The Importance of Acquiring Visitor’s Data: Lessons from Walmart’s Acquisition of VIZIO

The Purpose of VIZIO’s Acquisition by Walmart

Walmart has entered into an agreement to acquire VIZIO for $11.50 per share in cash, which equates to a fully diluted equity value of approximately $2.3 billion. The acquisition aims to facilitate the accelerated growth of Walmart Connect, the retailer’s closed-loop omnichannel media business, by leveraging VIZIO’s SmartCast Operating System. 

Additionally, Walmart Connect experienced 30% growth for fiscal year 2024 and offers attractive opportunities for Walmart suppliers and sellers to reach their desired customers across various channels. ¹

All of the above suggest one thing: Walmart values the visitor data and information so much that they are willing to purchase an entire company for that sole purpose. Making it easy to understand that in today’s digital age, data holds tremendous potential and power.

Building a Strategy

First and foremost it’s important to understand why collecting visitor’s data is important and what benefits this acquisition is able to provide.

The Five main factors are:

1. What kind of audience are you trying to reach? 
2. What information has the most value for your business? 
3. Why are we gathering this information?
4. How are we gathering this information?
5. What are we doing with this information?

After identifying the first two, there’s a need to conduct proper research and find the specific numbers for each of them.

After understanding who exactly the business will be targeting, it’s important to understand the third point: “Why?”. The simple answer would be that the value of current SEO efforts is apparent, or perhaps just the general influx of organic traffic coming to the website is significant enough to consider this action. Perhaps there’s a confusion and lack of understanding of what to do with all that traffic. These are mere suggestions and the real answer might be more complex, depending on the business type.

Next, it’s crucial to understand “How”. This is usually resolved through partnering up with other agencies and external sources in order to capture visitor’s information properly. The vast majority of agencies out there will sell a visitor’s data of an average quality, so it’s important to handpick those who stand out. 

At IceWeb, the globally unique technology allows the capturing of a large amount of visitor’s data, and provides a very extensive and detailed list of information which others could only dream of acquiring.

Finally, after the visitor’s data has been acquired it’s important to understand what the business would like to do with it. Will it be email marketing? Phone marketing? Perhaps SMS or direct mail? There’s no limit to that, and each business will define its own strategy.

In Walmart’s case, through its acquisition of VIZIO, it can leverage the data obtained from SmartCast operating system to provide tailored recommendations, offers, and promotions to its customers, enhancing their shopping journey.

SEO & Targeted Advertising

SEO efforts give an insight on the incoming traffic to the website, allowing to better understand what interests brought these people to the business.  Acquiring this visitor data enables businesses to target their advertising efforts more effectively: By understanding customers’ demographics, interests, and preferences, companies can deliver targeted advertisements that are more likely to resonate with their audience. 

To compare this to Walmart’s strategy is that with VIZIO’s SmartCast operating system, Walmart gains access to a vast amount of data, allowing them to deliver personalized advertisements that cater to their customers’ specific interests and needs.

Understanding Customer Behavior

Once the business begins acquiring visitor’s data, it will provide valuable insights into customer behavior, preferences, and purchasing patterns. IceWeb’s Data I.O determines exactly what page a person was looking at, how long they spent there and where their mouse was hovering. Not only that, but IceWeb’s Data I.O is also able to differentiate between businesses and private visitors, allowing a more in-depth understanding of a customer’s or a visitor’s journey and their intent, making it easy to understand how to approach them.

When we look at Walmart, their acquisition of VIZIO enables them to gather data on customers’ viewing habits, preferences, and shopping behaviors, allowing them to refine their offerings and improve the overall shopping experience.

Improving Customer Engagement and Loyalty

Visitor’s data can be leveraged to improve customer engagement and foster loyalty. By analyzing data on customer interactions and preferences, businesses can develop strategies to enhance customer engagement and build stronger relationships. If a business knows what a prospect is interested in, they can and should leverage that in order to improve customer engagement further, to make sure these customers also want to come back at a later time.

Walmart’s acquisition of VIZIO allows them to engage with VIZIO’s customers in more personalized ways, ultimately fostering loyalty and repeat business, which is a fundamental aspect of Walmart’s business model – Repeat business. 

Enhanced Business Growth and Innovation

Business is all about growth and prosperity, and with such aspirations come additional expenses. It’s impossible for a business to grow without first investing money to generate growth, which is something many business owners seem to forget quite often.

While investing in various channels of marketing is important, it’s crucial to be innovative and enhance the business growth through additional methods. Visitor’s data acquisition acts as a pillar of support to the other channels, and thanks to that a business can continue developing, changing and growing endlessly.

If one takes a look at Walmart’s growth strategy, then by acquiring Vizio, Walmart aims to boost its ad business through Vizio’s SmartCast Operating System, which allows users to stream free ad-supported content on their TV ². This move is part of Walmart’s strategy to become a media and advertising giant like Amazon. The acquisition will give Walmart more ways to offer ads through Vizio televisions and create entertainment options exclusively for customers with Vizio TVs, increasing its power and reach in the world of advertising. ³

Conclusion

The acquisition of visitor’s data plays a crucial role in the success and growth of businesses in the digital era. Walmart’s strategic move in acquiring Vizio and its connections, particularly the SmartCast operating system, demonstrates the importance of leveraging visitor’s data to enhance customer experiences, drive targeted marketing efforts, and foster business growth. 

As businesses continue to navigate the evolving landscape of the digital world, the acquisition and analysis of visitor’s data will remain a vital component in gaining a better understanding of the customer and user base. 

Once the acquisition happens and the analysis has been conducted, a business is able to create successful strategies for customer outreach, which will target the desired customers and appeal to them in a more strategic yet sophisticated way.