#593 – Walmart WFS Selling Strategies

Can selling on Walmart.com be your new secret weapon for e-commerce success? Join us as we welcome Ryan King from BlueRyse, a true Walmart marketplace expert, who shares game-changing strategies for boosting your sales on Walmart. Ryan explains why diversifying your online presence beyond Amazon is not just a smart move but essential for long-term growth. He details how to establish a strong foundation on Walmart early, from crafting compelling listings to amassing reviews and maintaining brand consistency, all while catering to the unique preferences of Walmart shoppers.

For those new to the world of e-commerce, Ryan offers a comparative analysis of Amazon and Walmart, shedding light on why Amazon is often the go-to starting point due to its extensive tools and higher volume opportunities. He shares insider tips on navigating Walmart’s international selling stipulations and highlights the importance of brand registration to unlock exclusive advertising opportunities and protect intellectual property. Misconceptions about Walmart’s technology and algorithms are debunked, providing you with a solid understanding of how to effectively optimize your presence on this evolving platform.

Optimizing your product listings on Walmart isn’t just about slapping on a few keywords. Ryan emphasizes the importance of new product type level attributes and backend attributes for better search visibility. He also discusses the benefits of the Walmart Pro Seller badge and why re-uploading listings using the latest item spec 5.0 can make a difference. Learn how to craft clear product descriptions, optimize image stacks, and leverage sponsored product campaigns to skyrocket your sales. Plus, get the scoop on exciting new developments like sponsored brand shops and shelves that can significantly enhance your offsite traffic and ranking. Don’t miss this episode full of insights to elevate your Walmart selling game!

In episode 593 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Carrie, Kevin, and Ryan discuss:

• 00:00 – Advanced Strategies Q&A for Walmart Sellers
• 02:56 – The Importance of Selling on Walmart
• 07:33 – Organic Shopping Shift Towards Walmart
• 10:51 – Maximizing Profits While Avoiding Price Wars
• 12:41 – Optimizing Sales on Walmart Marketplace
• 16:47 – Managing Duplicate Listings and IP Claims
• 22:28 – Optimizing Walmart Listings for Conversion
• 27:22 – Walmart Pro Seller Badge’s Impact on Ranking
• 29:32 – Optimizing Walmart Listings and Advertising
• 33:03 – Optimizing Walmart PPC Campaigns for Efficiency

Transcript

Carrie Miller:

Today on the podcast we have Walmart expert Ryan King and we are asking him lots of questions and he is going to be sharing tons of advanced strategies for Walmart sellers to help you boost your sales on the Walmart marketplace.

Bradley Sutton:

How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. If you guys would like to network with other Walmart sellers, make sure to join our brand new Facebook group called Helium 10 Winning with Walmart. You can actually just search for that on Facebook or you can actually go to h10.me/Walmart group and you can go directly to that page. So make sure to join. You can tag me and carry with questions and ask questions of other Walmart sellers or even share your own experiences in that Facebook group. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I’m your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That’s a completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world, and this episode is our monthly live Walmart Wednesday show where we talk about anything and everything Walmart related with different guests, and today’s host is going to be Carrie Miller. So, Carrie, take it away.

Carrie Miller:

We have today, we have Ryan King. And I’ll go ahead and bring him on. Ryan King from Blue Rise. Hey, Ryan.

Ryan:

Hey, guys. Good to see you.

Kevin King:

Good to see you, Ryan! How you doing, man?

Ryan:

Doing great, Kevin. I have to say I’ve enjoyed the halo effect of the shared last name so I appreciate the lended credibility over the years.

Kevin King:

As you say, it’s always good to be the King, right?

Ryan:

Right, right. Yeah, well, glad to be here and excited to talk with you all.

Kevin King:

The buzz right now is all around TikTok shop. That’s what you know in my newsletter and the Billion Dollar Sellers and a lot of the people on the social medias and everywhere. They’re all talking about TikTok shop. And Walmart seems to be like this little unwanted stepchild that a lot of people don’t even pay attention to. But they should be paying attention to it and a lot of people you know are like okay, I want to diversify, I don’t want to have all my eggs in this Amazon basket and they look at maybe doing a Shopify site. They look at, maybe they’re going to go down the TikTok route, they’re going to do expand. But why is? Why should you actually be considering going to Walmart.com, maybe as your first step beyond Amazon?

Ryan:

Great question. You know there’s probably a lot of different goals for sellers. Some of that might be that they’re looking to. You know, back in the day it was, they wanted to de-risk on their platform. They wanted to make sure that Amazon didn’t have all the chips and if they suppressed a listing or something else happened in that regard, that they didn’t just all of a sudden turn the lights out on the business. And so they’re looking for another marketplace that also has volume, that is similar in a kind to Amazon is. So they’re familiar with how it operates in general, but it’s another place to be, and so that’s one strategy that people use. Another one would be we tell brands a lot of times now if you’re a successful Amazon brand or DTC brand, even a retail brand, it’s not really a question of if your brand is on Walmart already. It’s really a question of are you in control of your brand on Walmart right now? And so some brands they just want to make sure they’re there and they’re established, they’re discoverable for shoppers that are coming through any channel and making sure their brand is consistent and meeting the needs of those shoppers. For others, it’s kind of the midterm play. The buzz, you know, several years ago was everybody would say Walmart is Amazon of insert your year back in the glory days of, you know, 2009, 2012 of Amazon. But the sentiment was be a first mover and get in, start building out those listings, build out those reviews, that social proof, all those things. Start building your moat early so that as the traction continues to grow, you’re already established and you don’t have to fight that battle that others see on Amazon at the moment. So I see that’s one of the prevailing reasons for a lot of sellers right now is to say, ok, it may not be the rocket ship, the slingshot of volume that you may see or at least people used to tell about with Amazon, but it’s a slow and steady building and growing momentum.

Ryan:

As Walmart’s heavily invested, you’ve got retailer number one in the world who has made a concerted decision. They’ve had stops and starts over the years, but there is no question that they are fully committed to e-commerce as the future of Omni Retail. When you’ve got a giant like that who, from C suite down, is saying this is a major growth lever for us, then you know they’re going to keep pouring in. Uh, the advancements, the, the commitments needed for sellers on the marketplace, and so we’re seeing that happen. So I say that for a lot of people, the most compelling reason is to get in early, still right now, and establish and grow, counting on that rising tide lifting all the boats. And so the last one I’d say is you’ve got assortment. A lot of sellers have assortment that their hero products on a channel like Amazon may not end up being the hero products on Walmart, and vice versa. So if you have a broader portfolio of products and you have some in your assortment that may not be performing like you’d like them to on Amazon, those might become the heroes on Walmart, because it is a different shopper base, a different assortment they’re looking for, and so there’s different opportunities.

Kevin King:

What’s the difference between a Walmart buyer and an Amazon buyer? I mean, a lot of people already have their credit card and everything saved on Amazon, and Walmart has similar things too. But why does someone go to Walmart to buy your product versus Amazon? So people that just don’t like Amazon, they’re the big evil beast and so they go to Walmart. Or is it a different type of customer base? Is it more of the country folk that like to go shop at the stores that end up buying on Walmart? What’s the difference in the avatar of the customer, or is there any difference?

Ryan:

Yeah, great question, and I think it’s changing so that the target’s moving right now on who that shopper is and so we can talk about it in terms of behavior or even in avatar. But at a simple level, in search behavior, what we see is Walmart shoppers are typically going to Walmart, knowing more of what they’re looking for, where you might get a little bit more browsing activity on Amazon as Amazon’s kind of a competition with Google for search in a way, and that’s the way a lot of shoppers use it. On Walmart, it’s still more of a destination for purchase, so shoppers are going there to build out their cart, make their order. And so that’s a lot higher conversion intent on searches more often. And traditionally, as far as the type of shopper, Walmart’s always been the mantra of everyday low price, so that’s been the traditional shopper as well on dot com, which is, you know, those that are looking for quality products but really price driven for a long time. Now I’ll say the big change, one of the big changes, occurred during COVID. So 2020 definitely accelerated this across the board in e-commerce. But for Walmart, the impact with COVID, combined with the period of kind of inflation we’ve gone through. Subsequently there’s been a lot of shoppers with higher net worths moving to Walmart because they’ve been trying to trade down, maybe an expensive. The largest growth sector has been order for pickup and delivery through the store because everything’s coming through Walmart.com, regardless if you’re an e-commerce shopper purely just e-commerce shipped to my door, or if you’re planning to go pick it up in store. Both of those assortments are online on the same product search results and so shoppers are going there.

Ryan:

Maybe they’re looking to trade down. Say, I want organic but I might not be shopping at whole foods now for my organic, I may go to Walmart for organic. And then, while I’m here, through Walmart plus and all these programs have rolled out, they’ve made it sticky, so price elasticity has gone up. Shoppers are spending more on Walmart.com than they are in store and so those elements are becoming more like the Amazon shopper I would say. Still, there’s lower volume currently right now for .com on Walmart than there is on Amazon, but that’s continuing to grow month over month, year over year. So I would say that you’re likely to find similar shoppers more and more, but you’re going to see more competition as a seller around your short tail general keywords or where the concentration of that volume is. It drops off fairly significantly the longer tail you go. That’s the same with Amazon. It’s going to drop off on longer tail keywords, but there’s just not as much volume at those longer tail keywords on Walmart as there is on Amazon, specifically.

Kevin King:

I would think, like what you said of people that pick it up in store is a major thing, because people that I need to go to Walmart and get my milk and my cheese and whatever and while I’m there I can pick up something that’s not in the store and that’s maybe that I can order off of Walmart.com that stores don’t carry and I don’t have to worry about sitting on my porch and someone swiping it or something. If it, you know, I’ve ordered it off of Amazon, but like. But the other thing is Walmart is kind of known in the US as a discount, like you said, a discount retailer. It’s like everyday low prices. So a lot of people go there probably thinking that they’re going to get the best price or the lowest price. But if you are a seller on Amazon and you expand to Walmart, you’re kind of handcuffed because you can’t actually sell for a lower price on Walmart, because if you do, then Amazon’s going to penalize you with their bots that are going to scrape and take the buy box away. So how do you combat that? Or just have to match it and just hope that the consumer just says well, I’m not going to compare it to Amazon, I’m just going to assume this is the lowest price.

Ryan:

Fantastic points. And price parity is probably one of the biggest challenges for those brands who you know, whether they’re retail brands competing across marketplaces or if it is a native e-commerce brand, and in that case, most brands that are selling on Walmart have come from first Amazon or D2C. And so, specifically for those high performing brands on Amazon, this question of buy box suppression usually comes up with regard to I don’t want Amazon to suppress my buy box. That’s a huge opportunity cost. So how do I compete on Walmart and not compromise that buy box? Walmart will do the same thing and suppress your listing or you will lose ineligibility on the buy box if your price point is price matched elsewhere and is not competitive. However, for the majority of sellers, the question is how do I compete and not lose something on Amazon specifically? So, to your point, a couple of strategies. So a lot of brands aren’t going to go through the supply chain development process. It takes in the early stages to create a different package and count and G10, those elements uniquely for Walmart, although that is an excellent strategy and it’s a sophisticated strategy to deal with it and it’s going to. You’re looking for that apples to oranges comparison so you can contest the price matching there. Others will maybe just bundle a product together and sell it as a unique item in that way, so adding one other thing or some other elements like that.

Ryan:

If you’re going down that road, that’d be one way to do it, the most consistent way. We’re seeing the ability to run on Walmart or promotion, maybe for discounting, while not, uh, compromising the buy box and Amazon. There’s actually a specific type of promotion called map cart pricing, and so it’s. It’s. It’s a way for you to avoid compromising, uh, minimum advertised price regulations, but also, basically, in effect, what it does. You can you have to at least discount your product by 10%. Uh, recommended around 20% or so, but when you do so, um, you can run that in it. It’s a. It just shows up as add, add to cart and that’s when the price shows up. So when we’ve run that with, with sellers we’re working with, that doesn’t price match back to Amazon, hasn’t compromised the buy boxes, and so that’s one way to do it without having to change the supply chain side.

Kevin King:

When you migrate over to Walmart. You say you set up on it’s very straightforward to set up on Walmart. Now, I mean it used to be a complicated process and you had to go through all these approvals. And I remember when I first signed up like in 2017, 2016,. Whenever they first started, you had to have like at least a thousand seller feedbacks on Amazon. Are there any rules that they’re looking at now from someone that’s already selling on Amazon, do they only want to experience sellers? Or, if you’re just starting out, can you actually expand there right away when you’re just getting going on Amazon, or even should you? Should you focus first on Amazon, get that rocking and rolling, then come to Walmart, or what would be your advice and strategy on those things?

Ryan:

Yeah. So I’d say Walmart’s still looking for proof of customer service, of success with business management, those kinds of things, and so, while it’s not heavily gated, there still are some elements you’re going to need when you apply. I think the other question you asked there is probably the biggest one for sellers right now and is a question we get and our advice usually is for sellers that are new when they’re looking to establish their brands. Most sellers are looking for they’re starting on Amazon first, and if you’re starting there, we would actually recommend start there and generate some momentum and start growing your brand there, because it’s probably going to be the fastest route to growing revenue at the moment, based on volumes, based on opportunities there, based on sheer volume of tools available. Other ways to gain insights you know Helium 10 has such a robust suite of tools around Amazon and has probably still the most robust set of tools for Walmart as well, although the market dropped significantly around Walmart-based tools. So there’s a lot of advantages maybe to starting on Amazon and getting things going there and focused and then, once you’ve established that, I’d say you know, six months a year in, that’s maybe the time to come over to Walmart, but it’s probably not the place to start from scratch.

Kevin King:

So do you need to be U.S. based? Like, you know, like TikTok shop, you have to have the U.S. based and a lot of times you’ve got to figure out how to get a US citizen on board. For Walmart, can you be living in Nigeria and sell on Walmart or living in Europe and sell on Walmart? And I know Walmart. I think the answer is no, because they’re actively going after Chinese sellers right now. But what are some of the stipulations for those that are international, that are listening to this? Can they get on Walmart.com in the US?

Ryan:

Yeah, so there’s a list and it’s been a continuing growing list, but there’s a list of countries that you can be a seller in without having a US-based entity. That list is always changing, but you can go to the application link to apply to sell at Walmart and in those cases you’ll see the list of drop-down countries that you can apply from. I think some of the countries that you can apply through are like India, China, Canada, Hong Kong, Japan, Mexico. There’s just a good number of countries that you can be an established seller in or a business entity in that they’ll let you into Walmart. So my advice would be go to the application page, look at the dropdown of countries and see if you’re eligible.

Kevin King:

So when I sign, up for an account on Amazon. Brand registry is one of the most important things to try to get going right away to just get that extra protection One. It opens up a bunch of extra features on Amazon, you know the A plus content and some of the advertising and a little bit of protection. Does Walmart have something similar to that and is that something that’s? Are there problems there that you should really make sure you get your trademarks and everything over on Walmart?

Ryan:

So Walmart has the equivalent would be brand portal, and I would absolutely recommend, if you’re the seller, if you’re the brand, to register through brand portal, and the main reasons are there are certain advertising opportunities that are only available to brand registered brands, so sponsored brand video, sponsored brand ads that go across as banner displays. Another major one would be brand shops, brand shelves we can talk about later as well and then IP protection. So probably the biggest issue for brands selling on Walmart, if you’re a successful brand is dropshipping sellers, and there may be even dropshippers that listen to this and are dropshipping to Walmart. It’s a very common business model. It can be a very successful business model. However, the issue pops up when dropshippers or others are creating duplicate listings, not using the actual G10, the actual product identifier number when they’re setting up. So you can set up a product by match. You can enter the G10 and Walmart will find in the system which listing matches that, and then you can apply to sell on that listing. Walmart’s open marketplace, so anybody can sell on any listing, just about. There are some gated categories, but not nearly as many as Amazon, and in that case, if you are the brand, if you are the seller, Walmart’s not going to intervene, just like Amazon’s not going to intervene If it’s multiple sellers on that account. You’re going to have to compete on price and those kind of elements. But what we see is endemic on the platform still is duplicate listings popping up all over the place.

Ryan:

People are using a different G10 to create their own version of that same product listing and trying to capture search volume there, and so the advantage of being registered in Brand Portal is that you can file IP infringement claims, and in this case, the most successful one to do is to file claims against those alternate listings for using your copyrighted imagery, and so we see success of getting those pulled down within 48 hours typically when that happens. Now you can still file that IP claim even if you’re not registered through brand portal. There’s a link to file that claim, but you can’t track its progress, you can’t see the history, all those kinds of things. So it just gives you greater credibility in those and greater ability to look back at the progress. And the last one I’d say is you’re a registered brand. It’s going to give you the highest content ranking for your listing. So even if there are other sellers that have tried to change that listing content. You’re going to outrank them as the registered brand and chances are you’re not going to have to deal with things changing on your listing in that regard.

Kevin King:

Now you said earlier that the general thinking still out there for some people is like Walmart is behind in technology. That’s like Amazon 2013, 2015 or something. How is the algorithm on Walmart different than Amazon or is it different? Or what are some of the key things that you need to pay attention to when it comes to launching and ranking on Walmart?

Ryan:

Yeah, Walmart’s definitely when it comes to tech and online man they’ve got a lot of dedicated resource to it, so it’s grown significantly on the online side. Taking into account the history of Walmart.com knowing that some of the artifacts are the history of it was an online or in-store experience built in the online acquiredjet.com mostly for personnel, but also some technology, those kinds of things. There’s layers of algorithms in there kind of combined together over the years in some way, so it does definitely operate differently. Some of the questions around in-store versus online and how does the algorithm consider those elements. In some cases there’s some categories. It’s going to be more competitive and more difficult to gain market share over in-store brands, and some of that may be driven by the algorithm, but some of that also is just driven by conversion, because order for pickup and delivery is going to be a much higher conversion rate than a lot of purely online items. At this point. Pickup and delivery is going to be a much higher conversion rate than a lot of purely online items at this point. Some things basically come down to and this is played out mostly in listing optimization when we think about the algorithm right now. And so things like Amazon sellers. The differences are Amazon you used to have backend keywords and those kinds of things. There used to be a field on Walmart as well. They had the back end search terms field. That got deprecated basically across the board years ago now. So even if you see those attributes for any reason, it’s not really useful Product titles. You have limited real estate on Walmart and so the temptation for a lot of Amazon based brands is to stuff that title as full as you can. Walmart doesn’t like that, the algorithm does not like that. There are certain criteria you need to hold to and character limits there, and so the biggest difference from a user experience, from a seller experience, is you need to really just understand style guides and optimization behavior for Walmart and not just assume I know what worked on Amazon and I’m just going to reproduce that strategy because surely it’s going to work on this platform.

Ryan:

So the more you adhere to Walmart’s criteria on the title, the key features, which are bullet points in the short description, which is the short paragraph element and then the more you fill out the attributes on the back end, those are going to be the key elements. I’d say the biggest. Um, the last part. I’d say that’s the biggest difference we’ve seen over the years is Walmart’s um focus, hyper focus on relevancy of your product type to keywords and so um. This shows up with um PPC performance, as well as just being able to rank on any search results. Uh, the good news is Walmart gives you a quality score. You get a listing quality score. They grade you from zero to 100 percent. The easy benchmark is uh. Walmart has some incentives incentives for getting up over 65, 70, 70%. You know Pro Seller badge, those kinds of elements. We know internal personnel and you get better relevancy for PPC performance when you’re up over 80% in listing quality score. But we also know that in a lot of categories, when we’re going back to this Omni team, merchants and category managers and category directors on the marketplace really want to see 95% or higher. So there are advantages to get best in class and content quality score, which includes the title, bullet points, short description, backend attributes, all those elements.

Carrie Miller:

I want to jump in here to ask something really quick along with that, which is the item spec, because I know that we have the new not everybody has access to I think most people do the item spec 5.0. How has that helped with visibility and is it different with? Can you have a better access to certain product types, or what have you found that has been helpful with the new item spec 5.0?

Ryan:

Yeah, so what we’ve seen is so Walmart’s rolling out the 5.0. It’s basically the new bulk attributes template for updating listings. API partners have been moving over to the 5.0 spec. Depends on the account you’re in. A lot of accounts if you’re trying to upload by bulk, you may still be getting 4.0 or somewhere between 4.0 and 5.0. The biggest advantage is seeing those product types and identifying what product type you should go for, because what’s happening basically is those listing quality scores are being determined by the attributes on the backend. How complete are they and therefore, how relevant in your product type are you for the keywords they’re going to index you for and that you want to rank for? The quality scores used to be evaluated at a category level and that’s how the algorithm was evaluating. They’ve moved now, and have been moving for a while now, to add a product type level. There’s actually different style guide requirements based on different attributes for the spec sheet, so it’s really getting more granular. One advantage you’ll see is is you don’t have to if you’re if you’re in home goods, you don’t have to fill out an attribute field for sports team. You know, because in your category there may be a licensed sports brand for your blanket your selling um, and so in the past it used to be be as exhaustive as possible and just even enter non-apple if if that’s the question you’re being asked now the advising is because you’re getting to that granular product type. Uh, if it doesn’t apply to you, you don’t need to fill it out necessarily, but you’re getting much more focused attributes. Therefore, you know, a lot of shoppers are general search term and then they’re using filters through what Walmart calls the facets. All this drop down options to the side to narrow down their selection, and so it just makes sense the more accurate your attributes are that build out those facets, the more likely you are to appear in search.

Carrie Miller:

Do you think that everyone should re-upload their listings with the new item spec? Because I know when I download it it’ll say 4.0. I have a few accounts, One will say four, and I have some accounts that are already on the five. So should people, when they get access, should they just download the 5.0 and then re-upload everything?

Ryan:

I don’t know if we see enough yet to see there’s a dramatic difference yet. What you’re more likely going to see, so yes. If you have it available, certainly do it and learn it, because your score will be impacted over time by it. So what we’re seeing more symptomatically is people’s content quality scores are dropping, and they don’t know why. They maybe set it and forget it. A long time ago they were at 90, 95, and now they’re at 78, 80, because it’s no longer the attributes they’re being graded on. And so, at the very least, I’d say go look and see what the attributes are and what you need to fill out, because there’s likely new attributes that are being asked for.

Kevin King:

And you said the Pro Seller badge earlier is a big factor in that rating. What is the Pro Seller badge and what do you need to do to get that, or why is that so important?

Ryan:

They’re actually updating the program right now Pro Seller badge and what do you need to do to get that or why is that so important? They’re actually updating the program right now. Pro Seller badge is basically rewarding those sellers who have I think it’s in the past 90 days of history you have over 100 units, I believe, sold and that you are meeting certain criteria. So the main criteria are that you have a competitive offer, so pricing, and competitive shipping. So at minimum three days free shipping is what they’re looking for as a standard and that means, if you’re seller fulfilled, that you at least have that turned on. So there’s two levels of kind of moving into the. As a Pro Seller, you’ll get the Pro Seller badge, which can provide some conversion lift If someone’s looking at that buy box and seeing the badge there. A Pro Seller badge also qualifies you, now, if you are a Pro Seller doing seller fulfilled orders and you have Pro Seller badge, they will give you a 5% discount on commission rate for selling as a Pro Seller for those listings that are seller fulfilled. And then it also qualifies you to be to have your listings eligible to be what they’re calling Pro Seller listings, and so those listings qualify and you may be eligible as the language they’re giving. So it’s not a guarantee that every one of your listings is going to be Pro Seller, but this also qualifies. I believe it does qualify if you’re fulfilled for WFS on those listings. If they’re eligible and they meet certain criteria during that period gives you a 10% discount on Walmart commission as well. So there are definitely incentives in that regard and there’s incentives for conversion rate.

Kevin King:

So it’s on the SKU level, not on the account level.

Ryan:

The Pro Seller badge is account level and results and for seller fulfilled orders a 5% discount at SKU levels when ordered and then below that Pro Seller badge at the seller account level you qualify, you’re eligible for Pro Seller listings at the SKU level.

Kevin King:

Besides helping on a conversion, does it help on your ranking?

Ryan:

We see..

Kevin King:

The algorithm on the ranking, if you have that?

Ryan:

There’s no way to verify like 100% by looking at the algorithm, but what we see suggests that we don’t know if it’s a leading or lagging effect. Is it causation or correlation that as a Pro Seller you increase conversion, therefore you have higher ranking, or if it’s hard baked into the algorithm, that Pro Seller badge is going to have higher conversion? We can’t say with 100% confidence.

Kevin King:

You talked earlier about. You can’t just import your listing from Amazon over. You got to pay attention to the titles, got to be shorter. There’s no back end description. Some of the back end fields and search term fields and stuff are different. How do you actually optimize? What’s the strategy, like using Helium 10 to find out keywords to help build the listing? What’s the strategy to actually optimize a listing on Amazon I’m sorry, on Walmart so that it actually will have a chance to rank? And you said earlier like sometimes you know even the product type that you’re looking at. If there’s big brands in there, they’re going to give priority to those big brands. So what can you do when you’re building your listing to overcome some of those things and to make sure you’ve totally optimized it?

Ryan:

What you can do as a seller. You can actually input, you can input your ASIN to create your listing and Walmart will ingest basic data, all that kind of data, and that helps get you started. Uh, where we would go from there is, I would say you can either start the journey through uh Helium 10 or you can start the journey directly on Walmart.com. What our team will often do and what we recommend to sellers often start on Walmart.com and just take um and if you have Helium 10, we recommend the tool strongly. Go and plug in what you know a good generic search term is going to be. Take that search term let’s go with, we’re saying, coffee filters, and you plug that search term in, sort by bestseller, and then open up X-Ray and you can take I think it’s up to 20 in Cerebro I always do 15, but it’s up to 20 of the top selling listings, bring them over into Cerebro and then evaluate and pull the Walmart search volumes. Now you’re going to get high, medium, low as a range in those search volume results and sort by high to low and pick the top 20 or so keywords. They’re going to be uh that you’re seeing on um Cerebro there, and then uh, from there we use those keywords. Take the top one or two keywords and you probably in your product title are going to only have space to put one or two keywords in there. Uh, they’re going to be top ones. Historically we’ve seen the title is going to give you about three, three times the ranking power of anywhere else on your listing for those keywords. So pick some good ones there and then repeat the remainders once or twice, not overly, so don’t overstuff and make it more so readable.

Ryan:

Walmart wants short description, which is the paragraph format, and long description, which is the key features, the bullet points. They have certain criteria you’re going to need to know by the style guide, which are much more. They’re less salesy. It’s much more clear, concise, professional language. Sellers might look at it and think it sounds boring and it can’t sound as flashy and I can’t put the well, Amazon’s deprecating emojis as well, anyway, for a long time. But you got to be clean and concise and it’s got to be readable and there’s character and word count suggestions there that you’ll get. But make sure you’re optimizing in that regard. And then the other element is going to be backend attributes. So make sure that those backend attributes are complete. Main thing is don’t overstuff the title. Use the same basic principles you understand for best practices on Amazon. Your image stack is going to be very similar, but make sure you’re highlighting the benefits to the customer. That image stack should look like a storyboard of the customer’s journey, of what’s convincing them to click through and buy. And also we see a lot of people missing out on the opportunity to optimize by. So there’s optimized by algorithm and it’s part of the question we’re answering. There’s really optimized for conversion what’s the shopper looking for? And so include images in there in that image stack that involve product assortment. What else can you cross sell that you’re also selling on Walmart that the shopper may not be aware of? So those are a few of the tips.

Kevin King:

So, besides optimizing your listing and gearing it towards making sure you have the good keywords, like you said, the weights and the title and a lot of that, what about when it comes to advertising? What are you seeing is giving the best ROI, or what are some of the best advertising strategies? When it comes to getting your visibility on Walmart.

Ryan:

Advertising can be heavily influenced by relevancy. So we talked about product type, we talked about how that impacts relevancy for those keywords and those elements, with all those things considered the best way to get going. Usually we see a dual-pronged approach, so automatic and manual campaigns through a sponsored product. So when we’re talking about ROI, there’s different goals. For some brands that wanna increase new to brand sales and broader awareness, there’s gonna be maybe more sponsored brand or upper funnel type things. But for a lot of sellers what they mean is just flat sales. Is it profitable sales and how do we get that going and how do we succeed there? So sponsored product, largely through Search and Grid. So you got your automatic bidding campaign, which is gonna be more your exploratory. You’re gonna keep that capped at a relatively lower budget, so it doesn’t go crazy. It’s gonna skew towards branded terms, those types of things, but it’s also gonna give you placements next to you know, on other competitors PDPs and buy box. You can also get those placements on manual. But it’s gonna explore a bit and you’re going to see what are those indicators of where things are happening. But, just like Amazon in the early days as well, where you’re going to get efficiency is identifying on sponsored product, manual campaigns and exact match or others. You’re trying to harvest those words to get into top of search. So you might put a multiplier top of search for sponsored product for in-grid uh um, because that’s where you really want to win uh above the fold. And so, um, you can target, um, uh, some other placements you can. You can uh factor on and consider is that, uh, a majority of traffic going to Walmart.com is coming through mobile, so you might want to uh add a multiplier on placement in mobile, also with top of search as well. And so you can look at desktop.

Ryan:

If you think about where people are shopping for your product, if your product is something that takes more consideration and more research, maybe desktop modifier might be something that you see as increasing bids there and you’re going to see higher. If it’s ROAS you’re looking at, or TACOS, whatever it may be, you’re gonna see maybe a bump there. But really the goal would be launching auto campaigns, but not with so much spend that you’re tanking conversion rate because it’s going after complete irrelevant terms. But really your goal is to start learning by getting those impressions, getting some signs of conversion rate and then doubling down through manual bids exact match to increase those and that gets the flywheel going. With the greater relevancy, the lower your bid’s gonna have to be to win, because it’s basically an enhanced second bid auction. It’s whoever’s bidding higher. But also a major factor is if someone’s bidding a little bit lower than you but Walmart sees them as more relevant, they’ll win the bid for that placement. And so you’re trying to get that flywheel going and see that efficiency grow.

Kevin King:

Just before we wrap up here, what’s something that you’re seeing on Walmart that you’re excited about, that’s coming out, that’s in the pipeline that you they’re starting to talk about, or something that’s like man, this is going to be kick-ass when they, when they launch this is going to really help sellers and really make things easy. What’s some things that are coming down the pike that make you, uh, excited on when it comes to Walmart?

Ryan:

Yeah. One of the new ones that just came out that we’re exciting to see it continue rolling out uh is uh, um, uh, sponsored, uh, sponsored brand uh shops and shelves. So one of the big things we’ve seen is the impact of offsite traffic. So whether or not you’re a aspiring retail brand or you’re trying to drive sales or really kind of grow ranking, offsite traffic is rewarded highly. But in the past, like I mentioned, where others are creating duplicate listings, people trying to conquest or muddy up the search results, even on a branded search, sponsor brand shops and brand shelves are a unique destination that clears all that distraction aside and helps you drive traffic to your own. So we’re seeing increased conversion rates, increased efficiency from off-site traffic driving to a brand shop or brand shelf, and those are available for free for somebody who’s brand registered.

Kevin King:

What’s the difference between the two? For someone that doesn’t know what’s the difference between a brand shop and a brand shelf.

Ryan:

So think of brand shop as the landing page that can control can contain multiple brand shelves. So you’re going to have the brand shop, a hero image with your logo, those kind of elements and maybe a call to action button, and then you’re going to have ways to display different shelves. The shelf is up. You have to have a minimum of six non-variant items, but you can create them in different kinds of categories, categorize them however you want to designate that kind of assortment and you can create category level. You can put other videos on brand shop as well. You can build out your story. It’s still in its beginning stages, so it’s limited functionalities, but you can guide shoppers through your assortment and your own kind of sub domain, so to speak, with Walmart. So they’ll give you a vanity URL that you can use. That’s more simple to understand if you’re using a driving from outside traffic or giving it out in different ways. But there’s also another URL that you can use in your sponsored brand ads. Instead of when they click on your logo or whatever it is on a sponsored brand ad and just getting a branded search result, you’ll actually get driven to the brand shop. Each of those shelves you could also drive traffic to, and those are just going to be the different ways you assort your products together and group them together.

Carrie Miller:

Thank you so much for spending the time to answer all those questions. That’s a lot to talk for over an hour straight.

Kevin King:

That was good. That was a lot of good information. Hopefully, everybody got some good insights from this. If you’re not selling on Walmart, now’s the time to get on and ride that wave as it continues to grow. Helium 10 is the tool that you want to be using to do all your research and do all your analytics and then you know if you need some additional help. You know Ryan’s company Rise will definitely Blue Rise will definitely help you out when it comes to that, or if you need a little hand-holding along the way, they’re definitely the go-to. Appreciate it Ryan and everybody, have a great rest of your day and great rest of your week and we’ll see you again on the inside. Take care everybody.

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• Freedom Ticket: Taught by Amazon thought leader Kevin King, get A-Z Amazon strategies and techniques for establishing and solidifying your business. 
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