August 22, 2014
Share this Article:
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.
Finding the balance between quantity (large number of clicks/impressions) and quality (relevant) traffic is the aim.
As of August 31st, 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.
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.
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!
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
From powerful brand propositions, customer-centric experiences or creative search campaigns, our proven approach overcomes obstacles and delivers commercial success.
We work fast and break norms by applying innovation, intelligence and creativity to everything we do. We look for people who share our passion and ambition.
Interested in finding out more about how we deliver outstanding results? Speak to our experts today.