With ‘Anytime, Anywhere‘ on the brand’s core, Walmart’s digital marketing strategy is rooted in two ‘A’s’–Accessibility and Availability.
It has 10,622 stores across 24 countries and successfully caters to over 37 million customers every day through its marketplace and offline stores, ticking off each A’s.
Starting its journey as a small discount retailer today, entails a solid branding story that’s not only backed by a large and dependable customer base but in addition by statistics.
So, what’s that hidden gem in Walmart’s marketing strategy that makes it a know-it-all-done-it-all retailer?
To get to the reply, we’ll deep dive into Walmart’s digital marketing campaigns from 2020 to 2023 and analyze its digital marketing journey. However, before that, let’s take a take a look at its marketing mix.
Any digital marketing campaign falls under a single P of the 4 P’s or a mix of two. However, understanding all of the P’s of the marketing mixture of Walmart allows for a comprehensive framework to construct a marketing strategy.
Walmart’s Product Strategy
Primarily rooted in offering retail service, Walmart has an array of product categories, further divided into subcategories. It covers a large network of product departments, equivalent to:
- Electronics
- Movies
- Music
- Books
- Pharmacy
- Beauty
- Home Improvement
A couple of key the reason why Walmart offers such quite a lot of products are:
- Becomes a one-stop destination shop for its customers,
- Gives an edge over other retailers,
- Serves big selection of shoppers.
In addition to this, the brand offers season-specific products equivalent to Halloween party costumes or Christmas-related decor. This wide product category routinely attracts a large number of individuals.
Walmart’s Pricing Strategy
Walmart’s pricing strategy might be easily summed up in a single sentence.
Best products no less than prices.
Since the corporate procures products in bulk worldwide, the pricing strategy enjoys economic advantages.
How?
- Walmart has a highly efficient supply chain management system, reducing operational costs enabling more competitive pricing.
- It invests in store-brand products, giving full control over manufacturing products and eventually reducing costs.
- It uses data-driven approach to forecast demands accurately, reducing waste and optimizing inventory management.
However, the brand prices its products in a different way at different hours by coining terms equivalent to “Every day, low prices.” Walmart’s low-price policy will also be seen in its tagline, which serves because the brand’s cornerstone: “Save money. Live higher.” The tagline aptly targets people from socio-economic backgrounds, making the pricing strategy effective amongst other strategies within the marketing mix for Walmart.
Walmart’s Distribution and Place Strategy
Walmart uses the hub and spoke method, wherein the products ordered centrally are distributed to individual stores.
- Walmart optimizes the distribution process and enables quick replenishment of store inventories.
- It collaborates with vendors, ensuring a smooth product flow from suppliers to stores.
- It operates various regional distribution centers, ensuring the receipt and distribution of products to specific regions.
With over 10,000 retail units spread across over 20 countries, it delivers products on to stores by suppliers or vendors of the stores. By transporting huge volumes of products, their distribution strategy stresses reducing transportation costs and provide chains with greener transportation.
Walmart’s Promotion Strategies
Walmart’s “Every Day Low Price” strategy has set a milestone for other retailers, provided that the model relies heavily on the concept customers prefer to purchase products at low prices than wait for discount coupons or seasonal sales.
- Attracts price-conscious customers,
- Offers personalized promotions, ensuring customers get offers specifically tailored as per their preferences,
- Promotes impulse buying with limited-time promotions.
With EDLP, Walmart gains a competitive edge over its budding competitors by choosing smaller margins per product in exchange for increased sales volumes. Walmart’s promotional strategy is comparable to one among Costco’s marketing strategies – selling bulk-size, high-quality products with low-profit margins.
Now that we all know the marketing mixture of Walmart, let’s start with its digital marketing campaigns.
Walmart’s “Different Kind of Membership” Campaign (2020)
A campaign that makes you’re feeling more connected to yourself or your family members stays slightly longer with you.
The Walmart digital marketing strategy exactly does so with its “Different Kind of Membership” campaign.
The company rolled out this campaign in 2020 to introduce the Walmart+ program, promoting unlimited free deliveries, special fuel prices, and other tools to make shopping easier for families.
The campaign video stars 22 cross-sectional families from diverse backgrounds and displays their mundane, chaotic lives. The central theme of those videos is an easy but effective quest–to have the option to seek out and spend more quality time with family members. From family dinners to welcoming a newborn baby, the video smartly matches the Walmart+ program and the way it enables families to do more of what matters.
Through the campaign, Walmart’s marketing strategy subtly plugs in its services, equivalent to home delivery, leaving families more time to spend with one another.
Key takeaways from the campaign:
- Fosters inclusivity,
- Adds value to customers,
- Puts customers at the middle.
Walmart’s “Built for Better” Campaign (2021)
In 2021, Walmart launched this campaign and tactfully up leveled its customers’ trust by imbibing sustainability.
“Customers have trusted us for our low prices, but additionally they need to know that the products they buy are good for his or her families, the planet, and the individuals who made them,” said Ewing Walmart, Walmart’s Senior Vice President.
The company used the icon “Built for Better – For You” for products and “Built for Better – for the Planet” for other items. Products with the previous icon met higher dietary standards, falling under EWG verifications, Standard 100 by Oeko, etc.
While products carrying the latter icon are confirmed with over 30 independent standards having a primary deal with environmental advantages, equivalent to Rainforest Alliance, Better Cotton Initiative, etc.
This Walmart marketing strategy puts sustainability and humility at the middle while also practicing one among its core values–transparency. It lets its customers know what they’re buying and the results of the products on the environment.
If you’re scratching your head over your next campaign idea, observe an ongoing challenge that the masses face and see should you could align your brand value with what goals to resolve or no less than mitigate the challenge. For example, should you’re a fashion store, use biodegradable or recycled fabrics to seamlessly integrate sustainability.
So the campaign
- Promotes sustainability,
- Attracts environment-conscious customers,
- Fosters transparency.
Walmart’s “Live Better Now” Campaign (2022)
What if an organization could make it easier to live a greater life?
Like previous campaigns in Walmart’s marketing strategy evaluation, Walmart’s “Live Better Now” campaign primarily focuses on this query.
Walmart took a step further toward bettering its customers’ lives by launching a one-minute-long industrial throughout the Winter Olympics opening ceremony that ran across digital and linear media in 2022.
The video’s prime focus was telling the story behind its greater purpose of helping people live higher.
The video radiates nothing but wholesomeness. It shows a pair, arm-in-arm, walking through a car parking zone with puppy chow, a Walmart worker helping an elderly shopper carry plants into the automotive’s trunk, and a family sitting down at their dinner table.
“At Walmart, we understand how the human connection ignites the potential for a greater life,” said Walmart’s Chief Marketing Office.
Through this campaign, Walmart not only emphasizes the importance of human connection but positions itself as an important node of connectivity throughout the wide network of huma connection spread across.
Must-knows of the campaign:
- Highlights Walmart’s tech prowess at the tip of the video,
- Infuses a sense of safety to certain populations that felt anxious to step up throughout the pandemic,
- Debut throughout the Winter Olympics, making the ad an event.
Walmart’s “Welcome to Your Walmart” Campaign (2023)
Walmart is understood to have all the things for everybody. However, its latest campaign, Welcome to Your Walmart, reinforces that the shop has that specific thing for you.
The campaign, launched in 2023, spanned a full spectrum of broadcast and digital channels and focused on showcasing easy stories and moments that Walmart customers experience every day.
The company tactfully seized the chance to have interaction its customers throughout the summers. And, the video showcases search queries that customers often pop up with throughout the summer, equivalent to “What’s in season” or “Summer family fun trip” on socials.
It conveys that Walmart isn’t just there for you in-store but can also be just a few clicks away on Walmart.com or its app as your needs arise. The company states that it has customers at every step of the day.
While many digital marketing agencies will make it easier to personalize campaigns, this one stands out because it’s tailored specifically for purchasers while also addressing season-specific customer demands.
Key takeaways for you:
- Meets exactly where its customers are,
- Provides answers to customer queries,
- Smartly fuses search engine optimisation with content marketing by utilizing probably the most searched keywords in a way relevant to customers,
- Drives engagement in a customer-centric way,
- Leverages influencer marketing.
In Summary
On conducting Walmart digital marketing strategy evaluation, we observe that it has continued to focus, convey, and practice “making lives higher” through each campaign in a method or one other.
When any Walmart marketing strategy closely, whether a campaign from the yr 2020 or the yr 2023, it has carved creative ways to attach with its customers, keeping the central theme the identical. While these campaigns may be a wonderful source of inspiration in your upcoming campaigns, don’t hesitate to achieve out to retail marketing agencies for well-thought and executed campaigns.
At the tip of the day, it’s about finding a wonderful balance between your brand’s value and your customers’ needs. So, where’s your brand currently at?
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