How to Win on Walmart, Not Just Amazon

**Matt**: Well, hello and welcome to the eCommerce Podcast. My name is Matt Edmundson, and it is great as ever to be with you on what can only be described as a really hot day in England. It's like the only time of the year it's hot, and it's now. So welcome to the show. Great to have you with us. If you're new to the show, we talk about all things ecommerce. That's the plan. That's the aim. That's the hope. We get great guests on the show to come and talk to us about their knowledge and their insight or their stories if they're a founder. but we also like to get experts on the show, and Andrew is no exception today. So we're going to get into a conversation with him in just a second. But before we do, let me just tell you, we've got a website. Of course we do, we're in the digital space, ecommercepodcast.net. if you head to that website, you can find the transcript, you can find the show notes, anything that you need related to the episode, all the links that come out in the conversation, everything is available at ecommercepodcast.net, where incidentally you can sign up to the newsletter and get all of the stuff sent to your inbox for free. There's thousands of people which do, so go and join them. And of course, whilst you're there, check out some of the other things that we do, like our cohort groups. If you want to get together on monthly calls with ecommerce folks from around the world, then come join those. They're always good fun. Actually, they're really good fun. I really do enjoy those. But yeah, go check them out. And if you're into AI, check out SAM, our Slingshot system for AI. But that's, that's all of that. Everything, like I say, is on the website ecommercepodcast.net. You can see it all there. Do go check it out. Now, without further ado, I'd do a drum roll, Andrew, if I actually had a drum, but I don't. So welcome to the show, man. How you doing?

**Andrew**: Thanks. Appreciate you having me.

**Matt**: No, no, it's good to have you, man. Good to have you. For those that don't know you listening to the show, just give us a sort of the brief snapshot of all things Andrew.

**Andrew**: Okay. I've been doing Amazon about 7 years. I was a, I guess as far back as an ecommerce director for a large, beach supply business. And yeah, I think I was just so in love with Amazon and everything Amazon. And so one day I was like, you know what, I can keep doing this without the 9-to-5 work and open up my life a little bit. And that's kind of the direction I've taken. And now I not only run my own business, Amazon, Walmart, but I help others do the same through a business called SellTru. So that's, yeah, that's a little bit about me.

**Matt**: And it's fair to say, Andrew, that Amazon has changed a lot over the last 7 years.

**Andrew**: Yeah, that's a fair assumption for sure.

**Matt**: Since you started and obviously since you sort of went down this path, what are the key changes that you've seen?

**Andrew**: Well, I mean, during this period of time, right, we've had COVID, which was like, you know, an easy— I want to call it like an easy path to selling products online. Like, that was— so, you know, transitioning from something that was, you know, the beginning, I was more just, you know, learning, just getting started. And then all of a sudden it became like really easy, really fast. And then coming out of it became harder. So, but, you know, I had more time and experience to like start to figure things out. So I made a lot of mistakes during, you know, that transition period. But I guess that would be my biggest change, right? I think that happened for everybody though.

**Matt**: It did. COVID was a fascinating one. I mean, we don't talk about it hardly these days. I remember one time it was the only conversation that we had, you know, with COVID But it's quickly how— well, it's amazing to me how quickly the world forgets. You know, about that and sort of adapted and moved on from this whole event. But it is true to say, and maybe, is it still the case? Do you think that it's harder to sell now since COVID I mean, COVID, like you say, was the easy path to online sales. You know, you could sell snow to Eskimos if you could ship it online. Do you think that's still the case? Do you think things have changed?

**Andrew**: Definitely. There's a lot of products that used to sell that are just no longer viable anymore. Even, you know, after COVID, I think we saw this big search term spike where different products— I'll give you an example. The one that's failed now is like a back pillow for like sitting in a chair, right? And that was like, that was huge. You've seen the keyword spike and now it's like there's so much saturation. But like, at that time, it was just like the easiest product to sell in the world. Yeah.

**Matt**: And, so it's interesting, isn't it? And, and they— I remember one time somebody coming to me and going, Matt, I need some help. And I'm like, what do you need help with? They're like, I've got a container load of, fidget spinners. Can you help me sell them? I went, I went, no way, dude. No, that's just— I'm not getting—

**Andrew**: no, that's a dangerous road to be on, right?

**Matt**: Yeah, it is. It is. It's interesting, isn't it? How quickly you can, you can miss the trend, right? In the sense you go, well, I'm gonna make a shedload of money here, buy some products. And before you know it's sort of, it's, it's gone by at 1,000 miles an hour.

**Andrew**: Absolutely.

**Matt**: So you obviously work with people, with Amazon, with Walmart. fast forward, obviously we're sort of post-COVID now. And like I say, long since forgotten about COVID If you could mave a— wait, mave? No, not mave, wave a magic wand, right? And solve the single biggest problem that you see for you, for your customers, what would it be and why?

**Andrew**: Solve the single biggest problem. I would say that I talk about this a lot, I think, and going on to the Walmart topic, the single biggest problem that I see with brands is treating every ecommerce platform like they're Amazon. Like they're the— if I just take my workflow that already works on Amazon and just copy and paste it onto Walmart, for example, that should work. Yeah, that will work for me. And that's just not true. you know, each of these are their own search engine, and I primarily and only focus on Walmart and Amazon. I like the marketplaces. That's been my bread and butter. but like I said, they're their own search engine. Yeah, there's different keyword searches on Walmart as there are on Amazon. You know, some are the same, but I would say that the majority are slightly different, So you can't just copy and paste these listings from Amazon to Walmart and vice versa. It just doesn't work. I think a lot of people struggle with that. Yeah.

**Matt**: Well, you can see why people do it, right? Because in your head you kind of go, it's a marketplace. I'm selling to people through Amazon or I'm selling to people through Walmart. How hard is the same product is going to get shipped, right? You can see why people would think that. and also it's easy, I suppose, isn't it? But you don't have to sort of— you just kind of think, we'll cut and paste, we'll try that first. what are some of them? I mean, you've mentioned keywords, which I actually is an interesting one because obviously people are typing in different searches in Amazon for that product than they are in Walmart. What have you seen there?

**Andrew**: Well, I think the easy part is the— is maybe the biggest thing, right? So like you, like you touched on for a second, it's, it's really easy to just export a list and then import it into Walmart and just be like, okay, I'm done. And if I need to make, go back and make changes later, I can. And the issue is Walmart is just not there yet as far as changes that we can make. I mean, I have a listing I've been trying to change a main image on for like a month. I mean, it's just sometimes it's just like, it doesn't make sense why I can't just change it. Like, Yeah, it's wild. But with that thing, it's like, so that means like you really have to set it up properly the first time. so that's—

**Matt**: yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? With, with— do you think Walmart is getting there? I mean, how long do you think it'll be before it catches up?

**Andrew**: They're definitely getting there. they're, they're working hard on it. I mean, I see it every day. When I first started on Walmart, we had to upload Excel spreadsheets. There was no UI that you could go in and even add a product. You know, you had to go through a Walmart account manager and then they would help you, and it was just like a whole back and forth thing with, you know, all these random people, and they would switch you out. It was just like, it was a nightmare. But yeah, they're, they're getting to it, they're working on it very much. That's why I still say like it's just such a place right now where if you can get over those difficulties and those humps and like Understanding when you're getting onto the platform, like, it's not an automatic— it's not like Amazon. You're not just going to gain traffic overnight if you just pump PPC campaigns, or yeah, if you just, there's no shortcut really. You have to know that you're going to endure some of these little hiccups because the platform just isn't mature yet. But once you can get over that and you can find that spot It, it's, it's a great platform.

**Matt**: I'm intrigued actually, Andrew, listening to you talk, cause I'm, I'm sort of thinking in my head, well, Amazon will be a bigger platform than Walmart. I'm guessing, right? It's going to have a bigger audience. It'll have more orders, which in my head would also probably equate to Walmart being less competitive than Amazon. Would that be a fair assumption?

**Andrew**: Walmart is a lot less competitive. A lot less. There are a lot, a lot less competitive. I do think, and I, you know, hold me to this, I still think that in the long run Walmart might beat out Amazon in the ecommerce space.

**Matt**: Okay.

**Andrew**: I say that because Walmart has storefronts that Amazon doesn't, and you know, the thing right now that makes Amazon so great is their fast shipping and Walmart's more getting into that with WFS, and I think that the whole concept of being able to purchase something from Walmart, get it fast, right? Say we're in the future a little bit and Walmart can get you those single-day deliveries or, for products, right? And then you don't like it and you can just take it to the store and drop it off, or take it to the store and exchange it real quick for something. That's something that Amazon can't give you.

**Matt**: Yeah.

**Andrew**: So I see that being a big help, as well as the fact that like their warehouses are their storefronts. Yeah, so that really helps them in the logistics side of things and getting products to you quicker. They haven't really implemented all of those, right? They're still building, but I think that's a big driver in why they could be more successful than Amazon in the long run. As far as ecommerce goes now.

**Matt**: Yeah, it's an interesting point, isn't it? Because what you've got, I suppose, with Walmart, like you say, you've got the ability to go to the store. I don't know what it's like in the States as much as I do here, but simple things like click and collect, like almost like a drive-through where you can pick up your orders. Amazon, again, don't— I don't think it'd be that difficult for them to create them, but they don't— certainly don't have the infrastructure right now, whereas Walmart, you do. Like, I'm assuming that— I mean, you can do it here, so I'm assuming you can do it in the States where you can just literally do click and collect and somebody will come out there with your order to the car, literally like a drive-through. it's the most extraordinary thing. And dropping returns off like that, you know, on the way back to the office or on the way home or something you're bringing a level of convenience there, aren't you? Rather than just, we have to send it to your house or your place of work, and if you want to return it, you need to figure that out. we need a courier involved. so that— yeah, you're right. I guess there's a level of convenience that Amazon just don't have, right?

**Andrew**: Exactly. And especially in the home space, the grocery space, right, where people need things pretty quickly, and you can just pull up and get them. It's, it's a game changer in my opinion.

**Matt**: Yeah. Are you— is it fair to say then that you're concentrating on Walmart more than Amazon, the same amount, or is it still not as big of a deal for you right now but you think it will be in the future?

**Andrew**: I would say time-wise I probably put 40% of my time into Walmart just because it does require a little bit more of that, those little nuances. Like I said, I just really believe in what I've seen in the growth that I've seen of specific products on Walmart. And I know that, I just know how successful and how high the margins are., with the crazy low competition. So I'm, I'm in on it. I'm all in on it. I really, I really like the platform.

**Matt**: So what sort of things do you see working well? Like, if I— I mean, I sell supplements and we sell them on amazon.com, we sell them on amazon.co.uk, and it's one of the products that we have. It does okay for us on Amazon, actually. I have no complaints. It's always nice to sell more, isn't it? But You know, what it sort of has its pros and cons, I suppose, Amazon. would that work on Walmart? Should I think about— I mean, we tried Walmart and it didn't work as well as we thought, but this was a couple years ago. but yeah, I'm, I'm curious what kind of products are working well on Walmart, do you think?

**Andrew**: I think supplements are fantastic. I think the food products are probably some of the best. Yeah. obviously Walmart's a large grocery retailer, so food products work really well. Anything in that home space, you know, when I put my mind in like the customer avatar, if you want to say that, for somebody who's shopping on the Walmart app, you know, they're, they're buying their groceries and maybe they're buying a couple other things for their house around that period of time and they're just adding them to their cart. So I think those products work really well. And I've seen real success with those. So that would be my go-to.

**Matt**: Very interesting. Another client— is the clientele similar for Walmart? Like, I'm— I mean, I've been in Walmart stores in the States, got lost in Walmart stores because they're so huge, but I'm kind of like— and actually Walmart, until recently owned a big supermarket chain here in the UK called Asda, and they sort of turned them into these mini Walmarts, but I think they've sold it on now. Is the people who go into Walmart, are they the same clientele buying online or is it a different clientele buying online as opposed to the ones going in the store? I don't know if you know.

**Andrew**: Yeah, I'm not 100% sure, but I think it's, I think it's a, if I'm generalising here, I think the average Amazon customer avatar is slightly different than the Walmart customer avatar. yeah, I don't think— I think you can get away with selling, more high-ticket products on Amazon than you can on Walmart. Yeah, like I said, the grocery niche is really the one I stick in, so I can speak from that niche. But yeah, I think as far as Amazon goes, you could probably get away with more of the higher-ticket items.

**Matt**: Yeah, it's interesting because I— again, the little I know about the States, you've I suppose they've done very well aiming at the niche, which is the budget conscious. It's like, you know, we're gonna sell you the tin of beans for like 10 cents lower than the guys down the road because we're going to leave them on the pallet and it's going to be fine. whereas the guys, you know, that shop at say Whole Foods, they have a very different demographic, right? And so Do you— well, I mean, let's touch on that. Do you see— I don't know, actually, I've not even thought about this— places like, Target and Whole Foods and sort of the whole raft of sort of Walmart-style stores creating their own marketplaces?

**Andrew**: Yeah, I mean, Target has their own marketplace. Whole Foods is owned by Amazon, I believe, so they use, you know, Amazon's platform, right? So, but yeah, Target has their own. It's not open to the public like, Walmart and Amazon are, so it's kind of gated. And, and, I haven't found any. I tried it once before and I wasn't happy with it, so I kind of moved on. But yeah, they do have a platform.

**Matt**: Okay, so let's, let's get into Walmart then. So what are some of the secrets to doing Walmart well? That I should think about, maybe as a supplement brand or as a grocery brand or a household brand? What should— what are some of the things that I should look at doing to do this platform well?

**Andrew**: Start with your expectations. All right, I think, I think you got to start there. You really do. You have to start there and under— like I said, it's not a platform where you're just going to jump on. Even, even in the supplement space, right, where we know there's massive search volume Just don't expect to just rush everything with PPC campaigns and just get traffic overnight and, yeah, you know, you can kind of brute force it. That's just not the case. Starting with obviously having a product in the right niche, understanding the Walmart platform, great. And we'll just use your supplement product as an example. So setting up a Walmart-specific listing is really important, right? We want to go in there, we want to see what keywords are a little bit different. You already have the data from Amazon, so that's a great starting point. But let's check that data against Walmart search, right? And make sure that, okay, these key terms actually work here and are getting similar searches. Let's set up a Walmart-specific listing because their titles are different, their bullet points are different, all of that. I would say generally you can use the same images, but, so start there. All right, once you have your listing set and you're ready to launch, you just double-check it one more time because like I said, it's really difficult to change once you're already on there. So yeah, be 100% that this is, this is my listing, this is the best I can do, and then we launch. That's, that's the start, obviously. My next step, and this was a lot easier in 2025, 2024, 2023. They've changed it in 2026, so I've prefaced with this, but the biggest and most important thing that I found to be success on Walmart is what's called a Walmart account manager. This is something that Amazon doesn't even offer, but it's essentially a Walmart employee They have a lot of accounts, let's say, yeah, 30 accounts or whatever. But what they can do for you is pretty special. So they can do what's called virtual shelf placement, and this is pretty cool. So if you tell them, hey, you know, these are the— and this is how I do it— I'll say, hey, look, these are the keywords that my product ranks for on Amazon. Okay, I'm successful on Amazon. If you want my product to be successful on Walmart Here's my key terms, I'm gonna give it to you. And what they can do is say, okay, with these key terms, here's the shelves that exist within the Walmart platform, and I can go through and I can manually put your product on those shelves. So it's kind of like skipping the whole search term, you know, ranking, right? Like, yeah, they can manually do that for you. Now there are, and the way I've been explained to it, there are shelves that are search-specific, that aren't like generalized shelves. And so those they can't do that for, but right off the bat they can get you on some visibility within these virtual shelves. So I would start there and I would say, okay, you know, give them my report, give them my data. Hey, this is, these are the key terms, and then have them add that virtual shelf placement. That's a strong foundation to start with. And you'll start to garner sales just from that.

**Matt**: So these Walmart account managers, can anybody get them? Do you have to have like a minimum trade value? What's the scoop there?

**Andrew**: So in 2026, you do have to have like a minimum GMV, what they call that, a sales number. So like, if you're— let's say you're just starting, you know, you don't have much Amazon data, you're not a big seller on Amazon, then you have to grow that account by yourself for a while. I'm not sure what that number is, and I've asked that question before to a few of these account managers and they don't really have an answer. But you have to grow it to a certain point and then they reach out to you now at this point and say, hey, you know, we've seen your account, we would like to bring you on with an account manager so they can kind of help you get to that next level.

**Matt**: Yeah.

**Andrew**: If you have a— if you have an account on Amazon that's doing pretty well, I would imagine at some point they've already tried to reach out to you via email because that's what's happening. A lot of these account managers are having to reach out to these Amazon sellers and they're trying to get them onto the platform. So I would imagine if you have, you know, if you're doing good sales on Amazon, they've probably already tried to reach out to you.

**Matt**: That's interesting. So actually the minimum GMV, the minimum requirement to get on Walmart is not Walmart specific, it's Amazon specific.

**Andrew**: It's not Amazon specific either. Like I've asked this question a few times and I haven't gotten a real answer. It's just that they reach out to these people trying to pull them in. I don't know what the value is. Because it could be different for each category. I, like I said, I've asked them, they don't even know the answer. They just say that, you know, they're asked to reach out to X amount of people per month and that's kind of how that works.

**Matt**: So do you have to wait for them to reach out to you or can you be proactive and reach out to them?

**Andrew**: You used to be able to, pre-2025 you could, not anymore. and that's kind of a little frustrating. I'm actually— that's one of the topics I'm going to the Walmart convention in San Diego this year, just to try to speak to some of the directors about that. Like, maybe there's a tip line or something I can— we can have that we can say, look, this account has X amount of sales. I believe they should have an account manager. Can we— because they want that, right? I mean, that's in their best interest. So I'm not sure why they don't have something like that currently. but yeah, that's one of the questions I have for them.

**Matt**: How do you get an— I suppose if you've already got an account manager, or if you know someone that has someone, then, you know, it's— it becomes your old boys' network, right?

**Andrew**: That's, that's interesting as well, because the account managers are so specific on their category, that yes, if you have the exact same category of a, of another seller, then I could recommend that person to you. But if they're not And they're so hyper-specific in their categories, so it's— that kind of makes it a little difficult.

**Matt**: That's really interesting. Okay, so Amazon, in theory, if you're doing well, Walmart's going to reach out to you. If they reach out to you, sort of don't look the gift horse in the mouth and go yes. That, that would be a conversation I'd love to have.

**Andrew**: Take that gift and run with it because they can be very beneficial.

**Matt**: And supercharges the relationship right from day one, doesn't it? I suppose.

**Andrew**: Absolutely. and just, you know, maintaining a good relationship with them. Like, I try to have a conversation once every 2 weeks, you know, with my account manager and, you know, building that relationship. And yeah, and, each one is a little bit different and they're, you know, their backgrounds and how they've come up through the Walmart system and that kind of thing. So, you know, I have one that, you know, I've worked with for a long time and she even has a good relationship with the director of that category. So sometimes when I bring things up to her, she's like, "Okay, let me ask my director about that." And then, you know, then the director knows your account and then you can kind of work that relationship higher up the chain. That helps.

**Matt**: So what sort of things— I mean, obviously they can— the account managers can get stuff on the shelf for you, or these virtual shelves that you call it. What are some of the other things that you're hoping to get from your account manager?

**Andrew**: So they do these things called flash deals. those are very interesting. So they do those, I think, once a week, once every 2 weeks. Sometimes they make you skip one anyways. Flash deals are just essentially a spot where they say, okay, if you discount this product for us X amount, I believe the minimum is 10%, if you discount this product 10%, we will then put you on this special shelf within the Walmart website which gets extra traffic and give you know, just that spot where you can you can garnish even more sales. these are all things on Walmart, like, again, that typically, right, if we're running Amazon, we would always stay running advertising 24/7. Run advertising, run advertising, run advertising. Yeah, that's just not the case on Walmart. Once you're on Walmart and you've— it's a lot easier to maintain organic keyword search spots and rankings than it is on Amazon. Like, if I cut my PPC on Walmart tomorrow, I'm going to keep those spots for sometimes a month, 2 months. So typically my plan is I launch a product, I run those keywords for a couple months, understanding that maybe I'm breaking even or losing some money at this point, but my goal is to get organic ranking. At that point, I can cut those ad spend. Yeah, I can use these flash deals and, the next one I'm going to get into, what's called the tentpole events, for the rest. Like, I can run straight off that and be a great seller just without any advertising. And that's, that's a strategy I've been running for a while. It's been pretty good for me.

**Matt**: So, wow. So there's— I mean, there's a lot there. So you've— you're, you're running these flash deals to build your rankings, in effect. And then you've mentioned the sort of the tentpole event.

**Andrew**: Did I get that right? Yeah, yeah. Tentpole events are pretty special. These are events that Walmart runs. you know, they have their big back-to-school event, they have their big, Black Friday event, they have Christmas, they have— these are like their big events. And these events are really special because they get their own Walmart page. Okay. and then also if you do Walmart is really heavily trying to compete against Amazon. So say you have a product at $20 on both websites. Walmart will tell you, okay, if you run 15% off on this product on Walmart specifically, you can't run it on Amazon, but if you do it for me on Walmart, I'll give you a break on your commission fees. So typically when you might pay me 15% of your commission fee, I'll cut that down to 7 or 6% for you. Okay, so then that discount that you're running at 15% is actually, you know, whatever minus the— yeah, the percentage that they're giving you. and they're doing this to incentivise these sellers on Walmart to run these discounts that aren't available on Amazon. And that's kind of how they're, you know, playing that game against Amazon. We still have the lowest prices because our sellers are running these discounts, but on the back end, they're giving us this, you know, rebate essentially.

**Matt**: Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm, I'm curious, Amazon climbing, clamping down on this? I mean, I think it would be hard to do so in a free market economy, but Amazon do like to be dictators, don't they? And, and so I'm kind of curious, are they clamping down on systems like that?

**Andrew**: I haven't had any issues with it, thus far. You know, maybe after this podcast comes out. No, I haven't had any issues thus far. And, for my clients, we haven't had any issues with it this far. So keep our fingers crossed.

**Matt**: Yeah, I'd be curious to see how much longer Amazon let people get away with that. Again, I, you know, short of staying legal, obviously. So you've got the flash deals, you've got the tentpole events, and so you're doing these things to boost your sales on, Walmart, which hopefully has the knock-on benefit of increasing your organic rankings, which I'm assuming Walmart, like Amazon, look at sales, volume, don't they? And they— that will help with your ranking. but in the midst of this, you mentioned you're still using PPC, but maybe with a view to turning that off at some point, which high enough.

**Andrew**: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Once, once I see that, you know, my organic ranking is page 1 in a good spot, for specific key terms that I'm, I'm looking at, then I'll go ahead and cut that off because it will, it'll maintain its spot for a while, especially when you continue to run these flash deals and tentpole events because you're, you're getting that sales velocity that they're requiring. Yeah. So, so we can cut back.

**Matt**: Yeah. So the— you're in effect, you're paying it forward, aren't you, with the discounting? So you're like, well, I'm going to lose money here, but I'm going to save money by not having to pay the paperclip. In terms of ad spend then, is it comparable to, say, Amazon? Is it more costly? Is it— is it— are you getting a higher rate of return on Walmart?

**Andrew**: Yeah, I mean, their CPC is a lot lower on Walmart, but I'll say their conversion rate is lower because of that as well. Walmart platform is just not, I guess, as trusted as the Amazon platform yet. I would say that if you have a healthy product and, you know, it's been on the platform for a little while, you got some good reviews, and I want to go into the reviews thing in a bit, but If you got some good reviews, then you can get some great returns. I mean, 4x, 5x sometimes. I mean, it really, you, it does it well. You can get some good returns there.

**Matt**: Yeah, yeah, especially as competition is still fairly settled on Amazon, and slowly moving over, I would imagine. So Yeah, okay, well, let's dig into reviews. You mentioned that, so this is obviously part of your process as well. So you're taking advantage of the sales, you're growing your rankings, your sales velocity is going up, you've got these sort of special events going on. So what about reviews? Because obviously that also helps with conversion.

**Andrew**: Yeah, when we launch a product— now again, this is not something Amazon offers, but when you launch a product on Walmart, if you have It used to be different and now it's a lot better on Walmart. So we can import reviews from our Shopify website directly onto our Walmart listing. Obviously that helps a lot. Yeah. If you have— it's only a few platforms that allow it currently. You have to have a specific few and they're like the main ones that Shopify promotes anyways. But if you have those, you can just import Excel file, upload those directly to Walmart. They do a review check and then launch them on your product listing. I've— I'm not sure how much actually they help in like the algorithm for Walmart, but they definitely help with— and this is a weird they definitely help with sales, right? Because yeah, I'll get a review later and they'll be like, oh, I read the reviews and this product was great. And it was, it was amazing. but like, how much does it actually help the algorithm when you upload those? I'm not, I'm not sure.

**Matt**: Yeah, I can't imagine a whole great deal, but I can imagine it will, especially if you're new. But I can imagine the conversion rate would go up. Yeah, because you're gonna, you're gonna, as a consumer, you're gonna, you know, I do it all the time on that. I mean, we don't have Walmart in the UK, but on Amazon you kind of go dude, you've only got 10 reviews, whereas this one's got 180 reviews. it might even be like a pound more expensive or a dollar more expensive, but it's got so many more reviews, I'm going to trust that, right? I, that's kind of how it works in my head, which I'm assuming is how it works in most people's heads.

**Andrew**: Yeah, I agree. definitely it's, it's, it's boosting conversion rate for sure.

**Matt**: It's interesting though that they've allowed you to upload reviews from other platforms. I think that's actually quite smart, especially if they're verifiable reviews, because why would you not, right? This is the— it's gonna help Walmart, right? They're making more conversions, they're making more sales.

**Andrew**: I agree, it's, it's a win-win situation for everyone. you know, interesting why Amazon's never done that, but I know Amazon's historically had issues with— yeah, they have fake reviews and things like that, so maybe that's the route they've taken.

**Matt**: Yeah, they— I think they've had to work hard to sort of regain that trust, haven't they? I suppose. that's really fascinating, Andrew. I mean, is there anything else that we should— I mean, you've given us a lot there to think about where Walmart is concerned. What are some of the other things that we need to think about?

**Andrew**: Yeah, so I would say that when it comes to the Walmart ad platform, if you want to touch on that for a little bit, You know, I mentioned we launch campaigns.

**Matt**: You can't—

**Andrew**: again, you can't take your Amazon campaigns and copy and paste them onto Walmart. It just doesn't work. The ad platform is just not that mature. campaigns on Walmart are like 3 keywords, 5 keywords max I'd put in a campaign. Like, you just can't do the same as Amazon. So really dial in, like, these are my keywords, I know the product converts for these. Yeah, let's run those and then hands off. That's, that's what I would recommend. Again, run those for a few months and then you can kind of dial it back as you start your flash deals, as you start your promotions, as you work your, you know, account manager. And then one thing I want to talk about is like the next step. Okay, so say you're running very successful on Walmart, you know, your GMV is $100,000 a month, $200,000 a month, whatever that might be, right? And you're, you're starting to get to that next level. they'll actually pass you off from an account manager to like the next step of account manager. These account managers have even more access, even more ability to promote your products through influencer campaigns that run on the homepage of Walmart, which are very interesting. Now, I've been doing this a while. I've only had access to one of those before, but again, those are prime real estate spots. I mean, hundreds of millions of people see those.

**Matt**: Yeah.

**Andrew**: So, but again, they start to have that access that, you know, you just can't get these kind of things on the Amazon platform. But like with those relationships, working that, like I said, with the directors directly or those next level account managers, we can start to get those prime placements.

**Matt**: It's really interesting, isn't it, how it feels, Andrew, if I can put it this way that Walmart is being maybe a little bit old school, you know, with account managers. And the more valuable the account, the more valuable your account manager is, if that makes sense. That success begets success in many ways. And it does feel a bit old school, which actually appeals to someone like me. I'm not going to lie. I think that's genius. I'd love to be able to pick up the phone. I remember in the early days when we had a beauty company, we sold product direct to Amazon and Amazon sold it on the Amazon site. So we were in effect a supplier to Amazon. And, and in name only, I would probably say, I think we still did exactly all the same amount of work. We still put the content together. We still, you know, in effect ran it for them and they just took a, you know, they decided the sales price versus us. And we decided, you know, we knew what the selling price to Amazon was and they just took care of the rest. And it was a really interesting experiment for me. I don't know if they still do it actually, or whether they've gone back to it, because the one difference you did have was I had someone on the phone that I could pick up and call and go, dude, what's going on here? And they could resolve the problem. We've never had that since. Yeah, you know, the ability to call someone at Amazon and get them to resolve the problem. to be fair, it didn't even last with them. I think once the account had been set up, after a year or two of running it, maybe, that feature disappeared and it became a lot more, no, the machines are going to deal with this, which became quite frustrating actually on a few occasions.

**Andrew**: Yeah, that's, that is one thing that I do like, as far as far as my account managers go. Like, I've, I've had issues where I'm trying to make a change, I'm trying to do something and on Amazon, it would just be like, pick up the phone and call Amazon support and we've all been there, we know how that goes.

**Matt**: Yeah, good luck.

**Andrew**: And instead, I can just say, okay, I'll tell my account manager, this is my problem, how can we resolve this? And when she starts a case for me, it gets resolved so fast. It's like, it's like they can get to the next level almost instantly. So that's, that's a really nice feature.

**Matt**: Yeah. To have.

**Andrew**: Yeah.

**Matt**: Now I imagine it is. It's, and it's sensible, isn't it, in so many ways. but I love it. I, again, this is, I think goes back to the difference between Amazon and Walmart in so many ways. Amazon has come the old school route. It's got the big superstores, right? And it you're used to having account managers. and I— one of the things we've been talking about over the years in our team is how we bring that customer account management feel into our own ecommerce site for our own customers. How can we do that? because that just ultimately, it breeds repeat sales like nothing else, right? It's, it's quite an interesting concept or an interesting idea. where do you see it all going between Amazon and Walmart? Do you think it'll just carry on down the road it's going to go? Walmart's going to catch up, Amazon's just going to stick in its lane, or have you got some kind of insight into this that maybe we've not all seen?

**Andrew**: You know, I only know what's available. And I think that if I had to guess, Amazon's pushing, they're pushing innovation, right? They want to get to that next level of how fast can we ship the product. And I think that's— that is the next level of ecommerce, like where can we take that? Is it even economically— it doesn't make sense, right? I think that if I had to guess, Walmart does catch up in the near future as far as the ecom space goes. I mean, they're not that far behind in traffic already. Now, they don't have that years of trust and shipping speed and delivery that Amazon does have. So it's going to take a little bit more time. Yeah. But, you know, in the age of AI, right? Like, for all we know, Amazon could pivot and go more AWS, AI-focused, and that could be their lane. And maybe they take their hands off ecommerce a little bit, and that's where Walmart makes their ground. I don't know. We'll see. It's, it's interesting.

**Matt**: It is. Do you, I mean, talking about AI, obviously Claude, everybody's using Claude Code or ChatGPT or some kind of, frontier model right now, aren't they? I'm, can you, are there, I don't know if you know, are there MCPs, are there APIs that Walmart have that enable you to sort of dial in via your AI of choice, or is that not happening yet?

**Andrew**: That's not happening yet. you know, that would be really great. I know, I know I use Helium 10 pretty much every day. I'm sure a lot of people, others out here do. I think they're coming out with the MCP pretty soon that's going to be directly tied into the Claude system. So that's going to be, you know, a game changer in my opinion.

**Matt**: Yeah, it will be, very much.

**Andrew**: So maybe we can get some of that Walmart data from that.

**Matt**: Yeah, watch this space, as they say. Andrew, listen, I'm, I'm thoroughly enjoying the conversation, but I'm also thoroughly aware of time. if people are listening to this and they're like, you know what, we want to start this whole Walmart game, how do they connect with you? How do they reach out to you if they want to do that? what's the best way?

**Andrew**: Yeah, visit the website, selltru.com. you can reach me at andrew@selltru.com. That's the two best ways.

**Matt**: And selltru is true without an E, right?

**Andrew**: True without an E. Tru.

**Matt**: Yeah, very good. Okay, so selltru.com. We will of course link to that in the show notes. So, wherever you're listening to this podcast, you'll be able to scroll down, you'll be able to click that link, and if you're on YouTube, it will be in the description, and you'll be transported by the sheer miracle of digital technology to Andrew's website. But Andrew, man, thanks. Listen, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for answering all my questions about Walmart. Got the brain juices flowing. I'm especially interested in Helium 10's MCP coming out. So we will see what happens there. But we've got to the stage of the show where for those that listen to the end, I like to do this thing called saving the best till last. So given everything that we've talked about, what is your best bit of advice for someone who's wanting to get started on Walmart that we've not already covered, that's really going to give them the edge, if I can put it that way?

**Andrew**: Yeah, I— if you're just starting on Walmart and you don't have like a niche or, you're not specific to something, my best piece of advice would be to wholesale. I think there's a big opportunity out there for wholesale on Walmart. And what I mean by that is, go to Amazon, there's tons of small businesses, tons of small brands out there that have great products, that do great sales on the Amazon platform, but just don't exist on Walmart. Maybe it's because they don't have a big enough team, maybe it's because they don't want to learn the platform, whatever that might be. And, and there's an opportunity right there is to you know, call these brands up, have a conversation with them, explain who you are, and that, hey, I want to sell your product on Walmart, can you give me a wholesale price? And very good, take that product and follow that recipe that we explained earlier, and, you know, go ahead and sell it on the Walmart platform. I think there's a lot of opportunity there for tons of different product categories. It doesn't just have to be the food space. But if you see something that's, you know, doing well, on Amazon, it'll probably do well on Walmart as well. That's a really great little advice.

**Matt**: Love that. In fact, it's almost like a different form of dropshipping, isn't it, in one respect? Because you're not buying stock per se, yeah, well, you're not having it manufactured. You're, you're, you're bringing something in that's successful and said, oh, that's pretty smart, like that. Like that a lot. Andrew, before we go, the one thing I forgot to do, which inevitably I do on quite a few of the podcast episodes, is ask for a question for me. This is where you give me a question and I will go away on social media and answer said question. So what's your question for me, sir?

**Andrew**: Hmm. It could be anything. Doesn't have to be ecommerce related.

**Matt**: Can be absolutely anything, you know, as long as it's sort of PG.

**Andrew**: Yeah. You know, I'm fascinated by this topic. I think a lot of people are right now in the news, in the media. So my question would be, are aliens real? That would be my question.

**Matt**: That's a very good question. A good exercise. Oh, I love this. I really hope E.T.'s real. I really want to meet him one day. Me too. But no, if you want to know whether I think aliens are real, then come follow me on social media, @mattedmundson. I will try my level best to answer that question. Question. But Andrew, in the meantime, thank you so much for coming on the show, man. Genuinely really appreciate it.

**Andrew**: Thank you. Appreciate you having me.

**Matt**: Oh, it's been great. Genuinely been great. So there you go, wrapped up another episode of the eCommerce Podcast. Love that conversation. I don't know about you, but I learned a lot. I've got pages and pages of notes, as I, as I tend to do, old school, write them down. and we're going to have conversations with the team, which is awesome. of course, if you're using Sam's Slingshot, the system that I mentioned earlier, AI system, you will be able to go to Sam and you'll be able to ask Sam for help in taking all of Andrew's tips and applying them to your business, and it will go, sure, we will help you with that. That's the genius of this whole thing. So give that a try if you are a Slingshot user, you'll enjoy it. It's a new feature where we've tied the eCommerce Podcast episode in with the AI system every week. So that's very cool. Yeah, it is really cool. Even if I do say I'm selling myself. But yeah, do go check it out. But anyway, all of that said, that's it from me. That's it from Andrew. Thank you so much for joining us. Have a phenomenal week wherever you are in the world. We'll see you next time. Bye for now.