Sleigh Your Holiday Sales with Walmart Connect

Your holiday plans are already finalized and ready to execute. But we know most marketers don’t preplan the entire budget—they leave a little discretionary budget to capitalize on opportunities within the season. 

When you and your team are discussing where to spend that final part of the budget, Walmart Connect is a smart investment for several reasons. With Walmart’s massive reach and trusted presence across nearly 5,000 stores and online, you can easily scale and expand your visibility to millions of loyal shoppers. And, because most retail marketers already spend with Walmart Connect, adding more budget is an incremental effort — versus starting with a new retail media network during this busy time of the year— that allows you to engage with high-intent shoppers at both online and in-store touchpoints during peak holiday moments.

Walmart Connect is also a powerful choice for advertisers because of how central Walmart is to holiday shopping itself. It consistently draws in deal-seeking customers throughout the season, going big for peak moments like Walmart’s Holiday Deals Event, Black Friday, and Walmart+ Week. By being at the heart of these high-traffic shopping moments, Walmart attracts millions of shoppers actively looking for holiday gifts, making it a prime environment for brands to engage with motivated buyers. The sheer scale of Walmart’s holiday participation means advertisers can reach a high-intent audience when it’s most crucial.

Here are key insights to keep in mind as you plan your Walmart Connect holiday campaigns:

• 79% of Walmart customers plan to shop at Walmart’s holiday deal events this year.
• 81% choose Walmart for deal events because of its unbeatable value.
• 42% use these events to buy gifts for friends and family.
• 41% of Walmart customers make impulse purchases during holiday deal events.

With nearly half of Walmart customers starting their holiday shopping by October, advertisers need to act now to capture early shoppers. By engaging with these customers right from the beginning of the season and leveraging Walmart Connect’s full-funnel advertising solutions, you can ensure your brand is visible during critical high-traffic moments. The earlier you start, the greater the opportunity to maximize your impact.

Walmart Connect’s Full-Funnel Advertising Solutions and Best Practices

Walmart Connect offers advertisers a full-funnel approach, helping brands engage shoppers at every stage of their holiday shopping journey. Starting with brand awareness, advertisers can use Sponsored Brands and Display Ads to build recognition as customers begin their holiday research. These top-funnel tactics are particularly useful as 79% of Walmart customers are expected to participate in deal events this year.

As shoppers move further into their decision-making process, Sponsored Products help ensure your items are visible and top-of-mind. 42% of Walmart customers use deal events to buy gifts for friends and family, making visibility during these moments crucial for advertisers. Walmart’s dynamic bidding system allows advertisers to adjust bids in real-time, helping them secure top placements during competitive moments like Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

The final step of the funnel focuses on conversions. As Walmart shoppers finalize their purchasing decisions, tools like retargeting and real-time optimizations help advertisers capture last-minute shoppers, ensuring that their products are the ones being added to carts. With Walmart’s data-driven insights and closed-loop attribution, advertisers can accurately measure how their campaigns are driving both online and in-store sales.

To make the most of Walmart’s holiday traffic, here are key best practices:

• Start early: Launch your campaigns by October to engage the early shoppers who are already planning their holiday purchases. Early activation will ensure your products are visible throughout the season.
• Increase bids for top placements: Securing premium ad spots is crucial during peak shopping days. Walmart Connect’s dynamic bidding feature helps you stay competitive by automatically adjusting your bids.
• Utilize omnichannel data: With Walmart’s unique ability to track both online and in-store behaviors, advertisers can optimize campaigns based on comprehensive insights, reaching customers at every touchpoint.
• Monitor performance regularly: Continuously analyzing campaign performance allows advertisers to make real-time adjustments, ensuring that you capture traffic efficiently during the busiest shopping days.

How Skai Can Help Maximize Your Walmart Connect Campaigns

Skai’s platform provides a suite of advanced tools designed to enhance your holiday campaigns on Walmart Connect, ensuring your efforts are streamlined, data-driven, and optimized for success during the busiest time of the year.

Here are Skai’s top capabilities to help marketers maximize their holiday retail media efforts:

• Search Term Analysis (STA): This tool acts like a holiday elf for your keyword strategy, highlighting underperforming terms and helping you refine your search terms to focus on the most profitable keywords. It ensures your budget is directed toward what drives conversions during key holiday moments.
• Automated Actions: Skai’s automation engine allows you to set triggers and rules for campaigns. This means you can “set and forget” repetitive tasks like adjusting bids or shifting budgets based on campaign performance—perfect for managing campaigns during busy periods like Black Friday or Cyber Monday without constant manual intervention.
• Budget Navigator: As you navigate holiday spending, Skai’s Budget Navigator helps you manage your budget in real-time, providing predictive insights on where to invest more or when to pull back to ensure optimal ROI throughout the season.
• Dayparting Optimization: Not every hour of the holiday shopping season holds the same value. Skai’s AI-driven dayparting ensures your ads are displayed during the highest conversion windows, letting you allocate budget efficiently across key times of day.
• Portfolio Bid Optimization: This feature automatically adjusts bids across campaigns, ensuring you’re competitive in high-value auctions without overspending. It’s like having a virtual assistant ensuring you’re bidding just right to capture critical ad placements.
• Custom Alerts: Skai allows you to set up custom alerts for key metrics—whether it’s a sudden drop in click-through rates or when a campaign surpasses a certain revenue target. These alerts allow you to react swiftly to take advantage of real-time holiday opportunities.

These are just a handful of the tools that make Skai a powerful partner for maximizing your Walmart Connect campaigns during the holiday season, enabling advertisers to optimize their campaigns, automate key processes, and stay ahead of trends without missing a beat.

Be Ready for the Holiday Rush

The brands that win during the holiday season are the ones that are visible when shoppers are making their first purchases. Walmart, as one of the top destinations for deal-seeking holiday shoppers, attracts millions of consumers actively searching for gifts. By launching your Walmart Connect campaigns early, you can ensure your products are front and center for customers who are already primed to buy. Engage these high-intent shoppers before your competition does and take full advantage of Walmart’s unmatched retail presence during key shopping moments.

Activate your Walmart Connect campaigns now to capture early holiday shoppers and ensure your brand is top of mind when traffic peaks during Walmart’s exclusive deal events. With deals kicking off as early as October, the sooner you get started, the better positioned your ads will be when Black Friday and Cyber Monday hit. Don’t miss out on the biggest sales opportunities of the year—start your campaign today and make the most of Walmart’s high-intent audience.