Although Amazon retains its title as the world’s largest online retailer, Walmart Marketplace is rapidly closing the gap and making it the best-selling platform. With continuous rollouts of new tools, features, and programs for merchants, Sam Walton’s brainchild is on a clear mission to steal the No. 1 position.
One of the platform’s recent ventures is the Walmart Sponsored Products program, which is among the best Walmart marketing strategies. Since there are more than 80 million products for shoppers to sort through, getting your business in front of potential customers before your rivals are essential. That’s something the program may help with. In this article, we will discuss the following:
- What are Walmart Sponsored Products?
- Steps to get started with the program
- Different ways to take advantage of sponsored products
Let’s find out right now!
Are you new to Walmart ads? Check out how to advertise on Walmart Marketplace to increase your online presence and ultimately boost your Walmart sales.
Walmart Sponsored Products: Basic Knowledge
Definition of sponsored product
Simply put, the Walmart Sponsored Products program is a CPC (cost-per-click) campaign that helps brands and retailers promote their items/businesses on the Walmart Marketplace.
To join this program, Walmart – one of the dominant online marketplaces – requires a monthly budget of at least $1,000 and a daily budget of at least $100. Depending on the type of product advertising campaign you choose, you may determine how much you want to spend, build ad groups of particular products, select your targeted keywords, and decide how much you want to pay per click.
As you sell on Walmart with registered products, they will be promoted throughout the desktop website, mobile platform, and app, bringing a wide range of conversion-boosting benefits:
- Increased visibility: Walmart sponsored products are displayed at the most notable placements (more on that later!) with a red tag to denote their affluence. Because of this, your items can stand out among the other listings, making them more attractive for prospective buyers to click on.
- Testing new products: Expanding the catalog and testing out new products are essential for e-sellers if they want to keep growing their businesses and retain sustainability. According to business experts, enrolling in the program doesn’t only boost sales but also helps them launch new items on Walmart immediately. You may see sales for new products the same day you add them to your inventory.
- Easier customer journey: Surveys from ClickZ show that shoppers often spend 55% of their purchase journey in the initial research stages. By taking advantage of marketplace ads, you can make your products stand out and convince shoppers to purchase. Less competition: Since it is a limited program, merchants must fulfill several requirements before enrolling in Walmart Sponsored Products. On the bright side, there will be less rivalry for advertising space and the top place.
Different types of Walmart advertising campaigns
Sellers can choose from two types of Walmart advertising campaigns: Automatic and manual.
Running an automatic campaign for your sponsored products is the simplest way to promote them on Walmart.com. Along with a straightforward setup come eye-catching placements and greater impression volumes. For this type of campaign, you don’t have to manage your keywords – all you have to do is provide the product detail and let Walmart’s search algorithm handle the rest. Thanks to their convenience, automatic campaigns are most suitable for brands with less advertising experience, for introducing new products, and for those who want to extend their reach outside of their current customer base.
With a manual campaign, you can select the keywords you would like to place a bid on. You may want to use the analytics tool provided by Walmart to filter out underperforming keywords from your advertising campaigns. A manual campaign is most suitable for brands that have experience with Walmart Marketplace and a fair understanding of the keywords your potential buyers search for.
All in all, which type of advertising campaign you choose depends on your needs and marketing experience. An automatic campaign provides maximum exposure, while a manual one comes with maximum control. Yet, keep in mind that these campaigns can immensely affect your Walmart Marketplace seller costs.
Where do Walmart ads appear?
Ads for Walmart sponsored products appear in prominent, high-traffic placements, such as:
- Search In-grid: In the 3rd, 5th, 6th, or 12th positions on browse, category, and search pages.
- Product Carousel: On browse, category, and search pages.
- Buy Box: On the product detail pages, beneath the Buy Box.
Guide on How to Get Started With Walmart Sponsored Products
Now that you know about the tremendous amount of opportunity for those who join the Walmart Sponsored Products program, are you ready to apply?
Well, here is a caveat: The marketplace is quite strict on who is accepted. To be eligible, a seller must:
- Own a verified seller account;
- Maintain high shipping standards;
- Offer competitive price points;
- Maintain a steady supply of all products;
- Have positive reviews;
- Provide specific information if self-serving.
These criteria ensure that you are a reliable retailer with a budget ready to invest in marketing, a proper business plan, and a clear pricing strategy in place.
#Step 1: Create a store on Walmart Marketplace
As such, becoming a marketplace seller is the first step in joining the Walmart Marketplace Ads program. You can register for a seller account through Walmart’s application portal, where you have to provide the following information:
- Your business details, including tax ID, employer identification number, and eCommerce experience;
- Your current address;
- Planned method of integration for your product listings;
- Catalog size, major product categories, etc.
Generally, completing the application form will take up to 20 minutes. The more information you provide, the faster you will get your application result, so make sure you don’t rush through it.
#Step 2: Upload products
Once you are approved to create a store on Walmart Marketplace, congratulations, you are halfway done! Your next step is to upload all of your items to the catalog. There are two methods:
- Setup by Match: Oftentimes, when a seller begins selling on Walmart, he will conduct careful research to find out a unique and lucrative product. Others, however, choose to list Walmart best-seller items to compete directly with existing vendors. In this case, they can use the Setup by Match tool to extract info from current listings and upload their products in minutes rather than creating new listings. This helps save a great deal of time.
- Full Item Spec: If you have a unique selection of items on offer, each with its own selling points, features, and characteristics, you have to establish a new listing. While it costs you some extra time, you can fully control your listing, from optimization to content and more. Just pick among the category templates and customize the catalog according to your preference.
#Step 3: Request access to the Walmart Sponsored Products platform
When you are done setting up your store, you can request access to the Walmart Sponsored Products platform by sending an email to [email protected] and providing information regarding your business on Walmart.
Unfortunately, the platform has yet to give clear instructions on what details you should provide. According to experienced e-sellers, though, Walmart considers an application based on your experience and available budget. Make sure you give them as much information as possible.
#Step 4: Create and launch Walmart Ads
After receiving approval, get ready to establish and launch a Walmart ads campaign!
- Select the type of your campaign: As mentioned, qualified sellers can choose between an automatic and a manual campaign. Based on your needs and advertising experience, you can let Walmart handles the process or take up the baton yourself.
- Determine your keywords: So you decide to go for a manual campaign? It’s time to carry out in-depth research to seek valuable keywords. When you select and place bids on the keywords that will trigger your ads to display, you also decide how much you will pay per click. Of course, certain keywords have more competition, making it vital to have a solid grasp of your business’ ad budget and the amount you are willing to spend on ads monthly.
3 Ways to Optimize Walmart Sponsored Products
Indeed, joining the Walmart Sponsored Products program is an effective way to boost your store’s visibility. With the three tips I share below, though, you can further optimize this tool and make it even more powerful!
Achieve the Walmart Buy Box
When multiple sellers offer the same product, they share the same listing and compete for the Add to Cart button. This button, also known as the Walmart Buy Box, is where most shoppers make their purchases. The competition is fierce since only one seller can win the buy box, and the winner’s product is the only one that goes into customers’ carts.
Buyers are often drawn to the first listing, so nearly every retailer who doesn’t have the Buy Box loses sales. According to Statista, over 80% of sales go through this blue button. To obtain the Buy Box and maximize your Walmart sponsored products’ visibility, here are some winning factors:
- Fast & reliable shipping service;
- Competitive pricing strategy;
- Plenty of stock;
- Good reviews and ratings;
- Optimized listings.
Improve your listings
That leads us to the second tip: Improve your listings. Your position in the top organic product search results is based on your content’s quality. If your listings fall out of the top 128, your Walmart products won’t be on display.
Thus, optimizing all the listings is the key. Make sure that they have:
- Clear and descriptive titles;
- High-quality images;
- Important features;
- Detailed product descriptions.
As vital as they are, listing management and optimization are very time-intensive. A listing software, such as LitCommerce, will save you the time involved in the process, giving you more hours to focus on your business plan. Using the Template feature, you can establish a set of attributes for all of your Walmart catalog. This streamlines the process, guarantees consistency, and ensures that all of your listings are optimized.
Manage inventory
Here is a fun fact: The algorithm tends to reward higher stock availability with the precious Buy Box. Yes, that’s a factor Walmart Marketplace highly values! When your products become Walmart-sponsored, the demand for them rises. The platform wants to make sure every seller can keep up with the new demand and cover the sales volume, so having good inventory management is a big plus.
Once your items run out of stock, you get pushed down from the top results. To avoid this problem, many sellers set up an automatic alarm to warn them when the supply of a product drops below the threshold. Another way is to take advantage of multichannel-listing softwares that include inventory-management tools. They help you keep track of stock in every warehouse, including Walmart, to prevent both overselling and underselling.
Walmart Sponsored Products: FAQs
- What are Walmart sponsored products?
Walmart Sponsored Products, also known as Performance ads, are pay-per-click ads that allow sellers on marketplace to promote particular items from their catalogs or an entire product range. These ads appear at prominent, high-traffic placements, like on top of search results, with a red sponsored products tag.
- How to optimize your Walmart items?
There are three ways to optimize your Walmart items, even when they have become Walmart sponsored products:
- Achieve the Walmart Buy Box;
- Improve your listings;
- Optimize your inventory and make sure you always have high stock availability.
- What does sponsored mean on Walmart Marketplace?
When a product is sponsored on Walmart Marketplace, it will be promoted in shopping results and relevant product pages. That way, customers can discover and purchase the product faster, leading to an increase in sales.
Final Words
Walmart Sponsored Products have specific entry requirements in order to maintain the authority and reliability of their search results. In return, it will reward you with more product visibility and brand recognition, which generates more revenue. That’s why enrolling in the program is totally worth your effort.
With effective listings, your chance of being accepted to Walmart – the best-selling platform – will greatly increase! Check out LitCommerce – the all-inclusive eCommerce listing software. Our solution can help you with professionally designed listing templates, order management, and inventory syncing, all from a central dashboard.
For more information, don’t hesitate to contact us – we are here to help you with your business!
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