Walmart offers a relatively new way for its marketplace sellers to boost sales. In its quest to generate even more profits, Walmart Sponsored Product Ads have moved into a new platform. In January 2021, Walmart unveiled its new advertising platform — Walmart Connect. The service is a welcome feature that Walmart sellers have asked about for years.
With Walmart Connect, you can get your brand noticed and drive revenue. To learn more about using Walmart Connect and Walmart Sponsored Products to help boost sales, keep reading.
A Quick Overview of Walmart Connect
Walmart Connect is an advertising platform that unites several of Walmart’s advertising services. Under this new platform sellers will find the Walmart Ad Center, Walmart Advertising Partners, and Managed Advertising Services.
Depending on your goals and your budget, you may find that Walmart Connect is a good fit for your company. Walmart advertising can give your company an advantage in a competitive marketplace. Furthermore, you can choose the kind of campaign that will work best for your business. However, you may find that a few helpful insights come in handy for helping you to get started.
Walmart Sponsored Products
The most common service in Walmart Connect under the Walmart Ad Center is Sponsored Products. Sponsored Products advertising can be especially beneficial for helping products stand out on Walmart. If you’re a Walmart seller seeking ways to increase visibility and drive traffic to your products, Sponsored Products is the logical choice.
Sponsored Products allows you to set up your own campaigns and put a marketing budget behind your listings. Your products will appear in prominent, high-traffic areas when customers browse and in the search results on Walmart.com.
Now with Walmart Connect, sellers can take their advertising strategy up a notch. Many sellers are excited to have the opportunity to get their products in front of more potential buyers. With a big boost in visibility, sellers are looking forward to more conversions.
What You Get With Walmart Sponsored Products Advertising
Walmart Sponsored Products operates using a cost-per-click (CPC) model. CPC means that you only pay when someone clicks on your ad.
CPC is a very common advertising model commonly used on other networks like Google or Amazon. The method is typically cost-effective for businesses. However, it’s important to note that Walmart’s advertising platform is still in its infancy and years behind the likes of Amazon.
Unlike Amazon, however, Walmart only shows your listing once per page. If you’re running an ad, for example, you will not see your product listed in organic search results.
Campaigns are the foundation of Sponsored Products. Here, you’ll choose either an automatic or manual campaign — more on that in a moment.
You’ll also choose an ad group. An ad group includes related or similar products. For example, cat food might serve as one group. Meanwhile, Walmart would show dog food in another ad group.
Ideally, you’ll want to add up to 10 to 20 SKUs per ad group. By doing so, you’ll yield the best results. Adding several SKUs to an ad group is also a good idea if you’re using automated campaigns.
Getting Started With Sponsored Product Ads
It’s important to think about how you approach using Walmart Sponsored Products. For example, you might want to consider what products to use during a holiday push. With this in mind, you’d want to choose your highest-rated, competitively priced goods. The holidays aren’t the time to try to offload low-performing SKUs.
You might sell in one of Walmart’s top categories. If so, you might yield even better results from Walmart ads. These categories include:
- Appliances
- Bicycles
- Dollhouses
- Dolls
- Furniture
- Riding toys
- TVs
- Videos
No matter what category of products you sell, however, you’ll want to upload quality images.
You’ll also want to provide accurate titles and descriptions. Furthermore, you’ll want to link to your reviews.
It’s important to choose a strategy for your Walmart advertisements. You don’t want to waste money driving traffic to pages that will most likely not convert because of poor content.
You’ll also want to monitor your campaigns. Accordingly, you want to keep an eye on your Item Health Report. You can access the Item Health Report using your Sponsored Product Performance Dashboard. The dashboard allows you to monitor your product inventory closely.
Budgeting Your Ad Spend
Fortunately, Walmart has also revealed new, lower budget thresholds. Now, you can launch a Walmart Sponsored Product campaign with a minimum budget of as little as $100. Alternatively, you can launch a campaign with a daily budget commitment of as low as $50.
Some retailers might have more money to spend on Walmart advertising. In this case, it’s beneficial to set your budget about 35% higher on top shopping days. This practice will bring more traffic to your product listings.
You might also increase your CPC bid. A higher CPC bid will make your products more visible in the Walmart marketplace. These are both good practices for capturing peak holiday shopping traffic. Here, you can set your CPC bid to the maximum price that you’re willing to pay.
You’ll also want to consider your launch date. For the most part, you want to launch your campaigns as early as possible. Still, you want to take advantage of special Walmart shopping days. For example, you want to get your campaign up and running ahead of Black Friday. You also want to have your campaign in place before one of Walmart’s Deals for Days events.
Choosing Your Campaign: Automatic or Manual
Again, there are two kinds of campaigns that you can run on Walmart Connect. You can run either an automatic or manual campaign.
If you’re just getting started with Sponsored Products, you might want to test the waters with an automatic campaign. This kind of campaign will give your brand maximum exposure. The Walmart algorithm will serve your ads against relevant search queries.
It’s easy to set up an automatic campaign. With an automated campaign, there’s no need to manage keywords. Also, an automatic campaign will generate a higher impression rate, thanks to the Walmart algorithm.
Conversely, you might want to set up a manual campaign. A manual campaign is more suited for someone who has more experience using paid search and the products being sold.
If you’ve been selling on Walmart for a while, for instance, you’ll have a better idea of the keywords that customers use to search for your products. Automated campaigns give you the most exposure. However, a manual campaign gives you the most control.
With a manual campaign, you’ll bid on specific search queries used by customers. It allows you to handpick the keywords that you want to bid on. Therefore, a manual campaign is typically more targeted.
Top Perks of Walmart Connect
With Walmart Connect, you can gain a better understanding of which advertising options drive conversions. You can also learn which ads have little to no effect on customer buying decisions.
For example, Sponsored Products is a closed-loop advertising system. In other words, it covers every point along customers’ buying path. For this reason, you can learn more about customer shopping patterns. More importantly, you can learn more about what convinces them to buy your products.
Sponsored Products makes it easier for you to identify your target consumer. It also simplifies the process of measuring the performance of your Walmart advertising campaigns. Marketers can learn what works at driving conversions — and what does not.
Walmart Sponsored Products gives you access to data generated by millions of shoppers. As a result, you’ll have an incredible amount of data to help you understand who’s more likely to purchase your goods. With this information, you’ll have more success in reaching the right shoppers.
Now Walmart Connect can help you to reach your product sales goals. What’s more, it’s a powerful tool for helping you to learn better ways to generate revenue for your retail business.
Let Us Help You Boost Sales and Increase ROI
Now you know more about using Walmart Connect and Sponsored Products advertising to help boost sales. However, you can benefit even more by partnering with an expert in e-commerce. OperationROI has served retailers in the e-commerce space for more than a decade.
With OperationROI, you’ll have access to a full-service e-commerce marketing management agency. We specialize in developing marketing partnerships to help you grow your e-commerce business successfully. Contact OperationROI today at (888) 277-5429 or connect with us online to learn more about developing an outstanding growth campaign for your business.
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