Have Your Promotions Ready
We recommend to our clients that you have your promotional discounts signed off by October at the latest – earlier if possible!
Many retailers leave this until the last minute and this gives less time to prepare your assets and campaigns. It’s highly recommended to beat the rush as the ad approval process does become longer at this peak time of the year.
Also, a considerable amount of work goes into ad updates so please bear this in mind too.
Evaluate Your Offers – Promo Codes
Traditionally, many retailers tend to compete with each other in a ‘race to the bottom’ which can create a price war and also eat into your precious margin!
A workaround may be to introduce bundles for example, ‘buy 2 get one free’ which will allow your Average Order Value to increase as customers need to hit a threshold to gain a discount.
Also, the use of promotion codes can be a great tactic as long as your codes have great visibility. Users may think that the code is personalised to them and that they are bagging themselves a bigger discount if marketed correctly.
Utilise Ad Extensions
The primary focus is to ensure your ad headlines and descriptions are prepared in a way that showcases your key USP’s. However, in addition to this it’s important to utilise the available ad extensions as well.
Promotion extensions show below your ad to help showcase key promotions at various times of the year. You can choose from a list of preset events and stipulate your promotion and schedule it to run as long as you want.
Merchant Promotions give online retailers the opportunity to append special offers to their Shopping Ads. These are really valuable as if you’re adding a promo code for example – you can add this to your shopping feed to ensure full visibility across Google Shopping.
Multiple Networks
The use of multiple networks across Google can be key within Q4. More so now in the cost of living crisis as consideration periods are now much longer than they were 2 years ago. Users like to shop around to save as much as they possibly can, whether this be a discount or free delivery.
By utilising the 3 core networks, Shopping, Search, and Display you can create a 360 strategy that allows your brand awareness to thrive. Keeping yourselves at the forefront of customers minds to prevent them from shopping with one of your competitors.
Display can also be significantly cheaper than Search and Shopping so this can be a great way of promoting your offers as well as your brand during Q4.