Walmart's Black Friday Deals for Days 2022: Recommendations for Advertisers

With Black Friday Cyber Monday (aka Cyber 5) around the corner, retailers continue to launch their signature promotions well ahead of the holidays, and Walmart is one big box giant going full steam ahead.

It began with “Big Save Sale” in 2020 and marks its annual return this year as “Black Friday Deals for Days,” an early major holiday sale featuring steep discounts across categories of products that customers can take advantage of both online and in-store. Spanning most of November, the massive promotion is an attractive opportunity for advertisers to promote their products to more than 100 million unique visitors a month. Walmart advertisers should be ready for a surge in traffic this holiday season and prepare accordingly, given that there were 600 million visitors in November 2021.

Walmart unveils Three Black Friday Sales

2022’s “Black Friday Deals for Days” starts almost a month earlier than Cyber 5 and continues during the five-day period. To build anticipation that lasts throughout the holidays, customers can enjoy shopping in three parts, closing out with incredible deals on Cyber Monday. While Walmart+ members get a seven-hour head start, all customers can beat the rush both on Walmart.com and in stores: 

• Event 1

Online: Nov 7, 7 pm ET; continues in stores: Nov 9

Walmart+ Early Access: Nov 7, 12 pm ET

• Event 2 

Online: Nov 14, 7 pm ET; continues in stores: Nov 16

Walmart+ Early Access: Nov 14, 12 pm ET

• Event 3 

Online: Nov 21, 7 pm ET; continues in stores Nov 25

Walmart+ Early Access: Nov 21, 12 pm ET

• Cyber Monday 

Online and in stores: Nov 28

3 Black Friday Recommendations for Walmart Advertisers

Are you a brand on Walmart looking for ways to boost your sales during Black Friday? These are our three recommendations to get the most out of your Black Friday Cyber Monday Walmart advertising.

Choose the Right Products

Continue to push your best sellers to gain traction to existing products and categories that customers are already familiar with. Bargain-hunting customers are more likely to seek out brands they already know than ones they haven’t come across, especially during this period of steep markdowns.

Promoting a new product during Black Friday Deals for Days will likely cost you more because of increased cost-per-clicks (CPCs) resulting in a lower return on ad spend (ROAS). Since customers are likely looking to scoop up big-ticket items at highly favorable discounts across popular categories, typically including electronics, advertisers should also be featuring their higher-priced items. Whether the expensive items are your top performers or excessive inventory, the significant influx of Black Friday shopping traffic will likely see their typical sales boom.

Getting customers to notice your products is the next step and this is where advertisers should be leveraging the suite of Walmart’s Sponsored Search ad types, namely Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands. Products which win the buy box are eligible for these ad types. And to compete for the buy box, sellers must ensure that their products are always in stock, competitively priced, quickly shipped and delivered on time, and have good reviews. With the deals of the first event already announced, participating advertisers should also prepare to restock.

Increase Campaign Budgets and Bids

Given that there is an increase in traffic and clicks during this promotional period, advertisers must ensure that they have enough budget per campaign to avoid their ads going dark. We recommend increasing budgets by at least three times your current budget.  

To compete during Black Friday promotions among higher CPCs, you should increase your keyword bids and apply bid multipliers. Spending more on advertising elevates the chances of your deals appearing on Walmart.com’s prime real estate, which include slots in the first row of Search In-Grid placement, Carousel ads at the bottom of a search, browse, and/or product detail page (PDP), and the Buy Box banner on the PDP. In these prominent Sponsored Products positions, your ads are likely to reach a bigger audience and capture more views, and in turn, lead to greater sales.

Maximize your Advertising Strategy

Targeting your most strategic keywords with a mix of manual and automatic targeting is a great way to amplify your product's search relevance, increasing the likelihood of your ad being shown to shoppers. At Perpetua, we recommend zeroing in on exact keyword matches while optimizing a limited selection of phrase matches, and largely avoiding broad matches. Also, group highly similar products into the same goal to prevent your keywords from competing against one another. 

To bolster your Black Friday advertising, apply these tips:

• Adjust the bids of Sponsored Products (SP) and Sponsored Brands (SB) of your Black Friday deals to extend their reach

• Run Search In-grid (SP) ads shown within the first three pages of search results and browse pages to entice customers directly to your product listings

• Utilize Product Carousels (SP) that also appear on these pages to capture new customers, cross-sell or upsell your products 

• Enhance the chances of your ads appearing as the hard-to-miss Buy Box banners (SP) through automatic campaigns to seize customers’ attention

• Select SKUs belonging to the same brand that you own in creating Sponsored Brands, a high-visibility horizontal banner featuring your brand logo, a custom headline, and up to four of your chosen products that prominently appears at the very top of a shelf, search, or category page for a specific term

• Showcase your product with Sponsored Brands to generate product discoverability of up to four of your Black Friday deals and attract new-to-brand customers 

Customizing your keyword targeting with these tips will boost the chances of conversion of your Black Friday advertising.

If you’re interested in learning how Perpetua can help you grow your sales on Walmart, please email us at hello@perpetua.io.