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Well, hello, and welcome to this week’s edition of the eCommercer.
It’s easy to assume that what works in one place will work everywhere. You find a system that runs, and naturally you want to copy and paste it across everything else. It’s logical. It saves time. It feels efficient.
But this week, Andrew Deramo talked about how the single biggest mistake he sees brands make is treating every ecommerce marketplace like it’s Amazon.
The one mistake that quietly kills Walmart launches
Andrew is the founder of SellTru, where he’s spent seven years helping ecommerce brands grow on Amazon and Walmart Marketplace. He now puts roughly 40% of his time into Walmart, and thinks Walmart might actually overtake Amazon in ecommerce long-term.
His argument is that Walmart has something Amazon simply can’t replicate — physical storefronts that double as warehouses. Faster logistics. In-store returns and exchanges. The ability to pull up in your car and have someone bring your order out to you. It’s a level of convenience Amazon can’t easily match, and Andrew thinks that as Walmart Fulfilment Services matures, the gap will narrow faster than most people expect.
But practically, you can’t just export your Amazon listings and import them into Walmart. Different search engine. Different keyword behaviour. Different title format, different bullet points. And it’s also a bit more frustrating as Walmart’s platform is still maturing, which means changes are difficult once you’re live. Andrew’s been trying to update a main image on one listing for a month. So you really have to get it right the first time.
The Walmart account manager nobody told you about
Walmart also has account managers, which Amazon simply doesn’t offer. These are actual Walmart employees assigned to your account, and they can do something called virtual shelf placement, which is where they manually place your product onto relevant shelves within the Walmart platform using your existing Amazon keyword data. It’s essentially a shortcut past the organic ranking grind.
There’s a catch, though, as you can no longer proactively request one. Walmart now reaches out to sellers based on GMV thresholds. But Andrew’s point is that if you’re already doing well on Amazon, they’ve probably already tried to email you. Worth checking.
Once you have an account manager, more tools open up. Flash deals give you a spot on a high-traffic shelf in exchange for a 10% discount. Tentpole events — back-to-school, Black Friday, Christmas — come with their own Walmart pages and commission rebates. Andrew gave the example of running a 15% discount on Walmart only, and in return Walmart cutting your commission fee from around 15% down to 6 or 7%. So the discount costs you less than it looks.
And once your organic rankings are solid, you can actually switch off your PPC campaigns. On Amazon, you’re running ads permanently. On Walmart, Andrew said organic spots hold for one to two months after you cut spend. His strategy is to run ads for a couple of months to earn the ranking, then maintain momentum through flash deals and tentpole events. Higher margins, lower ongoing ad spend.
| | Once I see that my organic ranking is page 1 in a good spot, I’ll cut the ads off — because it’ll maintain its spot for a while.
Andrew Deramo |
We have tried Walmart
We tried Walmart a couple of years back with our supplements, and it didn’t land the way we’d hoped. Listening to Andrew, I think I know why. We went in treating it like Amazon, which is exactly the mistake he described. Different search intent, different customer avatar (Andrew thinks Walmart’s online shopper is more grocery-and-home-goods-focused, more budget-conscious than the average Amazon customer), and a platform that rewards patience over brute-force PPC.
Andrew also mentioned you can import reviews from your Shopify store directly onto your Walmart listing via an Excel upload. Amazon doesn’t allow anything like that. More reviews, better conversion, less work.
His closing advice, for anyone just starting out — find a small brand that’s doing well on Amazon but doesn’t exist on Walmart yet. Contact them, ask for a wholesale price, then sell their product on Walmart following his recipe. Like a smarter version of dropshipping. There’s a lot of white space there.
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