Most Amazon sellers who try Walmart copy their listings straight across — same title, same bullet points, same ad campaigns — and wonder why it doesn't work. Andrew Deramo has spent seven years on Amazon and now puts 40% of his working time into Walmart. His argument is simple: Walmart is its own search engine, its own customer base, and its own opportunity. Sellers who treat it like a second Amazon are leaving money on the table.

In this episode, Andrew walks through the strategy he uses with his own products and his clients at SellTru — from building platform-specific listings to using Walmart's account managers to place products on virtual shelves, running flash deals and tentpole events to build organic rankings, and eventually cutting paid advertising altogether once those rankings hold.

Key Topics

• 06:11 — Why copy-pasting Amazon listings onto Walmart quietly undermines brands moving across
• 09:59 — Why Walmart is far less competitive than Amazon (and could win long-term)
• 18:16 — The Walmart account manager (something Amazon simply doesn't offer) and what virtual shelf placement actually means
• 26:24 — Flash deals, tentpole events, the commission rebate system, and why you can switch off PPC once you rank
• 33:12 — Importing Shopify reviews onto Walmart listings, and why conversion matters more than the algorithm question
• 35:54 — The wholesale opportunity — finding Amazon brands absent from Walmart and becoming their Walmart seller

Treat Walmart as Its Own Search Engine

Andrew's central point is that Walmart and Amazon are distinct search engines — different keyword volumes, different customer intent, different listing requirements. The titles are structured differently. The bullet points are structured differently. The keywords that perform well on one platform do not automatically perform well on the other.

The practical implication is that a brand moving onto Walmart needs to build a Walmart-specific listing from scratch, using Amazon data as a starting point to be checked and adjusted against Walmart search data. Andrew is direct about why this matters beyond just keyword matching.

"Set it up properly the first time. It's really difficult to change once you're already on there."

The Walmart platform is less mature than Amazon's, and making changes to live listings — even something as routine as updating a main image — can take weeks to process. Getting the listing right before launch matters more on Walmart than it does on Amazon.

The Walmart Account Manager Advantage

A significant difference is the Walmart account manager — a Walmart employee assigned to a seller's account, with no equivalent on the Amazon side.

What an account manager can do is called virtual shelf placement. A seller shares the keywords their product ranks for on Amazon, and the account manager manually places that product on the relevant virtual shelves within Walmart's platform. This effectively bypasses the organic ranking process for those shelf positions, giving a new or growing product visibility it would otherwise take months to earn.

In 2026 the route to getting an account manager has changed. Previously sellers could request one; now Walmart reaches out based on GMV thresholds. Andrew notes that if a brand is doing well on Amazon, a Walmart account manager has probably already sent them an email trying to bring them across.

"Take that gift and run with it because they can be very beneficial."

Account managers also facilitate flash deals — a minimum 10% discount in exchange for placement on a high-traffic promotional shelf — and give access to tentpole events around back-to-school, Black Friday, and Christmas. During those events, Walmart offers commission rebates to sellers running Walmart-exclusive discounts: if a seller discounts a product 15% on Walmart, Walmart may cut its commission rate from around 15% down to 6 or 7%.

Andrew is attending the Walmart convention in San Diego this year specifically to push for a clearer path to account manager access for sellers who qualify but haven't been contacted.

Running Ads on Walmart — and Stopping

Walmart's advertising platform is less developed than Amazon's. Andrew recommends no more than three to five keywords per campaign, running those tightly focused campaigns for a couple of months after launch to build organic rankings. The key difference from Amazon is what happens next.

On Amazon, organic ranking positions tend to decay quickly without ongoing ad spend to support them. On Walmart, Andrew finds those positions hold for one to two months after cutting PPC.

"Once I see that my organic ranking is page 1 in a good spot for specific key terms, I'll cut that off — because it'll maintain its spot for a while."

The strategy that follows is to sustain sales velocity through flash deals and tentpole events rather than continuous advertising. CPC is lower on Walmart than on Amazon, but conversion rates are also lower — the platform has less established consumer trust. Andrew sees returns of 4x to 5x ROAS on well-reviewed products once they have some history on the platform.

Reviews and the Shopify Import

Reviews affect conversion on Walmart just as they do on Amazon. What Walmart allows that Amazon doesn't is a direct import of existing Shopify reviews onto a Walmart listing — sellers upload an Excel file, Walmart runs a review check, and the reviews appear on the product page.

Andrew is honest about the limits of his knowledge here: he's confident the imported reviews lift conversion, but less sure how much weight the Walmart algorithm gives them as a ranking signal. The conversion benefit is the clearer win.

"I'll get a review later and they'll be like, 'Oh, I read the reviews and this product was great.' But how much does it actually help the algorithm when you upload those? I'm not sure."

The ability to port verified reviews from an existing Shopify store removes one of the biggest barriers for new products on any marketplace.

The Wholesale Opportunity

Andrew's closing advice is aimed at sellers who don't yet have their own product but want to build on Walmart.

His suggestion is wholesale. Find small brands doing well on Amazon that have no Walmart presence — either because they lack the team, haven't prioritised it, or simply haven't got around to it. Call them. Ask for a wholesale price. Then take their product through the same Walmart launch process described above.

"Go to Amazon, there's tons of small businesses out there that have great products, that do great sales on the Amazon platform, but just don't exist on Walmart. There's an opportunity right there."

The logic holds because a product with a proven Amazon track record is exactly the kind of listing that Walmart keyword data and an account manager relationship can accelerate. It is a lower-risk entry point than launching an unknown brand, and there are a large number of Amazon-only brands who have simply never had the bandwidth to expand.

About the Guest

Andrew Deramo is the founder of SellTru, where he helps ecommerce brands grow on Amazon and Walmart Marketplace. He has spent seven years on both platforms, started as ecommerce director for a large beach-supply business, and now runs his own product accounts alongside his agency work.

• Website: selltru.com
• LinkedIn: Andrew Deramo

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The eCommerce Podcast is hosted by Matt Edmundson. Each week Matt talks with ecommerce founders and experts about what's actually working — practical strategies, honest lessons, and the kind of insight that comes from running real businesses.

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Episode link: https://www.ecommerce-podcast.com/how-to-win-on-walmart-not-just-amazon-with-andrew-deramo