Takeaways from Walmart's Let's Grow Seller Summit

It's been about a week since the Podean team visited San Diego for Walmart's marketplace-focused trade show, the Let's Grow Seller Summit. One of the best parts of attending a show like this is walking the floor, learning about the different offerings across the Walmart marketplace ecosystem, and having smaller, more organic moments with Walmart's leadership team, other brands, and agencies to understand what's working for them.

Beyond the day-to-day tips and tricks that can help our clients sell and scale better on the platform, a few bigger takeaways stood out. Here's a look at what we heard, broken out across Walmart Marketplace and Walmart Connect.

Walmart Marketplace

We heard a lot from the Walmart Marketplace team, and the biggest themes from the show can be grouped into three buckets.

NEW ASSORTMENT: Walmart's focus on bringing new assortment onto the platform came through clearly, from the general sessions with Julie Barber, Head of Merchandising, and Michael Moss, to our smaller meetings on the floor. Walmart is using its Customer Favorites program to incentivize sellers to bring assortment over from Amazon, including commission breaks of up to 100% off for 90 days for products brought into Walmart Fulfillment Services (WFS).

INTERNATIONAL EXPANSION:  This was an eye-opening topic for the Podean team, especially the size of the opportunity in Mexico and Chile, on top of Canada. Walmart has roughly 3,100 stores in Mexico and a bigger presence there than Amazon. Given that Podean already has an office in Mexico City and existing Walmart clients live in the market, we see this as a significant opportunity in the coming months and years.

WALMART FULFILLMENT SERVICES INCENTIVES:  Tied closely to the assortment push, the incentive structure around WFS is clearly designed to accelerate how quickly sellers move inventory over from other marketplaces, and it's worth a close look for any brand weighing where to prioritize fulfillment.

STORES AS LAST-MILE DELIVERY HUB: One of the bigger steps we were excited to hear about is Walmart's plan to eventually roll out stores as last-mile delivery hubs for marketplace sellers. In practice, that means WFS inventory could be stocked in a local Walmart store to support one-hour or faster delivery, something Walmart Plus shoppers already get on 1P assortment today. With many Podean employees having worked at Walmart, we know firsthand how challenging the relationship between the ecommerce and in-store teams can be behind the scenes, so the fact that this is even being piloted speaks to real effort from Walmart's leadership. We expect impulse and high-volume products to be serviced first, think OTC categories like Tylenol-type pain relievers or dog treats, generally lower price point items that drive high unit volume. We're excited to see how this develops and what it could mean for our clients down the line.

Walmart Connect

On the advertising side, the word we heard over and over was full funnel. That's the direction Walmart Connect is moving, and it's shaping the conversations they want to have with brands.

FULL FUNNEL: Search advertising has become more robust with the recent addition of negative keyword targeting. Mid to upper funnel has also gotten more accessible: Walmart recently dropped the Sponsored Video CPC floor from 80 cents to 50 cents, lowering the barrier to entry for video. Walmart Connect is also rolling out new tools to understand the customer journey, similar to how Amazon tracks this through Amazon Marketing Cloud. Once live, brands will be able to see how display and self-service campaigns influence conversion alongside Sponsored Products and other advertising, including off-site activity.

OFFSITE: Walmart continues to expand its footprint beyond the platform. We know Walmart is piloting Trade Desk advertising for marketplace sellers, which is very new, and we expect to learn more about how the vibe.co acquisition fits into the roadmap, likely coming into the pipeline sometime next fiscal year.

We'll continue to share what we learn as these programs develop. If you have questions about how any of this applies to your business on Walmart, reach out to the Podean team.