Walmart Connect: Everything you need to know

In the present era, businesses rely heavily on digital advertising to connect with their target market, owing to the growing number of people spending their time online. 

To enhance their online presence, it has become critical for brands to establish themselves strongly. 

In 2022, Bayer, a leading pharmaceutical company, aimed to promote their Aleve and One A Day products to Walmart customers. The company searched for an effective solution to boost sales, increase media efficiency, and achieve a higher return on advertising spend (ROAS). 

Walmart Connect suggested a solution to reach and engage with offsite audiences, which led to a remarkable success story for Bayer, resulting in significant gains, improved ROAS, and remarkable media performance.

Let’s dive deeper to understand how Walmart Connect works and how you can leverage it to your advantage as Bayer did.

Here’s a quick peek into the Article 

1. What is Walmart Connect?
2. What is Walmart Connect focusing on?
3. Why should you use Walmart Connect?
4. How does Walmart Connect work?
5. Three Key Areas of Walmart Connect to Help Brands Reach Target Audiences
6. How to get started with Walmart Connect
7. Three Key Tips To Optimizing Your Walmart Connect Advertising
8. Wrapping it up

What is Walmart Connect?

In 2021, Walmart rebranded its media group as Walmart Connect, which functions as the advertising division of the retail giant. 

Walmart Connect provides a platform for advertisers to reach potential customers through various channels, including online, in-store, and sponsored media across the web. 

Advertisers can benefit from the association with Walmart’s trusted brand while advertising their products or services using Walmart Connect. This, in turn, can help build brand recognition and trust among shoppers. 

With Walmart Connect, advertisers have access to a vast audience and a range of advertising options, which can help them to increase their visibility and reach.

What is Walmart Connect focusing on?

Walmart Connect has a clear focus on three key areas to enhance seller-customer interactions and boost advertising efforts. 

The first area focuses on connecting shoppers with brands throughout the various stages of shopping, including awareness and consideration. Walmart Connect enables brands to showcase their products through a range of channels, including TV walls, in-store displays, and connected TV (CTV). Additionally, they offer premium advertising experiences through videos and advertising options, providing brands with even greater visibility and engagement opportunities.

The second area of focus for Walmart Connect is automation, which streamlines campaign management for sellers. This automation helps to increase efficiency and reduce errors, allowing sellers to focus on creating effective ads and campaigns. Additionally, Walmart Connect gives sellers more control over their ads, enabling them to adjust settings, targeting, and budgets as needed.

Finally, Walmart Connect utilizes innovation and technology to help advertisers achieve their advertising goals. By leveraging data and insights, Walmart Connect helps brands target their ads more precisely, reaching the right audience at the right time. This results in more effective campaigns with measurable results, enabling brands to track their performance and optimize their advertising strategies.

Why should you use Walmart Connect?

Walmart Connect helps you to present your offerings to the shoppers at the native Walmart properties. It also provides various avenues for brands to reach potential customers and improve their chances of influencing purchase decisions.

Research suggests that 40% of consumers make a purchase based on the influence of advertisements.

By partnering with Walmart Connect, brands have the opportunity to reach thousands of customers who visit Walmart stores or its websites daily. This means that brands can increase their visibility and improve their chances of connecting with their target audience. Additionally, brands can use Walmart Connect’s advertising tools to provide customers with relevant and useful information about their products, helping them make informed decisions and potentially increasing the likelihood of a purchase.

How does Walmart Connect work?

Walmart offers a wide range of advertising opportunities to brands, ranging from in-store displays to search result placements. This means that a Walmart product ad can take various forms, providing brands with a diverse set of options to showcase their products. So here is an overview of available ad formats, which brands can choose as the best fit for their products and target audience.

1. Search ads

One way to advertise your products on Walmart is through keyword-based ads. These ads enable your products to appear prominently in search results on Walmart.com or in the Walmart app, allowing you to reach relevant consumers who are actively searching for products.

Walmart offers two types of search ads to its brands: Walmart Sponsored Products and Search Brand Amplifier. With Walmart Sponsored Products, your ad can appear within search results, on a related product’s page, or in a pre-checkout reminder. This gives you a wider reach to your target audience and drives more traffic to your product pages.

The other type of search ad, Search Brand Amplifier, offers a more premium placement. A selection of your products will appear at the very top of Walmart’s search results, accompanied by your logo and a custom headline. This allows you to boost brand recognition and visibility for up to three products at a time. It is a great way to catch the attention of shoppers and stand out from your competitors.

2. Display ads

Brands have the opportunity to increase their brand awareness and encourage customers to make purchases by displaying ads in prominent locations across Walmart’s online platforms, including Walmart.com, the Walmart app, and third-party websites. Display ads can be strategically placed to reach customers who have shown interest in similar products or have previously shopped at Walmart.

Walmart’s targeted advertising approach ensures that ads are shown to consumers who are likely to be interested in the products being advertised. By leveraging data on customers’ shopping history and behavior, brands can display ads to relevant audiences, whether they are actively shopping on Walmart or browsing social media sites.

By providing a consistent experience across multiple platforms, brands can build brand recognition and encourage customers to make purchases. With Walmart’s broad reach, display ads offer a powerful way to connect with potential customers and drive sales.

3. In-store ads

With Walmart Connect, you can use in-store displays to remind shoppers about the benefits of your products while they shop in physical Walmart stores. This can be a great way to catch their attention and reinforce your brand message. Additionally, you can target shoppers with specific ads at the point of purchase, which can be especially effective in driving conversions.

Walmart Connect’s closed-loop tracking system allows you to measure the effectiveness of your in-store advertising efforts. It can track whether an ad on Walmart’s self-checkout screen or other in-store displays led to a conversion later on. This tracking data can help you optimize your advertising campaigns and make informed decisions about future advertising investments.

4. Brand interaction

Experiential retail is a retail trend that is gaining traction and is set to be a game-changer in 2022. Walmart, a renowned retail giant, has taken the lead in providing brands with various opportunities to leverage this trend. Brands can create exciting and unforgettable experiences for their customers by participating in Walmart’s unique store events and offering product sampling, which can help cultivate long-lasting loyalty among their target audience.

Walmart Connect is also offering a unique feature called ‘Content-to-Commerce’ to its customers. This feature brings brands and influencers together to create compelling and immersive native content that engages the audience at a deeper level. The feature has proven to be highly successful and is being used by numerous brands to reach out to their target audience and foster long-lasting relationships.

Overall, Walmart provides brands with various innovative ways to connect with their customers and stand out in a highly competitive retail environment. Through experiential retail and the Content-to-Commerce feature, brands can create memorable experiences for their customers and drive engagement and loyalty in the long run.

Recommended read: How to become a Walmart Spark Reviewer?

Three Key Areas of Walmart Connect to Help Brands Reach Target Audiences

Walmart Connect, formerly known as Walmart Media Group, has outlined its future vision centered around three key areas. The company aims to attract brands and facilitate their connection with their desired audiences by prioritizing these areas.

1. Ever-developing digital advertising choices

Walmart Connect has incorporated its digital assets to reach out to consumers through multiple channels such as Walmart.com, the Walmart app, and its pickup and delivery services. By leveraging these channels, Walmart Connect provides comprehensive advertising campaigns that can showcase your products at every stage of the modern consumer journey.

Starting from initial product awareness to building customer loyalty, Walmart Connect’s advertising campaigns offer advertisers the ability to reach potential customers through search or display ads just before they convert or at other crucially influential moments. This enables brands to connect with their target audience more effectively and promote their products through multiple touchpoints.

2. Inventive in-store experiences

Walmart Connect has installed nearly 170,000 screens in its 4,500 physical stores, providing brands with an opportunity to engage with customers while they shop in-store. These screens display ads on store TV walls and self-checkout screens, providing a new avenue for brands to promote their products. Additionally, brands can also offer product sampling promotions to entice potential customers.

Walmart Connect is exploring other in-store advertising opportunities as well, such as providing ad spots at its free drive-in movie events and family-friendly Halloween events. This initiative allows brands to connect with customers in a fun and engaging environment, which could result in increased brand awareness and customer loyalty.

3. Off-site media advertising opportunities

In addition to providing advertising opportunities within its digital and physical channels, Walmart Connect enables brands to utilize its vast collection of first-party data to enhance ad performance on external sites. This is made possible through the Walmart Connect demand-side platform (DSP), which allows brands to promote their products on third-party websites.

The Walmart Connect DSP is an innovative tool that leverages past purchase data and predictive audience segments to target specific consumers. This means that brands can precisely target potential customers when they’re browsing other websites, increasing the likelihood of a conversion. Retargeting is also an option, which enables brands to reach customers who have previously shown interest in their products.

Furthermore, the Walmart Connect DSP is open to all brands, regardless of whether they sell products through Walmart or not. This creates an opportunity for brands to expand their reach and target their desired audience through an additional channel while leveraging Walmart’s extensive first-party data to enhance ad performance.

How to get started with Walmart Connect

Getting started with Walmart Connect is a simple and straightforward process. Go to Walmart Connect.com and sign up by providing some basic business information, contact details, and tax ID through a short online form. 

However, brands should keep in mind that Walmart Connect is currently limited to a selected number of brands. While this means that some brands may have to wait before they can utilize Walmart Connect’s advertising solutions. It is expected that access will be extended in the near future, providing more brands with the opportunity to reach potential customers through Walmart’s digital and physical channels.

It is also essential to consider that creating Walmart-sponsored products or signing up for in-store promotions requires that a brand’s products are sold at Walmart. This requirement ensures that Walmart Connect’s advertising solutions are focused on promoting products that are available to consumers in Walmart stores, which can lead to increased foot traffic and sales for participating brands.

Three Key Tips To Optimizing Your Walmart Connect Advertising

Walmart Connect offers a wide variety of advertising options, which can make it challenging for brands to navigate. However, there are three straightforward tips that brands can follow to optimize their advertising campaigns on Walmart Connect.

1. Comprehend Shopper Behavior Across Various Walmart Channels

Promoting Walmart-sponsored products both in-store and on the Walmart website can be an effective advertising strategy. While some advertisers may be hesitant to invest in offline ads due to difficulties in tracking ROI, Walmart’s research suggests that in-store and online placements can have a significant impact on brand awareness and sales.

According to Walmart, 48% of its shoppers are most receptive to new brands while shopping in-store, while 45% say the same about browsing Walmart.com. In addition, over half (51%) of shoppers visit the Walmart website for product inspiration, and 47% visit a physical store for the same reason. These statistics suggest that in-store and online placements may be more effective than ads in the Walmart app or at pickup points. Therefore, promoting Walmart-sponsored products through a variety of channels can help brands reach a wider audience and improve their overall ad performance.

Recommended read: 11 actionable Walmart advertising strategies.

2. Implement Automated Rules to Improve Search Ad Campaigns

Walmart Connect has recently launched automated rules for brand advertising through its platform. This new feature helps brands save time and streamline their Walmart product ad campaigns. Automated rules can notify brands of important events and make budget adjustments automatically.

With automated rules, brands can set up notifications that alert them when their campaign reaches its daily budget or when their return on ad spend (ROAS) drops below a specific threshold. Brands can also use Walmart Connect to increase or decrease their budget based on certain conditions, such as low ROAS. 

For instance, if a campaign’s ROAS is low, Walmart Connect can automatically reduce the daily budget by half.

3. Apply Frequency Caps to Optimize Ad Performance

Walmart Connect’s demand-side platform allows brands to control the frequency of their Walmart product ads across all campaign touchpoints. The frequency caps can be set at the campaign level, which is a useful way to reduce costs and prevent bothering shoppers who aren’t engaging with the ads. 

By setting a frequency cap, advertisers can make sure that their ads are not shown to the same shoppers too many times, which can lead to a decrease in click-through rates and a waste of the advertising budget. This feature can help brands to optimize their advertising campaigns and make them more effective.

Wrapping it up

Walmart Connect is a powerful advertising platform that offers businesses the opportunity to reach Walmart’s large customer base. Through various ad formats and targeting options, businesses can create effective campaigns and track their performance in real time. 

With Walmart’s extensive reach and diverse range of products, Walmart Connect is an attractive option for businesses of all sizes willing to boost their online presence and drive sales. By leveraging the platform’s advanced targeting capabilities, businesses can connect with the right customers at the right time and achieve their advertising goals efficiently.

Additional Read:

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What are the best sellers on Walmart?

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