How Has Walmart Dominated Holiday Videos On YouTube?

It is utterly astounding how Walmart has dominated holiday videos on YouTube. So far in the fourth quarter of 2016 the retailer has amassed over 75 million views which are more than twice that of the closest competitors, Beats by Dre and Paramount who both have less than 30 millions views each. As a top web development company we wanted to dive into their success and talk about what they are doing that helps them utterly dominate holiday videos on YouTube.

This isn’t a first for them as they have routinely done well during the Thanksgiving and Christmas periods since 2014. As if this year’s strong showing wasn’t enough, they also have a track record of success which points to understanding the market much better than competitors.

Also worth noting is that movie companies, like Paramount or Warner Bros. typically garner lots of views simply because of the holiday movie release schedule and the accompanying trailers which are watched by millions of people before the venture out to catch a show. Of course that makes the Walmart numbers even more impressive.

What is Walmart doing?

• They have a plan – The success is not happenstance. It is very obvious that each year Walmart drafts a plan for their entire holiday video season. They develop ideas, themes, a production schedule, and then have videos created and ready to post when the calendar rolls around.
• They relate the moment first – Rather than just focusing on the product they are selling, Walmart focuses the story on a specific moment which is relatable to the audience. From there they will infuse the product or products they are trying to sell. For example in the highly popular “The Moment” it focuses on people having a moment during holiday preparation where they realized they forgot someone, all while “Don’t you forget about me,” plays. It starts with a moment we can all relate to and then sells the product or service.
• They cover multiple demographics – Unlike some retailers, Walmart seems like they have videos for every demographic or situation so that at least one video will resonate with whomever lands on the channel. Young, old, men, women, pushing trends like Star Wars, videos in Spanish, videos in Vietnamese, families, people dating and more are all part of what they are doing. If your business covers multiple demographics then you need to market to each one, which Walmart does very well.
• They use consistent branding and themes – Even within all the different demographics, a Walmart video is well branded. The product values are always good, the logo appears in multiple locations and they make good use of their slogans. Many of their videos are themes or series where users then become familiar or attached to characters involved making them more likely to watch the next video in the series.
• They utilize some celebrities – Cedric the Entertainer, Tia Mowry, Craig Robinson, and Patti LaBelle have all made appearance in Walmart videos. While not huge starts, these are all known and relatable people that are perceived positively by the audience and the way they are included into videos is as a peer or friend rather than obvious spokes model.

The bottom line is that you simply cannot overlook Walmart’s success in this area. Walmart has dominated holiday videos on YouTube for three years running and most likely won’t want to give up that position. Yes, they do have a much larger budget compared to many, but aside from that they consistently use good fundamentals in their campaign which also helps create success and can for you as well by adopting those fundamentals into your video marketing plan.

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