With the summer season coming to a close, it’s time to start thinking about flogging your stock and preparing for autumn/winter 2014.

So, whether you’re a clothing retailer with a surplus of maxi dresses or a B2B provider advertising a free trial, check out our seven tips for promoting sales with Google AdWords.

How can you utilise AdWords to boost your sales?

Finding the balance between quantity (large number of clicks/impressions) and quality (relevant) traffic is the aim.

Add promotion details to shopping feeds

As of August 31^st, Google is switching Product Listing Ads (PLAs) to fully fledged Shopping campaigns.

The benefit for advertisers is that you can create ad groups by brands, product categories and so on, and assign individual promotions to each. So, if you have a special offer on all Gucci perfume, you can add a new Gucci ad group with the “40% Off Perfumes & Free Next Day Delivery” promotion.

Change ad copy to include “sale” and discount

Sounds like a no-brainer, but don’t forget to test new ad copy with “sale” and “offer” in the Headline, and then highlight your USP/discounts in Description Line 2.

For added emphasis, make sure you amend the Display URL. So www.domain.com/Gucci becomes www.domain.com/Gucci-sale.

Add “sale” keywords

Now your ad copy is changed, make sure you add new keywords. You’d be surprised how many people include “sale”, “deal” and “offer” in their searches — and according to Google Trends, their popularity is on the rise.

Whether you decide to add these keywords as broad or exact, that’s up to you and your budget. But if you’re looking to attract the penny-pinching shopper who’s looking for some super savings, add it as broad match and watch your click-through rate (CTR) increase. Where relevant, add question keywords too!

Create display ads with checkout discount codes — use these for remarketing too

As well as mentioning “Save up to £X” or “Get up to X% off”, include a discount code for added enticement. This also means you can better attribute the exact number of sales from your display ads. Include the code if you’re running remarketing campaigns too — standard or dynamic.

Change sitelinks to sale sub-categories

As well as the generic sale page, it pays to direct bargain hunters to sub-category landing pages.

If you’re wondering which four sitelinks to start with, why not include your best-selling products, the range you have the most stock of, the products with the biggest discounts and those with the highest margin?

Be aware of margins: how much can you bid to ensure a decent return?

You probably want to clear your warehouse as quickly as possible, but make sure you’re sensible about how highly you bid. Don’t let end-of-season sale competition push your discounts too far.

Be sure to factor in the cost price of the item, how much you’re going to make on it at sale price, the cost of ranking in the top three search results, and your current conversion rates.

Utilise start and end dates

Instead of staying up until midnight to enable your campaign, just set up start and end dates as you go! Make sure you do this beforehand, as if you set the campaign to go live immediately, you can’t add a new start date.

Adding an end date is equally important as it’s easy to lose track of time and forget to pause the sale campaigns.

Social bonus!

Got a company Facebook page? Don’t forget to share your display/remarketing ad on Facebook and get yourself some free advertising! You can anyways boost the post or set up a full ad campaign (including remarketing) to target a specific audience, too.

Good luck with your sale! For more information about maximising your PPC budget, get in touch today.