Promotions best practices

This article will help ensure that 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 festive season
• 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 festive sales events.

Ramp up your promotions strategy

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

• Familiarise 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 that your promotions are viewable as quickly as possible by selecting promotional products in your product feed.
• Ensure that your titles are specific, accurate and easy to understand. Your promotions will be displayed under the 'Coupons from shop' section, so the more specific your promotion titles are, the easier it will be for your customers to find.
• If a promotion applies to a certain type of product, ensure that you include the name or type of that product in your title.
  • Yes: '20% off baby trainers only'.
    This title details the specific category that is eligible for coupons or discounts.
  • No: '20% off selected 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 that 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.
• Make sure that you only tag products that are on sale or being promoted so that your data is as accurate as possible. You can use a maximum of five custom labels for reporting and ads bidding.
• Resolve any questions that you might have by contacting the promotions support team.

Sitewide promotions can also help your offers surface more quickly.

Prepare for the festive season

The festive 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.
• Look at the best sellers report for trending categories and other insights to help inform your sales strategy.
• Focus on product feed hygiene and utilise 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 see that certain parameters drive higher engagement or ROI.
• During the festive season or other seasonal spikes, ensure that your campaigns have uncapped budgets to capture the full demand.
• Use the report editor to evaluate the performance of on sale and promoted products that you've tagged with a custom label attribute.

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