By Jacob May, Strategic Account Manager, VENDO

Introduction 

It is no secret that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are two of the biggest sales events at Walmart. Shoppers are accustomed to seeing the best items at the lowest possible price to ensure that they have a great gift for the Holiday Season. Recently, most retailers, including Walmart, have expanded their deals beyond the week of Black Friday, offering promotion pricing to their shoppers as early as the first week of November. This year will be no different. In fact, Holiday 2022 could offer the deepest discounts for the longest time frame that shoppers have ever seen. How can you ensure your items succeed during this competitive time of year? Keep reading to find out.

Steps for Holiday Success

#1: Identify Your Promotional Items

The first and maybe most important step in succeeding online is ensuring you are selecting the best items to promote online. There are several different strategies in picking your promotion items, but a few of them may include the below.

Overstocked Items

These are items that you can no longer afford to sit on any longer. One of the best ways to move through overstocked inventory is to offer Walmart a lower cost on the item so that they can rollback their retails. Items with reduced retails will receive a “Rollback” tag online, which helps drive customer interest and conversion. Walmart will also highlight the strike through price, so their online shoppers can see the value offered at the rollback price.

New Items

These are items that you have recently brought into your portfolio that you want to ensure start off on the right foot. Holiday shoppers are always looking for new, innovative items for exciting gifts. You may not be able to offer as deep of a discount on these types of items, so you will need to ensure that the innovation/excitement provide enough value for the Holiday shopper to spend a little bit more.

#2: Optimize Your Listings 

Many Holiday shoppers will be comparing similar items when determining if they want to make a purchase. To ensure that your item stands out among the rest, your product page should be fully optimized to Walmart.com’s standards. The most important standards to adhere to are:

• Content Score of at Least 95%
• At least 6-10 images that include clear detailed images of the important product features, lifestyle imagery, and infographics.
• Marketing Copy SEO that is fully optimized to your category’s style guide.
• 1-3 Videos that are item specific and instructional.
• Product Attribution, this will ensure that your item will show up in the filters that shoppers select when browsing.
• Ratings and Reviews, as they ensure that your items are highly rated so that shoppers can be confident in what they are purchasing.

#3: Developing Internal and External Ad Strategy 

Developing an advertising strategy for both on Walmart.com and externally are extremely important during the Holiday season. You can have the best content and pricing for your items, but if shoppers are not seeing your items, you will not sell to your full potential. Holiday advertising on Walmart.com is extremely competitive, depending on the timing, you may need to increase your advertising budget by as much as 150% to ensure your items are winning the valuable placements on site. Winning advertisements off Walmart.com are also important, as you want to ensure shoppers know that your items are available on Walmart.com’s site. Some external ad strategies may include Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and Instacart.

#4: Developing Inventory Strategy 

A key factor to consider when promoting items on Walmart.com during the Holiday Season is your inventory strategy. If your item is fully optimized, at a great price, and customers are seeing your ads both on site and externally, you have an excellent chance of moving significantly more volume during the Holiday season. This can cause you to move through much more inventory than normal and even cause you to go out of stock. If an item is out of stock, customers will not be able to see ads, or your product page on Walmart.com. When promoting items on Walmart.com for Holiday, you must ensure you have the inventory to support significant sales lifts.

Conclusion 

In closing, the Holiday season is one of the best opportunities for you to SELL MORE™ on Walmart.com. You must be sure you are identifying the right items, optimizing them for Walmart’s website, advertising both on and off Walmart.com, and staying in stock. If you check all these boxes, you set your items up for success to sell!