Enhancing Your Google Product Listing Ads With Online Shopping Discounts

If you are an online merchant, you are probably familiar with Google Product Listing Ads. To refresh your minds again, these ads are CPC (Cost per Click) ads that can be purchased through AdWords. Oftentimes, these ads will appear on the left in Google search result pages and on top of the main body of organic results. Pay per click agencies state that Product Listing Ads can be easily distinguished as they often feature a product image.

With that in mind, did you know that you enhance your listing ads? Yes, you can do so by offering online shopping discounts. By doing so, you get the opportunity to highlight your products, boost your products’ click through rate, increase conversions, and give potential customers more reasons to buy now. What’s more, you do not incur any additional charges when you include shopping discounts with Product Listing Ads!

Five Different Types of Online Shopping Discounts to Consider

• Rebates that are brand specific. For example, you can do one for each brand you sell. Try to get it sponsored by the products’ manufacturer.
• Percentage discounts (tiered). For example, 3% off orders that are worth $30, and 15% off orders that are worth $100 or more.
• Buy one and get the next at 40% off OR buy one and get the next one free
• Provide free shipping
• Lower the “Free Shipping” threshold

Studies have shown that lowered free shipping thresholds and tiered percentage discounts have achieved the most success as compared to the rest.

Online Shopping Discount Guidelines that Require Adherence

• Adhere to Google Shopping policies
• Adhere to Google’s Editorial Policies
• Combined promotion policies
• Link redemption codes appropriately to free or discounted shipping promotions
• Provide clear confirmation for promotion (discounts) receipts
• Products that are being promoted must be clear to online shoppers
• Avoid being overly restrictive
• Streamline the discount redemption process
• Promotion titles must be clear and concise
• Set promotions and discounts that add value

How Often Should You Run Online Shopping Discounts with Product Listing Ads?

You should run new online shopping discounts every three months because you (the retailer) can only input each discount or promotion for a maximum duration of that exact number of months. With that in mind, you can still create online shopping discount periods and other merchant promotions for the entire year. If you are doing it for a very specific set of products, you can add all four promotion IDs to the respective SKUs in their feeds.

Speaking of feeds, you must make sure that all warning and errors listed for your feed in Google Merchant Center feed must be corrected before setting up Product Listing Ads. If feed errors are left uncorrected, your products will not show. In addition, you might want to set up separate campaigns for PLAs rather than just adding product targets to all existing search campaigns. Do this and you will have more control over budget management and bidding.