Promotions best practices

This article will help ensure your sales and promotions are as effective as possible by outlining recommended best practices.

On this page

• The basics
• Ramp up your promotions strategy
• Prepare for the holidays
• Be ready to adjust in real time

The basics

If you’re a US retailer participating in Shopping ads or free product listings, providing competitive pricing with sales and discounts, or offering promotions will automatically make your products eligible for increased visibility. In addition, these best practices can help drive better performance and incremental conversions, plus help you make the most of holiday sales events.

Note: There’s a limit on the total number of active promotions in your account. Learn more about quota limits on Promotions

Ramp up your promotions strategy

A little work can go a long way when it comes to the visibility and effectiveness of your promotions.

• Familiarize yourself with promotions to ensure smooth promotional launches.
• Provide structured data for your promotions through the Merchant Center promotion builder tool to facilitate faster reviews and approvals.
• Ensure your promotions are viewable as quickly as possible by selecting promotional products in your product data source.
• Ensure your titles are specific, accurate, and easy to understand. Your promotions will be displayed under the “Coupons from store'' section, so the more specific your promotion titles are, the easier it will be for your customers to find.
• Include the name or type of product in your promotion title. See examples below:
  • Yes: “20% off on baby sneakers only.”
    This title details the specific category that is eligible for coupons or discounts.
  • No: “20% off on select products.”
    This title makes it difficult for customers to identify if the type of products they are interested in are included in your promotion.
• Keep your historical promotions approval rate as high as possible, and make certain you’re following the latest promotion policies.
• Tag your on sale and promotional products with a custom label attribute for better reporting and results analysis down the line.
  • Only tag products that are on sale or being promoted so your data is as accurate as possible. You can use a maximum of 5 custom labels for reporting and ads bidding.
• Remove stale promotions and ensure promo freshness to maximize their impact and avoid exceeding active promotion limits unnecessarily.
• Avoid duplicate promotions linked to a single offer: Create promotions that can be mapped to multiple offers.
  • If you have more than 1000 offers associated with your promotion, avoid using item ID filter for mapping and instead add the promotion ID attribute in the product data source that allows you to map more than 1000 offers to one promotion.
• Resolve any questions you might have by contacting the promotions support team.

Note: Sitewide promotions can also help your offers surface more quickly.

Prepare for the holidays

The holiday season is a critical time of the year for many retailers. Be prepared and make the most of the opportunity.

• Plan ahead and establish clear marketing objectives and targets.
• Focus on keeping your product data accurate and utilize the sale price [sale_price] attribute.
• Keep your inventory and prices fresh with automatic item updates.

Be ready to adjust in real time

Continuously monitor your promotional performance to understand what’s working, and adapt accordingly.

• Change sales and promotion end dates if you’re running low on inventory.
• Adjust your promotional strategies if you find that certain parameters drive higher engagement or ROI.
• During the holidays or other seasonal spikes, ensure your campaigns have uncapped budgets to capture the full demand.