59. Will Haire: Getting Started With Walmart
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If you’re looking to expand and diversify revenue for your eCommerce brand then Walmart is an increasingly attractive option.
Walmart are working hard to offer more features to sellers in an attempt to pick up some of Amazon’s market share.
In this week’s episode of the Brand Builder Show, we’re joined by Will Haire from BellaVix.
Will and his team manage both the Amazon and Walmart presence for a number of large, growing brands.
In the episode, we talked about how you can get started on Walmart on what are the key differences between selling on Amazon and Walmart.
Enjoy!
Episode Links
Talking Points
00:00 Introduction to Guest: Will Haire
01:37 Will’s background on E-Commerce
02:48 Will’s favorite five
08:30 Difference between Walmart and Amazon in terms of setup, selling, etc.
14:10 Ballpark sales figure of Amazon Sellers in Walmart using the same listing
15:13 Walmart’s fees structure vs Amazon
16:21 Walmart’s storage and fulfillment
19:59 Can you sell in Walmart and fulfill in Amazon?
21:05 Listing optimization and launching products in Walmart
23:06 Quick overview of SEO
26:16 What is it like to launch a product in Walmart?
30:48 Pricing and Buybacks in Waltermart
34:48 Where to find Will Haire
Ben Donovan 00:00
Hey folks, welcome back to another episode of The Brand Builder show where it’s gonna be a great episode today, we’re actually going to be talking about selling on Walmart. It’s gonna be really insightful episode to help us talk through it. We’ve got Will on the show today. Will, thanks for coming on and joining us today.
Will Haire 00:16
Yeah, Ben, thanks for having me excited to be here.
Ben Donovan 00:19
Yeah, man. No, I’m looking forward to. Walmart is a channel that I want to explore myself for our own brands. And so I’m gonna maybe take the chance to treat this like a little consultancy call. I get some free consultancy on the podcast and a ton of value with good stuff, man, good stuff. Yeah, I know, our audience will be very interested in the topic. Because Amazon, you know, is a big channel that we that we work with, and, you know, talk about a lot. And it’s got some strengths, but it’s, of course, got some weaknesses and diversification is always good. So it’s gonna be it’s gonna be a good one. But before we do that, let us know a little bit about yourself. Will, where are you tuning in from? It’s I’m in Manchester. It’s freezing cold today. It was snowing today in the UK. I’m guessing maybe it’s not snowing where you are?
Will Haire 01:07
No, I’m blessed. I’m in Raleigh, North Carolina on the east coast, the United States and it’s let’s see, it’s about like 17 degrees Celsius, which is like 65 ish degrees Fahrenheit here. So it’s it’s well we consider chilly for down south, but obviously, you guys got some snow, so I won’t.
Ben Donovan 01:28
Yeah, man. Yeah. Now give us give us a bit of your backstory as well. What what you’ve been up to over recent years in the E commerce space and what you do now?
Will Haire 01:37
Okay, man. Yeah. So my background is advertising I, it’s my passion. I’ve been doing advertising for Jesus hard to believe over 10 years now. Started out, always working in agencies. And then in about 2018, I decided I could do it better myself. So myself and my co founder who has a background in more corporate and marketing and digital marketing. We got together we formed BellaVix. And BellaVix is a premium agency focused on helping brands, market and scale on marketplaces like Amazon and Walmart.
Ben Donovan 02:11
Awesome, man. Awesome. Very succinct. I like it. You caught me off guard there, because that was like quick fire. That’s good. I like it. Yeah, we’re gonna dig into some of the aspects of that. With you, especially Walmart. Like I say, it’s a topic we haven’t really discussed much on the podcast. So I’m looking forward to talking about that. Before we do, we’d love to do it. Start off the episode with our slot favorite five, ask you your favorites of a bunch of different, different things. And so if you’re happy to do that, we’ll kind of run through those and find out some interesting facts about you. Number one, do you have a favorite ecommerce brand?
Will Haire 02:48
I do. And it’s gonna be a brand that we currently work with. The name of the brand is Kara MD, they’re out at Ohio, Cleveland, Ohio, we work with Dr. Karen Victor over there. And what I really like about the brand is a couple things is like as an advertiser brands that are fun to work with, or brands that kind of gives you the liberty to test different vehicles and platforms in order to help them achieve scale. And what was really nice is we help Victor achieve a lot of scale on Amazon and on as Walmart presents and came down to economics, he got a pretty sweet deal with another agency, who was wholesaling his product. So he left us and then six months later came back, because that agency wasn’t able to deliver the level of service that we do. So we’ve been working with Victor now for a little over three years. And I just love that, you know, not only does he give us a lot of freedom and control over his marketplace, and he has great branding. But he’s also, you know, he’s also just a great, great family owned company to work with. So while there are no Nike or anything like that, they have a place close to my heart.
Ben Donovan 03:57
That’s awesome. No, I love it. It’s interesting. There’s a range This question gives, it brings a range of answers. There are some big brands, you know, several people have said Nike, but then there are some lesser known brands maybe that many of our origins have never heard of and, and that’s what I love about it, the diversity and there’s always something to learn from, from all of the different brands in the world. I love being inspired by what other brands are doing. So thank you for that. How about a software or tool that helps you run your business or life?
Will Haire 04:26
Number three, curveball on this one, I’m gonna say hiring a virtual assistant. To share what we did is we we paid for outsourcing School, which is a local workshop essentially, and we got a bunch of documentation on hiring a virtual assistant to manage your calendar, manage your email box, do podcast prospecting, and sales prospecting. And so to give you some perspective, I spent about three to four hours a day inside my email or slack or into The messaging system just being very reactive. And since we have brought on a virtual assistant, and then follow the guidelines in the program they develop, I spent about 20 to 30 minutes a day. So we’ve had improvement about like 800% efficiency. And that allows me to focus more on items in the business that allowed me to have the biggest impact. So it was a game changer. So I highly recommend, well, it’s not a software or tool directly, it is a tool using using virtual assistants to free up your time from the mundane and, and help you be more impactful in the business. So
Ben Donovan 05:37
absolutely, absolutely. Love it. Okay, what about an organic marketing channel?
Will Haire 05:43
For us, SEO and blogging, we have over 200 pieces of content at this point, we have been consistently blogging for over three years at this point. So that’s been a game changer for us.
Ben Donovan 05:54
Nice. Nice. And what about a paid marketing channel?
Will Haire 05:58
So we don’t do any paid marketing for sales. We’re blessed that most people come in organically or through our network. But I will say we use LinkedIn for recruiting and we found a lot of success finding really good talent by advertising are our job postings through LinkedIn.
Ben Donovan 06:15
Nice, nice, good stuff. And then finally, do you have a favorite business book?
Will Haire 06:20
I do. And I’m sure other people have said it on your podcast. But traction by Gino Wickman has been a game changer. We do level 10 meetings, we do rocks, we are we use the entrepreneur operating system, which is how we we do our annual planning and all that other fun stuff. So it has been an absolute game changer. Our business coach made us read it, but it ended up it ended up changing changing the game and a book I read recently that anybody who’s in a leadership position leaders eat last by Simon Sinek is a great book about how groups think and what motivates teams, and then how to get kind of in front of that and be the leader you want to be. So I share two great books because I’m an overachiever.
Ben Donovan 07:09
That’s good. I love it. You’re already delivering extra value. I like it. Yeah. Good stuff. No, I appreciate that. It’s like I say it’s good to just, I find each week, there’s just something in there that is new to me, or is it just a good book to write down to pick up in the future? And, and so I know our audience, you know, like it to have comments coming in about, you know, I’m gonna get that book or I’ve never heard of that brand. But I look them up, and they’re doing this great thing. So I appreciate you taking the time to to answer those.
Ben Donovan 07:39
Good. Okay, so let’s talk about Walmart. Because like I say, it is a channel that is picking up steam in terms of the conversation, at least, that people are having people looking for more ways to diversify, Amazon, it’s been well documented in recent weeks are taking, you know, 50% or more in terms of fees. And so people are looking at that and thinking, well, Amazon isn’t maybe the golden goose that it used to be. Are there some other options here to build out more channels for a more holistic ecommerce brand? So I’d love to hear some some thoughts from you on Walmart, what it looks like. And from someone that you know, who would like to get their products into Walmart at some point in the next sort of 12 to 18 months? How does Walmart compare to selling on Amazon? Is it a similar setup? Are there lots of things different to be aware of? Give us a bit of an introductory rundown on it?
Will Haire 08:30
Yeah, I’m gonna run through some like the major components so you can get an idea. But first of all, I’m talking about like the major differences between the platform. So first and foremost, like, Walmart is just, it’s a lot larger than Amazon when it comes to their brick and mortar presence. So to give you some perspective, there are 4700 Walmart stores, compared to 525 Amazon fulfillment centers, including Whole Foods. There is 90% of the population lives 10 miles from a Walmart. So like, when the pandemic happened, for example, there was a Walmart was a lot less impacted than Amazon. And as you guys know what the fee increase, jeez, the fulfillments and now we’re bidding on additional capacity and stuff like that, like, Amazon is definitely a pay to play platform. Amazon still has about 40% of the general ecommerce and Walmart’s around 5%. Give or take there’s like 200 million, little over 200 million monthly unique visitors to Amazon where there’s about 100 million to Walmart.
Will Haire 09:39
But Walmart is aggressively investing in the E commerce space because their goal they see the opportunity. Consumer behavior has changed but one of the biggest differentiating factors and what makes Amazon still a better platform for third party sellers when compared to Walmart is Walmart, Walmart’s online experience is a one P experience. So ideally, when you shop at Walmart is you buy online and you pick up in the store, or Amazon as you buy online and be delivered to your house. So to this day, it’s despite everything they’re saying, it’s still a one P focused kind of model. So there’s lots of restrictions for third party sellers in terms of ranking your products, better, better placements, even the available advertising assets, the collateral, like their version of a plus content, like all of those are available through third parties, while it’s a lot smoother, and more integrated into the Amazon experience does the Amazon, the Amazon assembled Amazon is trying to to promote brands and have a really good experience where at will Walmart still, you know, is has a good user interface for their shopping experience. But the third party seller is secondary, it’s not a primary incentive. So a lot of the technology, a lot of the the usability is just not not equipped. It’s not there yet. So we love Walmart, I always equate it to like, getting into Walmart now is like getting into Amazon 10 years ago. But you know, if you got into Amazon 10 years ago, you know, there’s some pain points. And there’s some growing pains. So I just want everybody to be aware, you know, it’s a different user experience. And you should definitely list your products on there. There’s lots of great ways to listen, I’ll kind of run through the two databases, but those are the major points that I’ve I’ve noticed as somebody who operates on both platforms,
Ben Donovan 11:45
yeah. Okay. Okay. That’s interesting. So the, because I know obviously there are Walmart fulfillment services, to some extent, but you saying that people when people order on Walmart, there’s no option to order online and get delivered to their home?
Will Haire 12:01
Oh, no, there are options and brands do a WFS is definitely there, it’s you still need to be accepted in there is a waitlist to some degree, we’ve worked with brands that got in in two months, we work with brands that it took a year to get accepted into the process. There are like deliver with an extra our has a partnership with Walmart that you can, you can get some wfs benefits and be able to fulfill using their their logistics. But the overall what I’m saying the overall experience in terms of preferential treatment and what the platform is built around, is that one key relationship with people who have a presence inside brick and mortar stores.
Ben Donovan 12:44
Yeah. And for people that do want to get a presence in the stores, is that something that’s generally achievable? Or is that a very closed off kind of opportunity.
Will Haire 12:55
That’s not something we really focus on. Like anything else, getting your product at the buyers hands comes with its own challenges. I’m sure it’s challenging for you to show sales and stuff like that. A lot of brands we work with that get into Target they get into Walmart will actually leverage Amazon and their website to show sales and that they have a market before getting accepted into these platforms. And now we know that because we work with the sales team with some of the brands we work with. So they, they share this information, but we’re secondary. So I don’t know who they’re talking to. I don’t know what that relationship looks like. But I do know that they expect the brands that come in to Walmart to have some type of sales history before being.
Ben Donovan 13:43
Okay. And before we get into some of the more detailed aspects of it, then in terms of getting set up listing products, etc. To just give people a bit of a picture, maybe of the market size or the opportunity with Walmart, what do you tend to see from a typical Amazon seller that then goes and lists the same products on Walmart in terms of a comparative sales figure? I know it’s hard to say the exact amount. But yeah
Will Haire 14:10
We have a ballpark figure, though, we let all our sellers know, you can expect to do 5 to 25% of what you’re doing on Amazon, because it’s just a smaller marketplace. So a lot of times we’ll start with a brand and we’ll get them listed on Walmart, we’ll set up a lot of the credentials, and then they may scale back our operational services. And we’ll just do advertising, some brands. We just launched them on Walmart and then just turn it over, because the sales velocity just isn’t high enough. Like I said, I think everybody should have a presence. Walmart is pushing to consume more of that market share. But they’re not they’re not there yet. It’s going to take a little more time for them to work it out. And I do think the biggest shift that needs to happen is their focus on third party sellers. And then cleaning up some of the restrictions are Around listing by box price parity stuff like that.
Ben Donovan 15:03
Yep. In terms of fees, is it similarly expensive to fulfill? Are there similar kind of fee structures to Amazon?
Will Haire 15:13
Yeah, similar kind of fee structures, they did not increase their fees as much as, as Amazon did for let’s just say since March, I think that’s when the the new fees kicked in for Amazon. So Walmart is still you know, give or take, like 30% 50% referral, 15%, picker pack, they don’t charge the $40 Professional seller fee. But when you register your account, they have a trust and safety review process. And they’ll want to look at your website and stuff like that. So if you’re new to market brand, and you don’t have a lot of that collateral in place, Walmart is probably not the place for you to get started. It’s something to kind of grow into, as you’ve already established a bit of like, your direct to consumer website, and then obviously, some sort of a presence on Amazon. So I consider that like third in the pecking order.
Ben Donovan 16:05
Yeah. Okay. In terms of storage and fulfillment, you mentioned they’re getting set up with deliver, is that an easier way to get started otherwise, because you talked about getting accepted by for Walmart performance services?
Will Haire 16:21
Yep, it just, it’s easier because you can get some of the the two day shipping badges and stuff by working with an approved third party vendor delivered one that a lot of our brands end up using, because they integrate really well with Walmart, they’re an approved vendor. So there’s a lot of indirect benefits to working with them. But if you’re able to show a good fulfillment record over a given period of time, you will achieve some of those benefits. But nothing beats getting into WFS. And leveraging their solution, what I will say like, they have destroyed pallets of products, they have lost pallets of products, then the pallets of product show up months later, and they just throw it back in your inventory and charge storage fees. So like, it’s still a hot mess, to be honest with you. Like if you think Amazon is bad, Walmart is twice as bad. But you know, growing pains, it’s growing pains, figured out as much as we’re figuring it out.
Ben Donovan 17:24
I was gonna say, I mean, sounds just like Amazon to me,
Will Haire 17:29
though, Amazon has a good process and like get IDA or get Sita, whatever you call it. They’re like software solutions that make it easier. There’s nothing like that for Walmart, you can just, you just gotta keep track of your stuff and make sure that they’re not losing it open case. Yeah. Do you want support to blow your brains out?
Ben Donovan 17:50
But when you mentioned obviously harder to get accepted, like an approval process, which Amazon doesn’t really have that same kind of way is a bit of, you know, checking that they do, but not not in any way. Like you seem to be sort of suggesting there. Is it a long period of time should people? What kind of timeframe are people looking at,
Will Haire 18:10
It varies but the quickest we ever got somebody in was two months, and it happened to be a larger brand. So I think indirectly, they’re looking at some type of sales velocity based on the presence you have on different online retailers. For some of our smaller brands, it was early on, but the longest it took was like a year. That was terrible. But they were one of the first brands we launched. And it was like, you know, it was like four years ago at this point, they have made it a lot quicker. So I would say in general, you know, two to two to four months is reasonable. But also understand like it’s out of your hands, you know, though, they open and close these as they become available. I fully don’t understand like, how the network works and how they move inventory between warehouses, you got to think to 4700 stores that act as fulfillment centers. That sounds like it’s a little bit more of a complicated process. And it seems like they’re letting sellers in in batches. Which, you know, is just how they’re doing things right now. And like I said, secondary, they are not. They’re not pushing the needle on the third party sellers yet.
Ben Donovan 19:22
Yeah. So they’re, their fulfillment centers are like just off the back of their stores kind of setup.
Will Haire 19:28
Yeah, that’s pretty much back to the stores. I’m sure they have some general fulfillment centers, too. But as far as I’ve been educated, a lot of them are just tied to the stores. They’ll pull them right out of stock. So this is a different beast.
Ben Donovan 19:40
Yeah. Okay. Okay, cool. And then, just on the fulfillment side of things. The only other question I had was, I believe you can correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s sort of quite a big no, no, in terms of, if you sell something on Walmart, you couldn’t then fulfill it from Amazon stock. There’s a bit of tension there.
Will Haire 19:59
You know, Only more because it comes in the box with a smile when Amazon made the move to no longer brown box, Merchant Fulfilled orders. Walmart said, hey, no more fulfilling orders from from Amazon. I’m not sure I believe this may have I know in Europe, UK, for example, though brown box it in the US as far as I’m concerned, we lost that ability. And I think it’s just Amazon’s way of just differentiating themselves and making that separation from Walmart. So, so generally, no, you’d have to fill it from your third party logistics company or, or deliver or whatever else you’re gonna use the Walmart orders.
Ben Donovan 20:43
Yeah. Okay. All right. So then in terms of getting listings set up and ready to sell, obviously, that’s a big focus for Amazon sellers, because getting that organic ranking is key. So listing optimization, launching products out of the gate is a massive focus for Amazon sellers. Is it a similar process on that front for Walmart?
Will Haire 21:05
pretty much it is very similar. I’ll discuss some nuance differences, but they both allow for individual listings to be created directly in the platform. So if you’re old school and want to do it the wrong way, you can click click Type Type Type. They allow you to do bulk file uploads, they actually created a program recently that you could download your listings from Shopify and just pump it right into Walmart listing creator, and it’ll generate it for you. They both have the ability to do API’s, you know, listing their seller celebrate, or two functional ones that work well. And you can take that information from your website, your Shopify, for example, and have the title, the bullets all that show up on Walmart, which is great. Some things to keep in mind, Walmart requires UPC’s, there’s no like FN SKU model, you can file for US UPC exemptions, and they will get accepted, but gotta have the proper documentation in place. And formatting. What we find when we use the API’s is formatting is always jacked up like it never goes over well, it’s definitely better to just do a download and dump it in, if you can.
Will Haire 22:26
And then a huge advantage that Walmart has that Amazon doesn’t is like through yacht po or Bazaarvoice, you can, you can have your reviews on specific products and migrate over to Walmart. So essentially, if you have, you know, 1000s of reviews on a product, you can have that migrate over directly to Walmart, it takes time. And it comes in batches to I don’t know how the backend works. But generally, that’s a huge advantage where on Amazon, you know, you have to kind of build that, following their terms of service. So like indirectly, it’s just a product sales velocity.
Will Haire 23:06
And then real quick, just want to talk about SEO. So like, functionally, they both work the same, like tax relevance, sales, velocity, pricing, and availability, all play its own part in in helping your products index. But Walmart is a lot stricter on the guidelines around the number of characters you can use. So for example, typically what we find is like a lot of Amazon sellers will stuff the title, because the title is has the most weight. Essentially, when it comes to text relevancy, where on Walmart, they’re very strict 50 to 70 characters, that’s what they want, where you keyword stuff, or adding the slough if you’re going to fluff is the bullets to the three to 10 key features with a minimum of 150 words. So like this is where they want you to talk about the unique selling proposition. So when you’re thinking of your Walmart listing, you should be concise and consider the root keyword or the longtail keyword that you want to immediately rank for when developing the title. And when we’re talking about the features, benefits, anything else that might help you sell this product better, should be featured inside the bullet. So that’s what we learned was a major difference as when we first got started, we had a lot of trouble getting our products to rank well. And then after working with Walmart reps and having discussions, though, like Yeah, it’s because you’re not following our protocol. And you can literally search like Walmart, Walmart’s perfect product guide and Walmart has something in there. She’s their version, the university seller University where we break this down, and that was something that was like, oh, okay, this is why we’re having issues and once we resolve that and adhered more to the guideline, we started indexing more for keywords brings us Helium 10 is a great tool because they officially work with Walmart shoes where a lot of we’re able to get a lot of that keyword data and track indexation a lot better than in the past. So that was a recent update, kind of just how they play together.
Ben Donovan 25:16
And I see a 50 to 70 characters quite limiting.
Will Haire 25:20
Yeah, right. That’s what I’m saying. You got to be really concise when you think of your titles.
Ben Donovan 25:25
It’s better though, for their style guide, you know, for their overall user experience, because long titles are not a good user experience.
Will Haire 25:32
I totally agree with that, you know, you want to get some natural language in there. But like, what do you do if you have, you know, you’re selling apparel, and you have to include, you know, I don’t know the size, the color, the branding? Ingredients, if you’re in supplement, and it’s like a long ingredient like some of these? It could get out of hand, but you know, got to play the game.
Ben Donovan 25:56
Yeah, absolutely. Then when it comes to marketing, we’re talking about launching products getting products ranked. The common way out, obviously, Amazon sellers would do it is PPC, maybe some x driving some external traffic as well, using Google ads, influencers, that kind of thing. What does the perfect Walmart launch look like?
Will Haire 26:16
Very similar to that, but so something to keep in mind. So we know Amazon, I’m not gonna dig into that a lot of benefits to advertising and it works. Excuse me, it plays well with other products with Walmart is very limited. So like you can have as much budget as you want. But they do a first price auction. So what it means is like, whatever your bid prices is what you’re going to pay for, like. So that becomes an issue as you can blow through budget pretty quick, if you think you’re being aggressive, because Walmart will take advantage of that. Also, there’s limitations in the keywords you can advertise on, you need to index in the top 100 Organic places in order to buy ads on it. And yeah, so that’s where it’s hard to spend the budget, we have experienced with Walmart display. And that has helped that a little bit in terms of spending budgets were given. But display is like mid and upper funnel advertising tactics. So if you have a client who’s very ROLAGS driven, it, you’re not going to get the type of return you’d expect on your investment.
Will Haire 27:27
And we don’t really see great return to be honest with you, like, you know, generally, $1.50 to $2 would be around what we’re seeing. I’m generalizing different categories are different. But our return on adspend is not as strong as it is on Amazon. And maybe other sellers have had different experiences. But our experience is that it’s hard to use ads to drive sales efficiently. And a lot of it’s tied to the one piece getting a lot of the better real estate and be able to get that that sales velocity. And I’ll share it a little hack with you guys. Because cast and this is a great place to tell secrets. We actually leverage Amazon DSP to drive traffic to Walmart, because their programmatic system is built out much better. So we build audiences that allow us to drive Amazon traffic to off Amazon real estate. And we will actually tap into Amazon’s data and drive traffic to Walmart listings in order to get sales. So it’s our way of using a better built out system that has actual shopping behavior for customers who are in market. And then depending on what the client’s goals are will will drive a portion of that traffic over to Walmart.
Ben Donovan 28:42
Yeah, very cool. Good. Good little tactic. I like it. The you mentioned about not being able to run ads on keywords that you’re not ranked in the top 104. So how do you then go about launching? You can’t really use Walmart ads as a brand new product.
Will Haire 29:02
Yeah, so the text relevancy, your rank for certain keywords, you just might not be able to buy ads on a ton of keywords. And that’s the drawback. And that’s where for us success on Walmart has been tied to like off tech off off advertising and marketing tactics. So yes, you should advertise for what you can on Walmart to have a presence. Don’t expect a great return on your investment. But leverage Google search, leverage, influencer marketing, which is great. And then leverage, you know, any other advertising platform. We’re a big fan of DSP, whether it’s through Amazon or through other third parties. Programmatic advertising is a great way to build audiences and drive them to destinations that make the most sense based on their shopping.
Ben Donovan 29:49
Yeah, definitely. Definitely. The does Walmart have anything similar to Amazon attribution?
Will Haire 29:55
Oh, good question. I don’t believe they do? If they do, we aren’t using them. So I’ll have to double check into that. But I’m unaware of anything that’s like Walmart attribution.
Ben Donovan 30:07
Yeah. I mean, it’s quite a new thing for Amazon and, you know, relatively advanced for them. So I don’t Yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if Walmart aren’t doing it. But it has really changed the obviously driving external traffic, it makes it so much more achievable. And you can get so much more data. So I’m sure Walmart will introduce something like that in the future. But
Will Haire 30:29
Hey, they’re different on the hill. So 2023 is a new year. We’ll see. We’ll see what presents Walmart’s gonna give us
Ben Donovan 30:36
definitely, definitely sort of wrapping up on a Walmart. Is there anything that I haven’t asked about Walmart, selling on Walmart that you feel it’d be valuable for people to hear?
Will Haire 30:48
Yeah, just the pricing, pricing and buybacks. So Amazon, I would say is a bit more liberal when it comes to the pricing. Yeah, right. Pricing and buybacks. That’s crazy. But essentially, your product won’t get delisted. We know on Amazon, you should their fair pricing policy, you should have the lowest price available. And pretty much major retailers in your website, there are like you’re not going to get hit for eBay, for example. But you if you are a one P vendor, if you are using FBA versus FBM. Generally, it’s not always the lowest price that a win, which is great. Walmart is a lot stricter when it comes to competitive pricing, they want the lowest price period. So if Walmart scrapes the tire web and they find it cheaper, somewhere else, they’ll D list your product. And if somebody lists the product on your listing at a lower price, they d list your product. So just to keep in mind, like if you don’t have a good map policy, if you don’t have enforcement in place, like when we did work with a large retailer, we did some work with instant brands. And we were doing Prime Day exclusive deals. And man, it killed us because Walmart kept dropping our price and breaking the deals that we spent like six months prepping and getting everything in place in order to execute these ad strategies. So like, these two platforms are always competing. And being an advertiser, sometimes you’re just stuck in the middle. And it always comes down to like them, somebody breaking that policy, and then the brand not having good enforcement tactics in place to be quick enough to get these things fixed. So so just keep that in mind. If you’re a brand that has retail reach, and you’re considering Walmart, whatever else, it if you don’t have good rains, it will come back and affect your Amazon. And it could cost you dollars and cents. And that’s
Ben Donovan 32:51
absolutely, that’s really helpful to know. Are there any other platforms you guys work with? If if I was to ask you, what’s the most? What’s the channel that you’re most excited about? Moving forward? So are there any others out there? Or is it one of those two that we’ve been talking about that that gives the most opportunity moving forward?
Will Haire 33:10
You know, Amazon, for the most part, we’re the content creator, beta program, which is really exciting. And it’s, it’s Amazon is loud, allowing us to work directly with Amazon Associates. And for a percent commission, these associates are promoting our products, on their social networks all through the Amazon platform. And like what we’re seeing that, especially with Inspire is like Amazon’s getting really good at integrating influencers and social behavior. So like, what we’re what I’m most excited about is like, pay per click is only part of the strategy. We’re getting more tools and assets that allow us to do mid and upper funnel tactics to help grow brands. And be interesting, as you know, like anything else, Amazon is going to set the standard and then these other Walmart, Target, they’re going to come along and they’re going to have their own version of these. So being on the forefront is pretty exciting. And any program that has this work with influencers as something as an agency owner I’m really interested in because I do think that’s how you differentiate yourself and a more efficient ways to get exposure to new audiences.
Ben Donovan 34:22
Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I mean, I was gonna go in then and ask you loads about influencers, but that’s a topic for another whole other episode. Exactly, yeah, exactly. This obviously, this has been super helpful for me to get more of an understanding of Walmart as a platform and I know it will be for our listeners. If people want to find out more about the agency about what you do and connect with you. Where can they find you?
Will Haire 34:48
Definitely, definitely go to BellaVix.com. Bella B e l l a V as in Victor i x .com. We have a lot of blog content educating seller As on how to penetrate the market SEO, we do Walmart, Amazon and target. And then me personally, I am active on LinkedIn. So you could follow Will Haire, hair like on your head with an E, and check out we do a bi weekly news update, we do long form content on things like omni channel principles, the drones and its impact on E commerce and sellers. So we try to put out a lot of really relevant content. And hopefully, you guys get as much value from it as we do.
Ben Donovan 35:34
Absolutely, yeah. Well, we’ve already got a lot of value from this episode. So thank you for that. But we will leave the links to all of that in the show notes on the podcast, the description on YouTube, and all of that good stuff. Well, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for dropping all that value. We really appreciate you coming on, Nick. Yeah, then thanks for having me. Pleasure. Amazing. Well, thanks, guys for being here for this episode. Hope you got lots of value out of that I’m sure you did. Check out the links in the description to check out all that will and the team that are doing, let us know how you find it. If you start selling on Walmart, let me know because I’d love to hear about it. We’re gonna start doing more on it soon. It’s gonna be an interesting journey. Thank you for joining us in this episode, and we’ll see you in the next one. Same time next week. Take care.
Hey folks, welcome back to another episode of The Brand Builder show where it’s gonna be a great episode today, we’re actually going to be talking about selling on Walmart. It’s gonna be really insightful episode to help us talk through it. We’ve got Will on the show today. Will, thanks for coming on and joining us today.
Will Haire 00:16
Yeah, Ben, thanks for having me excited to be here.
Ben Donovan 00:19
Yeah, man. No, I’m looking forward to. Walmart is a channel that I want to explore myself for our own brands. And so I’m gonna maybe take the chance to treat this like a little consultancy call. I get some free consultancy on the podcast and a ton of value with good stuff, man, good stuff. Yeah, I know, our audience will be very interested in the topic. Because Amazon, you know, is a big channel that we that we work with, and, you know, talk about a lot. And it’s got some strengths, but it’s, of course, got some weaknesses and diversification is always good. So it’s gonna be it’s gonna be a good one. But before we do that, let us know a little bit about yourself. Will, where are you tuning in from? It’s I’m in Manchester. It’s freezing cold today. It was snowing today in the UK. I’m guessing maybe it’s not snowing where you are?
Will Haire 01:07
No, I’m blessed. I’m in Raleigh, North Carolina on the east coast, the United States and it’s let’s see, it’s about like 17 degrees Celsius, which is like 65 ish degrees Fahrenheit here. So it’s it’s well we consider chilly for down south, but obviously, you guys got some snow, so I won’t.
Ben Donovan 01:28
Yeah, man. Yeah. Now give us give us a bit of your backstory as well. What what you’ve been up to over recent years in the E commerce space and what you do now?
Will Haire 01:37
Okay, man. Yeah. So my background is advertising I, it’s my passion. I’ve been doing advertising for Jesus hard to believe over 10 years now. Started out, always working in agencies. And then in about 2018, I decided I could do it better myself. So myself and my co founder who has a background in more corporate and marketing and digital marketing. We got together we formed BellaVix. And BellaVix is a premium agency focused on helping brands, market and scale on marketplaces like Amazon and Walmart.
Ben Donovan 02:11
Awesome, man. Awesome. Very succinct. I like it. You caught me off guard there, because that was like quick fire. That’s good. I like it. Yeah, we’re gonna dig into some of the aspects of that. With you, especially Walmart. Like I say, it’s a topic we haven’t really discussed much on the podcast. So I’m looking forward to talking about that. Before we do, we’d love to do it. Start off the episode with our slot favorite five, ask you your favorites of a bunch of different, different things. And so if you’re happy to do that, we’ll kind of run through those and find out some interesting facts about you. Number one, do you have a favorite ecommerce brand?
Will Haire 02:48
I do. And it’s gonna be a brand that we currently work with. The name of the brand is Kara MD, they’re out at Ohio, Cleveland, Ohio, we work with Dr. Karen Victor over there. And what I really like about the brand is a couple things is like as an advertiser brands that are fun to work with, or brands that kind of gives you the liberty to test different vehicles and platforms in order to help them achieve scale. And what was really nice is we help Victor achieve a lot of scale on Amazon and on as Walmart presents and came down to economics, he got a pretty sweet deal with another agency, who was wholesaling his product. So he left us and then six months later came back, because that agency wasn’t able to deliver the level of service that we do. So we’ve been working with Victor now for a little over three years. And I just love that, you know, not only does he give us a lot of freedom and control over his marketplace, and he has great branding. But he’s also, you know, he’s also just a great, great family owned company to work with. So while there are no Nike or anything like that, they have a place close to my heart.
Ben Donovan 03:57
That’s awesome. No, I love it. It’s interesting. There’s a range This question gives, it brings a range of answers. There are some big brands, you know, several people have said Nike, but then there are some lesser known brands maybe that many of our origins have never heard of and, and that’s what I love about it, the diversity and there’s always something to learn from, from all of the different brands in the world. I love being inspired by what other brands are doing. So thank you for that. How about a software or tool that helps you run your business or life?
Will Haire 04:26
Number three, curveball on this one, I’m gonna say hiring a virtual assistant. To share what we did is we we paid for outsourcing School, which is a local workshop essentially, and we got a bunch of documentation on hiring a virtual assistant to manage your calendar, manage your email box, do podcast prospecting, and sales prospecting. And so to give you some perspective, I spent about three to four hours a day inside my email or slack or into The messaging system just being very reactive. And since we have brought on a virtual assistant, and then follow the guidelines in the program they develop, I spent about 20 to 30 minutes a day. So we’ve had improvement about like 800% efficiency. And that allows me to focus more on items in the business that allowed me to have the biggest impact. So it was a game changer. So I highly recommend, well, it’s not a software or tool directly, it is a tool using using virtual assistants to free up your time from the mundane and, and help you be more impactful in the business. So
Ben Donovan 05:37
absolutely, absolutely. Love it. Okay, what about an organic marketing channel?
Will Haire 05:43
For us, SEO and blogging, we have over 200 pieces of content at this point, we have been consistently blogging for over three years at this point. So that’s been a game changer for us.
Ben Donovan 05:54
Nice. Nice. And what about a paid marketing channel?
Will Haire 05:58
So we don’t do any paid marketing for sales. We’re blessed that most people come in organically or through our network. But I will say we use LinkedIn for recruiting and we found a lot of success finding really good talent by advertising are our job postings through LinkedIn.
Ben Donovan 06:15
Nice, nice, good stuff. And then finally, do you have a favorite business book?
Will Haire 06:20
I do. And I’m sure other people have said it on your podcast. But traction by Gino Wickman has been a game changer. We do level 10 meetings, we do rocks, we are we use the entrepreneur operating system, which is how we we do our annual planning and all that other fun stuff. So it has been an absolute game changer. Our business coach made us read it, but it ended up it ended up changing changing the game and a book I read recently that anybody who’s in a leadership position leaders eat last by Simon Sinek is a great book about how groups think and what motivates teams, and then how to get kind of in front of that and be the leader you want to be. So I share two great books because I’m an overachiever.
Ben Donovan 07:09
That’s good. I love it. You’re already delivering extra value. I like it. Yeah. Good stuff. No, I appreciate that. It’s like I say it’s good to just, I find each week, there’s just something in there that is new to me, or is it just a good book to write down to pick up in the future? And, and so I know our audience, you know, like it to have comments coming in about, you know, I’m gonna get that book or I’ve never heard of that brand. But I look them up, and they’re doing this great thing. So I appreciate you taking the time to to answer those.
Ben Donovan 07:39
Good. Okay, so let’s talk about Walmart. Because like I say, it is a channel that is picking up steam in terms of the conversation, at least, that people are having people looking for more ways to diversify, Amazon, it’s been well documented in recent weeks are taking, you know, 50% or more in terms of fees. And so people are looking at that and thinking, well, Amazon isn’t maybe the golden goose that it used to be. Are there some other options here to build out more channels for a more holistic ecommerce brand? So I’d love to hear some some thoughts from you on Walmart, what it looks like. And from someone that you know, who would like to get their products into Walmart at some point in the next sort of 12 to 18 months? How does Walmart compare to selling on Amazon? Is it a similar setup? Are there lots of things different to be aware of? Give us a bit of an introductory rundown on it?
Will Haire 08:30
Yeah, I’m gonna run through some like the major components so you can get an idea. But first of all, I’m talking about like the major differences between the platform. So first and foremost, like, Walmart is just, it’s a lot larger than Amazon when it comes to their brick and mortar presence. So to give you some perspective, there are 4700 Walmart stores, compared to 525 Amazon fulfillment centers, including Whole Foods. There is 90% of the population lives 10 miles from a Walmart. So like, when the pandemic happened, for example, there was a Walmart was a lot less impacted than Amazon. And as you guys know what the fee increase, jeez, the fulfillments and now we’re bidding on additional capacity and stuff like that, like, Amazon is definitely a pay to play platform. Amazon still has about 40% of the general ecommerce and Walmart’s around 5%. Give or take there’s like 200 million, little over 200 million monthly unique visitors to Amazon where there’s about 100 million to Walmart.
Will Haire 09:39
But Walmart is aggressively investing in the E commerce space because their goal they see the opportunity. Consumer behavior has changed but one of the biggest differentiating factors and what makes Amazon still a better platform for third party sellers when compared to Walmart is Walmart, Walmart’s online experience is a one P experience. So ideally, when you shop at Walmart is you buy online and you pick up in the store, or Amazon as you buy online and be delivered to your house. So to this day, it’s despite everything they’re saying, it’s still a one P focused kind of model. So there’s lots of restrictions for third party sellers in terms of ranking your products, better, better placements, even the available advertising assets, the collateral, like their version of a plus content, like all of those are available through third parties, while it’s a lot smoother, and more integrated into the Amazon experience does the Amazon, the Amazon assembled Amazon is trying to to promote brands and have a really good experience where at will Walmart still, you know, is has a good user interface for their shopping experience. But the third party seller is secondary, it’s not a primary incentive. So a lot of the technology, a lot of the the usability is just not not equipped. It’s not there yet. So we love Walmart, I always equate it to like, getting into Walmart now is like getting into Amazon 10 years ago. But you know, if you got into Amazon 10 years ago, you know, there’s some pain points. And there’s some growing pains. So I just want everybody to be aware, you know, it’s a different user experience. And you should definitely list your products on there. There’s lots of great ways to listen, I’ll kind of run through the two databases, but those are the major points that I’ve I’ve noticed as somebody who operates on both platforms,
Ben Donovan 11:45
yeah. Okay. Okay. That’s interesting. So the, because I know obviously there are Walmart fulfillment services, to some extent, but you saying that people when people order on Walmart, there’s no option to order online and get delivered to their home?
Will Haire 12:01
Oh, no, there are options and brands do a WFS is definitely there, it’s you still need to be accepted in there is a waitlist to some degree, we’ve worked with brands that got in in two months, we work with brands that it took a year to get accepted into the process. There are like deliver with an extra our has a partnership with Walmart that you can, you can get some wfs benefits and be able to fulfill using their their logistics. But the overall what I’m saying the overall experience in terms of preferential treatment and what the platform is built around, is that one key relationship with people who have a presence inside brick and mortar stores.
Ben Donovan 12:44
Yeah. And for people that do want to get a presence in the stores, is that something that’s generally achievable? Or is that a very closed off kind of opportunity.
Will Haire 12:55
That’s not something we really focus on. Like anything else, getting your product at the buyers hands comes with its own challenges. I’m sure it’s challenging for you to show sales and stuff like that. A lot of brands we work with that get into Target they get into Walmart will actually leverage Amazon and their website to show sales and that they have a market before getting accepted into these platforms. And now we know that because we work with the sales team with some of the brands we work with. So they, they share this information, but we’re secondary. So I don’t know who they’re talking to. I don’t know what that relationship looks like. But I do know that they expect the brands that come in to Walmart to have some type of sales history before being.
Ben Donovan 13:43
Okay. And before we get into some of the more detailed aspects of it, then in terms of getting set up listing products, etc. To just give people a bit of a picture, maybe of the market size or the opportunity with Walmart, what do you tend to see from a typical Amazon seller that then goes and lists the same products on Walmart in terms of a comparative sales figure? I know it’s hard to say the exact amount. But yeah
Will Haire 14:10
We have a ballpark figure, though, we let all our sellers know, you can expect to do 5 to 25% of what you’re doing on Amazon, because it’s just a smaller marketplace. So a lot of times we’ll start with a brand and we’ll get them listed on Walmart, we’ll set up a lot of the credentials, and then they may scale back our operational services. And we’ll just do advertising, some brands. We just launched them on Walmart and then just turn it over, because the sales velocity just isn’t high enough. Like I said, I think everybody should have a presence. Walmart is pushing to consume more of that market share. But they’re not they’re not there yet. It’s going to take a little more time for them to work it out. And I do think the biggest shift that needs to happen is their focus on third party sellers. And then cleaning up some of the restrictions are Around listing by box price parity stuff like that.
Ben Donovan 15:03
Yep. In terms of fees, is it similarly expensive to fulfill? Are there similar kind of fee structures to Amazon?
Will Haire 15:13
Yeah, similar kind of fee structures, they did not increase their fees as much as, as Amazon did for let’s just say since March, I think that’s when the the new fees kicked in for Amazon. So Walmart is still you know, give or take, like 30% 50% referral, 15%, picker pack, they don’t charge the $40 Professional seller fee. But when you register your account, they have a trust and safety review process. And they’ll want to look at your website and stuff like that. So if you’re new to market brand, and you don’t have a lot of that collateral in place, Walmart is probably not the place for you to get started. It’s something to kind of grow into, as you’ve already established a bit of like, your direct to consumer website, and then obviously, some sort of a presence on Amazon. So I consider that like third in the pecking order.
Ben Donovan 16:05
Yeah. Okay. In terms of storage and fulfillment, you mentioned they’re getting set up with deliver, is that an easier way to get started otherwise, because you talked about getting accepted by for Walmart performance services?
Will Haire 16:21
Yep, it just, it’s easier because you can get some of the the two day shipping badges and stuff by working with an approved third party vendor delivered one that a lot of our brands end up using, because they integrate really well with Walmart, they’re an approved vendor. So there’s a lot of indirect benefits to working with them. But if you’re able to show a good fulfillment record over a given period of time, you will achieve some of those benefits. But nothing beats getting into WFS. And leveraging their solution, what I will say like, they have destroyed pallets of products, they have lost pallets of products, then the pallets of product show up months later, and they just throw it back in your inventory and charge storage fees. So like, it’s still a hot mess, to be honest with you. Like if you think Amazon is bad, Walmart is twice as bad. But you know, growing pains, it’s growing pains, figured out as much as we’re figuring it out.
Ben Donovan 17:24
I was gonna say, I mean, sounds just like Amazon to me,
Will Haire 17:29
though, Amazon has a good process and like get IDA or get Sita, whatever you call it. They’re like software solutions that make it easier. There’s nothing like that for Walmart, you can just, you just gotta keep track of your stuff and make sure that they’re not losing it open case. Yeah. Do you want support to blow your brains out?
Ben Donovan 17:50
But when you mentioned obviously harder to get accepted, like an approval process, which Amazon doesn’t really have that same kind of way is a bit of, you know, checking that they do, but not not in any way. Like you seem to be sort of suggesting there. Is it a long period of time should people? What kind of timeframe are people looking at,
Will Haire 18:10
It varies but the quickest we ever got somebody in was two months, and it happened to be a larger brand. So I think indirectly, they’re looking at some type of sales velocity based on the presence you have on different online retailers. For some of our smaller brands, it was early on, but the longest it took was like a year. That was terrible. But they were one of the first brands we launched. And it was like, you know, it was like four years ago at this point, they have made it a lot quicker. So I would say in general, you know, two to two to four months is reasonable. But also understand like it’s out of your hands, you know, though, they open and close these as they become available. I fully don’t understand like, how the network works and how they move inventory between warehouses, you got to think to 4700 stores that act as fulfillment centers. That sounds like it’s a little bit more of a complicated process. And it seems like they’re letting sellers in in batches. Which, you know, is just how they’re doing things right now. And like I said, secondary, they are not. They’re not pushing the needle on the third party sellers yet.
Ben Donovan 19:22
Yeah. So they’re, their fulfillment centers are like just off the back of their stores kind of setup.
Will Haire 19:28
Yeah, that’s pretty much back to the stores. I’m sure they have some general fulfillment centers, too. But as far as I’ve been educated, a lot of them are just tied to the stores. They’ll pull them right out of stock. So this is a different beast.
Ben Donovan 19:40
Yeah. Okay. Okay, cool. And then, just on the fulfillment side of things. The only other question I had was, I believe you can correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s sort of quite a big no, no, in terms of, if you sell something on Walmart, you couldn’t then fulfill it from Amazon stock. There’s a bit of tension there.
Will Haire 19:59
You know, Only more because it comes in the box with a smile when Amazon made the move to no longer brown box, Merchant Fulfilled orders. Walmart said, hey, no more fulfilling orders from from Amazon. I’m not sure I believe this may have I know in Europe, UK, for example, though brown box it in the US as far as I’m concerned, we lost that ability. And I think it’s just Amazon’s way of just differentiating themselves and making that separation from Walmart. So, so generally, no, you’d have to fill it from your third party logistics company or, or deliver or whatever else you’re gonna use the Walmart orders.
Ben Donovan 20:43
Yeah. Okay. All right. So then in terms of getting listings set up and ready to sell, obviously, that’s a big focus for Amazon sellers, because getting that organic ranking is key. So listing optimization, launching products out of the gate is a massive focus for Amazon sellers. Is it a similar process on that front for Walmart?
Will Haire 21:05
pretty much it is very similar. I’ll discuss some nuance differences, but they both allow for individual listings to be created directly in the platform. So if you’re old school and want to do it the wrong way, you can click click Type Type Type. They allow you to do bulk file uploads, they actually created a program recently that you could download your listings from Shopify and just pump it right into Walmart listing creator, and it’ll generate it for you. They both have the ability to do API’s, you know, listing their seller celebrate, or two functional ones that work well. And you can take that information from your website, your Shopify, for example, and have the title, the bullets all that show up on Walmart, which is great. Some things to keep in mind, Walmart requires UPC’s, there’s no like FN SKU model, you can file for US UPC exemptions, and they will get accepted, but gotta have the proper documentation in place. And formatting. What we find when we use the API’s is formatting is always jacked up like it never goes over well, it’s definitely better to just do a download and dump it in, if you can.
Will Haire 22:26
And then a huge advantage that Walmart has that Amazon doesn’t is like through yacht po or Bazaarvoice, you can, you can have your reviews on specific products and migrate over to Walmart. So essentially, if you have, you know, 1000s of reviews on a product, you can have that migrate over directly to Walmart, it takes time. And it comes in batches to I don’t know how the backend works. But generally, that’s a huge advantage where on Amazon, you know, you have to kind of build that, following their terms of service. So like indirectly, it’s just a product sales velocity.
Will Haire 23:06
And then real quick, just want to talk about SEO. So like, functionally, they both work the same, like tax relevance, sales, velocity, pricing, and availability, all play its own part in in helping your products index. But Walmart is a lot stricter on the guidelines around the number of characters you can use. So for example, typically what we find is like a lot of Amazon sellers will stuff the title, because the title is has the most weight. Essentially, when it comes to text relevancy, where on Walmart, they’re very strict 50 to 70 characters, that’s what they want, where you keyword stuff, or adding the slough if you’re going to fluff is the bullets to the three to 10 key features with a minimum of 150 words. So like this is where they want you to talk about the unique selling proposition. So when you’re thinking of your Walmart listing, you should be concise and consider the root keyword or the longtail keyword that you want to immediately rank for when developing the title. And when we’re talking about the features, benefits, anything else that might help you sell this product better, should be featured inside the bullet. So that’s what we learned was a major difference as when we first got started, we had a lot of trouble getting our products to rank well. And then after working with Walmart reps and having discussions, though, like Yeah, it’s because you’re not following our protocol. And you can literally search like Walmart, Walmart’s perfect product guide and Walmart has something in there. She’s their version, the university seller University where we break this down, and that was something that was like, oh, okay, this is why we’re having issues and once we resolve that and adhered more to the guideline, we started indexing more for keywords brings us Helium 10 is a great tool because they officially work with Walmart shoes where a lot of we’re able to get a lot of that keyword data and track indexation a lot better than in the past. So that was a recent update, kind of just how they play together.
Ben Donovan 25:16
And I see a 50 to 70 characters quite limiting.
Will Haire 25:20
Yeah, right. That’s what I’m saying. You got to be really concise when you think of your titles.
Ben Donovan 25:25
It’s better though, for their style guide, you know, for their overall user experience, because long titles are not a good user experience.
Will Haire 25:32
I totally agree with that, you know, you want to get some natural language in there. But like, what do you do if you have, you know, you’re selling apparel, and you have to include, you know, I don’t know the size, the color, the branding? Ingredients, if you’re in supplement, and it’s like a long ingredient like some of these? It could get out of hand, but you know, got to play the game.
Ben Donovan 25:56
Yeah, absolutely. Then when it comes to marketing, we’re talking about launching products getting products ranked. The common way out, obviously, Amazon sellers would do it is PPC, maybe some x driving some external traffic as well, using Google ads, influencers, that kind of thing. What does the perfect Walmart launch look like?
Will Haire 26:16
Very similar to that, but so something to keep in mind. So we know Amazon, I’m not gonna dig into that a lot of benefits to advertising and it works. Excuse me, it plays well with other products with Walmart is very limited. So like you can have as much budget as you want. But they do a first price auction. So what it means is like, whatever your bid prices is what you’re going to pay for, like. So that becomes an issue as you can blow through budget pretty quick, if you think you’re being aggressive, because Walmart will take advantage of that. Also, there’s limitations in the keywords you can advertise on, you need to index in the top 100 Organic places in order to buy ads on it. And yeah, so that’s where it’s hard to spend the budget, we have experienced with Walmart display. And that has helped that a little bit in terms of spending budgets were given. But display is like mid and upper funnel advertising tactics. So if you have a client who’s very ROLAGS driven, it, you’re not going to get the type of return you’d expect on your investment.
Will Haire 27:27
And we don’t really see great return to be honest with you, like, you know, generally, $1.50 to $2 would be around what we’re seeing. I’m generalizing different categories are different. But our return on adspend is not as strong as it is on Amazon. And maybe other sellers have had different experiences. But our experience is that it’s hard to use ads to drive sales efficiently. And a lot of it’s tied to the one piece getting a lot of the better real estate and be able to get that that sales velocity. And I’ll share it a little hack with you guys. Because cast and this is a great place to tell secrets. We actually leverage Amazon DSP to drive traffic to Walmart, because their programmatic system is built out much better. So we build audiences that allow us to drive Amazon traffic to off Amazon real estate. And we will actually tap into Amazon’s data and drive traffic to Walmart listings in order to get sales. So it’s our way of using a better built out system that has actual shopping behavior for customers who are in market. And then depending on what the client’s goals are will will drive a portion of that traffic over to Walmart.
Ben Donovan 28:42
Yeah, very cool. Good. Good little tactic. I like it. The you mentioned about not being able to run ads on keywords that you’re not ranked in the top 104. So how do you then go about launching? You can’t really use Walmart ads as a brand new product.
Will Haire 29:02
Yeah, so the text relevancy, your rank for certain keywords, you just might not be able to buy ads on a ton of keywords. And that’s the drawback. And that’s where for us success on Walmart has been tied to like off tech off off advertising and marketing tactics. So yes, you should advertise for what you can on Walmart to have a presence. Don’t expect a great return on your investment. But leverage Google search, leverage, influencer marketing, which is great. And then leverage, you know, any other advertising platform. We’re a big fan of DSP, whether it’s through Amazon or through other third parties. Programmatic advertising is a great way to build audiences and drive them to destinations that make the most sense based on their shopping.
Ben Donovan 29:49
Yeah, definitely. Definitely. The does Walmart have anything similar to Amazon attribution?
Will Haire 29:55
Oh, good question. I don’t believe they do? If they do, we aren’t using them. So I’ll have to double check into that. But I’m unaware of anything that’s like Walmart attribution.
Ben Donovan 30:07
Yeah. I mean, it’s quite a new thing for Amazon and, you know, relatively advanced for them. So I don’t Yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if Walmart aren’t doing it. But it has really changed the obviously driving external traffic, it makes it so much more achievable. And you can get so much more data. So I’m sure Walmart will introduce something like that in the future. But
Will Haire 30:29
Hey, they’re different on the hill. So 2023 is a new year. We’ll see. We’ll see what presents Walmart’s gonna give us
Ben Donovan 30:36
definitely, definitely sort of wrapping up on a Walmart. Is there anything that I haven’t asked about Walmart, selling on Walmart that you feel it’d be valuable for people to hear?
Will Haire 30:48
Yeah, just the pricing, pricing and buybacks. So Amazon, I would say is a bit more liberal when it comes to the pricing. Yeah, right. Pricing and buybacks. That’s crazy. But essentially, your product won’t get delisted. We know on Amazon, you should their fair pricing policy, you should have the lowest price available. And pretty much major retailers in your website, there are like you’re not going to get hit for eBay, for example. But you if you are a one P vendor, if you are using FBA versus FBM. Generally, it’s not always the lowest price that a win, which is great. Walmart is a lot stricter when it comes to competitive pricing, they want the lowest price period. So if Walmart scrapes the tire web and they find it cheaper, somewhere else, they’ll D list your product. And if somebody lists the product on your listing at a lower price, they d list your product. So just to keep in mind, like if you don’t have a good map policy, if you don’t have enforcement in place, like when we did work with a large retailer, we did some work with instant brands. And we were doing Prime Day exclusive deals. And man, it killed us because Walmart kept dropping our price and breaking the deals that we spent like six months prepping and getting everything in place in order to execute these ad strategies. So like, these two platforms are always competing. And being an advertiser, sometimes you’re just stuck in the middle. And it always comes down to like them, somebody breaking that policy, and then the brand not having good enforcement tactics in place to be quick enough to get these things fixed. So so just keep that in mind. If you’re a brand that has retail reach, and you’re considering Walmart, whatever else, it if you don’t have good rains, it will come back and affect your Amazon. And it could cost you dollars and cents. And that’s
Ben Donovan 32:51
absolutely, that’s really helpful to know. Are there any other platforms you guys work with? If if I was to ask you, what’s the most? What’s the channel that you’re most excited about? Moving forward? So are there any others out there? Or is it one of those two that we’ve been talking about that that gives the most opportunity moving forward?
Will Haire 33:10
You know, Amazon, for the most part, we’re the content creator, beta program, which is really exciting. And it’s, it’s Amazon is loud, allowing us to work directly with Amazon Associates. And for a percent commission, these associates are promoting our products, on their social networks all through the Amazon platform. And like what we’re seeing that, especially with Inspire is like Amazon’s getting really good at integrating influencers and social behavior. So like, what we’re what I’m most excited about is like, pay per click is only part of the strategy. We’re getting more tools and assets that allow us to do mid and upper funnel tactics to help grow brands. And be interesting, as you know, like anything else, Amazon is going to set the standard and then these other Walmart, Target, they’re going to come along and they’re going to have their own version of these. So being on the forefront is pretty exciting. And any program that has this work with influencers as something as an agency owner I’m really interested in because I do think that’s how you differentiate yourself and a more efficient ways to get exposure to new audiences.
Ben Donovan 34:22
Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I mean, I was gonna go in then and ask you loads about influencers, but that’s a topic for another whole other episode. Exactly, yeah, exactly. This obviously, this has been super helpful for me to get more of an understanding of Walmart as a platform and I know it will be for our listeners. If people want to find out more about the agency about what you do and connect with you. Where can they find you?
Will Haire 34:48
Definitely, definitely go to BellaVix.com. Bella B e l l a V as in Victor i x .com. We have a lot of blog content educating seller As on how to penetrate the market SEO, we do Walmart, Amazon and target. And then me personally, I am active on LinkedIn. So you could follow Will Haire, hair like on your head with an E, and check out we do a bi weekly news update, we do long form content on things like omni channel principles, the drones and its impact on E commerce and sellers. So we try to put out a lot of really relevant content. And hopefully, you guys get as much value from it as we do.
Ben Donovan 35:34
Absolutely, yeah. Well, we’ve already got a lot of value from this episode. So thank you for that. But we will leave the links to all of that in the show notes on the podcast, the description on YouTube, and all of that good stuff. Well, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for dropping all that value. We really appreciate you coming on, Nick. Yeah, then thanks for having me. Pleasure. Amazing. Well, thanks, guys for being here for this episode. Hope you got lots of value out of that I’m sure you did. Check out the links in the description to check out all that will and the team that are doing, let us know how you find it. If you start selling on Walmart, let me know because I’d love to hear about it. We’re gonna start doing more on it soon. It’s gonna be an interesting journey. Thank you for joining us in this episode, and we’ll see you in the next one. Same time next week. Take care.
