The holidays have arrived at Walmart, and customers are ready to shop. With most people prefer online shopping over in-person this year (60% of consumers, according to Deloitte’s 2020 holiday retail survey), Marketplace sellers have an exciting opportunity to get as many eyes on their products as possible. Walmart.com attracts millions of customers, and using the Walmart Sponsored Products program can give your items a significant boost in visibility and potential conversion.
This is a year-round CPC (cost-per-click) service, but it’s beneficial during the holiday shopping surge in November and December. While utilizing Walmart Sponsored Products is optional, it’s a solution that may work for you depending on your goals and advertising budget. In this installment of the Sell Better Blog, we’ll explain how to use Walmart Sponsored Products to your advantage, which type of campaign would work best for your business, and actionable tips to get started.
Your Walmart Sponsored Products Holiday Playbook :
The Walmart Sponsored Products platform works by putting a marketing budget behind your products, and they get surfaced throughout the customer experience on Walmart.com. Ads appear in prominent high-traffic placements, including search results, category pages, and product detail pages. As a seller, you choose and set up your campaigns (either Automatic or Manual—more on that later) and manage your budget.
The best way to approach Sponsored Products is to think about which of your products could benefit from a holiday push. These should ideally include your highest-rated, competitively priced items rather than low-performing SKUs. If you sell in Walmart’s top holiday categories, these include appliances, furniture, TV & video, bikes & riding toys, and dolls & dollhouses for children. Regardless of category, your product detail pages should have quality images, accurate titles and descriptions, and reviews. Remember, your ad choices should be strategic: you wouldn’t want to spend your money driving traffic to pages less likely to convert due to poor content.
As your campaign runs, use the Item Health Report in your Sponsored Products Performance Dashboard to closely monitor product inventory. When choosing a launch date, it’s best to get your campaigns up and running as early as possible to take advantage of Walmart’s Black Friday Deals for Days events.
Setting a budget: You’ve got options.
Thanks to our new lower budget thresholds, you can launch a Walmart Sponsored Products campaign with a maximum budget commitment as low as 0 and a maximum daily budget commitment as low as. If your budget allows for a bit more of an investment, it’s a good idea to set your daily budget at least 35% higher on top holiday shopping days, bringing in more traffic and clicks. You can also increase bids to the maximum you are willing to pay.
Automatic vs. Manual campaigns: Which should you choose?
There are two types of campaigns: Automatic and Manual. Automatic campaigns are better suited for brands new to advertising, launching new products, or interested in expanding beyond their existing customer base. Through this process, your ads serve throughout the entire customer journey since more ad placements are available. Automatic campaigns are easy to set up, require no keyword management, and generate higher impression volume based on the nature of the algorithm.
In comparison, Manual campaigns are ideal for brands whose products have a more extended history on Walmart.com and who know the keywords their customers are using to search while shopping. While Automatic campaigns offer maximum exposure, Manual campaigns provide ultimate control. As the seller, you bid on search queries that customers use on Walmart.com, so these campaigns are more targeted. You can handpick the keywords you want to bid on and your preferred match types. Match types refer to how closely your keywords match those in a customer’s search (types are “exact,” “phrase,” and “broad”). Exact match types give you the most relevant traffic (let’s say the keywords are “women’s red sweatshirt”), and broad match types give you the most comprehensive exposure (“women’s loungewear”). You can benefit from Walmart’s Keyword Analytics tool to learn the traffic history of the products and keywords you want to promote.
Budgeting aside, deciding how to start your Sponsored Products campaign depends on your business objectives and campaign goals. Putting a marketing budget behind your products is a great way to do one of three things (or all three!): drive brand awareness, consideration, and purchases. Establish measurable goals up front that support your business objectives.
If you aim to build brand awareness by telling your brand story and reaching potential customers, choose an Automatic campaign and track impressions. And you desire to get more shoppers to consider your products over another brand’s, you’ll want to measure clicks, click-through rate, and item page visits (either campaign type would work well). If your ultimate goal is to drive sales, move seasonal inventory fast, or convert high-intent shoppers to purchasers, you’ll want to measure sales volume and ROAS (return on ad spend) through a Manual campaign.
Putting your campaign strategy to use: Follow these best practices
Set Manual campaign bids at least 20% higher than Automatic campaign bids to help maintain prominent placements during peak holiday traffic and to help capture the lift in impressions.
Add holiday keywords and phrases, such as “gift ideas for Mom” or “perfect stocking stuffer,” to capture long-tail searches.
Use all three match types: “Broad” for as much exposure as possible and “Phrase” and “Exact” for relevant traffic with a higher chance for conversion.
Use the Placement-level Report in your Sponsored Products Performance Dashboard to review your Search In-Grid ads. Add bid multipliers as necessary to boost performance.
Use the Item Keyword Report in your Sponsored Products Performance Dashboard to discover which keywords generate clicks and sales. Then, create a Manual campaign using those keywords.
Use bid multipliers for your best-performing and most profitable products to increase their chances of appearing in Search In-grid and Buy Box Placements.
If you have any further questions or need assistance with your Amazon journey, please get in touch with the BellaVix Team. We’re here to help you every step of the way on your path to success on Amazon. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us today!
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