Launching Walmart Business

The challenge

Walmart is the world’s largest retailer. It’s omnichannel scale and advantage is also its biggest challenge when it comes to small business audiences. People just don’t think of Walmart when they think of small business.

The launch of Walmart Business, a dedicated B2B platform for small businesses and nonprofit organizations, needed to do two things simultaneously: Cut through the parent brand’s consumer shadow and actively course-correct the narrative that Walmart sometimes competes with small businesses, rather than helping them.

The goal wasn’t just awareness. It was trust. Proving that a B2B-focused brand from the world’s most familiar retailer could establish real credibility in a crowded space.

My role: Integrated strategy

The strategy built trust around six interconnected pillars, designed to reach small businesses across every stage of the funnel — from first awareness to loyal customer.

Earned media. The launch of Walmart Business threaded visibility in B2B through a crowded announcement calendar, coinciding with holiday and new year campaigns. Despite being one of the more challenging periods to launch, we secured exclusives and built a drumbeat of visibility across publications with high affinity within business decision-maker audiences: Forbes, Fortune, Bloomberg, Small Business Currents, and regional Business Journals.

Branded content hub. Pivotal in building both trust and discoverability, we added small business resources to Walmart’s retail offering through a branded content hub built specifically for SMB audiences and covering the topics they actively search for. Over 250 pieces of original content anchored Walmart Business at the top of highly valuable search pages, and gave the brand a reason to be bookmarked beyond product or pricing.

Executive thought leadership. We positioned Ashley Hubka, SVP and General Manager of Walmart Business, as a genuine champion for small businesses - not a corporate spokesperson. Through earned media placements, a revamped and regularly active social presence, and contributed content (including a bylined column in Entrepreneur), we built a visible, credible voice at the top of the organization.

Social presence. We built Walmart Business’s social presence from zero, growing audiences across platforms in the first ten months. Our approach was to test and learn, across both closed and open communities, eventually finding the path of greatest return in engaging new audiences and winning customers.

Branded events. We stood up an events programme including webinars and in-person salon dinners, giving the brand a live presence in the SMB community and generating direct relationship opportunities with both media and customers.

Lifecycle marketing. We architected Walmart Business’s Marketing Operations function, including all audience segmentation and always-on lifecycle campaigns covering prospect nurture, customer acquisition, and retention. All of these drafted off of content, social or earned programs to build cohesive momentum around the Walmart Business brand promise of saving time, money, and hassle.

The results

Within our first year, our joined-up, omnichannel strategy delivered breakthrough value

• 800% increase in GMV driven through lifecycle campaign and content marketing activity
• 16,000+ customers converted directly from prospect nurture sequences
• 40% reduction in email unsubscribe rates against benchmarks from the B2C business
• 6.5% average CTOR across all email campaigns — compared to a 0.07% CTOR benchmark for Walmart’s B2C programs

Beyond the numbers, the programme established Walmart Business as a valid and valuable business within the eCommerce organisation’s mix of platforms. The credibility and content infrastructure built during this period laid the foundation for Walmart Business’s continued growth.