features, partner programs, and resources to help get started on the marketplace. Its pick-up and delivery business will continue to grow in 2022, with new services such as Walmart’s GoLocal fast gaining popularity.
Walmart has been outperforming even Amazon, with a growth rate of over 5 times. So, while many are seeing key figures like their ROAS and Share of Voice flatline on platforms like Amazon, Walmart has fast become the best next step.
How To Launch Your First Walmart Ads Campaign
According to the experts at Pacvue & Rise Interactive, the 3 pillars of a successful media strategy on an online marketplace such as Walmart are:
- Digital media, including email marketing and SEO
- A well-rounded customer experience on all channels
- Analytics and business insights
To further make the process of shifting to Walmart advertising easier, the marketplace offers its advertisers a platform & advertising solution called Walmart Connect. It makes keeping track of layout updates, newly added features, and everything else Walmart has to offer much easier.
A rule of thumb here is to start with a near-equal distribution of your ad dollars when budgeting between different types of media. So, 45% of your spend on auto campaigns should return 40% of the sales, while 55% of your spend on manual campaigns will return approximately 60% of sales.
Auto-campaigns are the easiest way to launch since they don’t require keywords to function. Once you input the number of products, Walmart itself efficiently decides which keywords & product pages you should show up on.
On the flip side, manual campaigns require you to have some understanding of researching & building search terms. Pacvue offers a keyword research tool for Walmart, along with competitive monitoring to make it easier.
Tips to Optimize Your Campaign Structure
Apart from diving into the deep end of Walmart advertising, here are a few quick high-level tips to instantly take your advertising strategy to the next level:
- Maintain a mix of marketplace advertising – Find the balance between spending on successfully established bases and expanding into newer keywords & trends. It’ll help you grow the pool of returning, loyal customers you have in the long run.
- Keep an eye on diminishing returns in keywords – By looking at your analytics, it’s important to find which keywords need proportionately higher pushes on the CPC, only to return proportionately lower revenue increases month-over-month. Depending on your target audience, those dollars are then better spent expanding on other targets on Walmart.
- Use 2022 predictions to get a head start – Currently, 77% of CPG brands work with Amazon, while only 56% work with Walmart Connect. Walmart is only expected to grow in 2022, and you can have the first-mover advantage with low CPCs while increasing ROAS.
- Leverage Custom Reporting Solutions – By investing in Pacvue’s customizable report widgets, you can compare enhanced metrics on Walmart side-by-side with other marketplaces. These performance insights can help you amplify your brand to make the most out of your ad dollars.
After slowly ramping up in 2021, Walmart advertisers are expected to start assigning a major chunk of their ad dollars to scale up on the marketplace. With this roadmap on how to incorporate Walmart into your paid media strategy, you are ready to make informed decisions when it comes to scaling your brand to Walmart.
To learn more about Walmart’s online paid media offerings and tips on perfecting your strategy, check out this webinar (embedded below) recently hosted by Pacvue in collaboration with Rise Interactive.
