12 Best Practices for Promotions on Google Merchant Center

For most consumers, online shopping is a must these days. In fact, 87% of shoppers surveyed say knowing they got a good deal is important to them when deciding which brand or retailer to buy from. According to Google Merchant Center, promotions increased conversions increased, CPA dropped, and revenue and return on ad spend jumped. Post purchase promotions can have a lasting impact on loyalty, brand advocacy and the likelihood of future purchases. The statistics show shoppers are looking for discounts.

Setting up promotions within your Google Shopping feed can allow you to enhance your product listing performance and can help encourage shoppers to select your products. When you have a promotion approved this can help boost your clickthrough rate and highlight the products you show on Google. Promotions can display within Google chrome, Google search, as well as the Shopping tab within search results.  

As soon as you submit a Google Shopping Merchant Center feed you are eligible for participating in promotions. You may need to activate this within your Google Merchant Center account and review the promotions policies to ensure that your submitted promotions meet all requirements. There are a few different promotion types that are available when creating a promotion. Google accepts the following types of promotions:  

• Discounts: Percent off, cash back, buy one get one free, or buy one get 2nd percent off 
• Free gifts: Free item or free gift card for a specified value 
• Shipping: Free or discounted shipping 

Typically, when users have an approaching promotion on the feed level, we can oftentimes assist with setting up logic to make it easier when you go to create your promotion in Merchant Center. On the feed level you can map the feed attribute field “promotion_id” to the value you are looking to create using your promotion. Once mapped on the feed and submitted to merchant center you can easily select items with this “promotion_id” when creating your promotion. Using the “promotion_id” attribute field on the feed level helps Google to understand which products have promotions so that they can display the promotions appropriately. 

We recommend the following best practices when it comes to submitting a promotion:   

• State the value of the promotion such as “Free $25 gift card/voucher with purchase”. 
• State the item or service that is valid for the discount such as “Sign up and get 10% off” of “$5 off $20). 
• State the lowest possible value. We’ve seen a common theme with promotions being rejected due to the terms “up to $20 off”. Clearly state the value such as “$10+ off”. 
• Include the max discount available in the title if space permits. Example: 30% off handbags (maximum discount $80).  
• Promotion titles must not include any of the specific redemption details. Coupon codes should be included in the designated code fields.  
• Titles must not exceed character limits of 60 characters.  
• The currency value listed in title must match the country locale for where the promotion is targeted.  
• Promotions must have proper spacing, grammar, spelling, appropriate punctuation and capitalization.  
• Use a unique promotion ID for each promotion.  
• Don’t reuse or recycle the same ID for different promotions.  
• Submit the promotion ID attribute for the specific products in a promotion.

Once your promotion is approved you can monitor during your selected promotion dates and ensure that all goes as expected. Once promotions are implemented correctly you can oftentimes see an increase in conversions and capture multi-screen traffic as Google will display “special offer” links on desktop and mobile devices.  

Need help with mapping the promotion ID within your feed? Be sure to read our blog post explaining how to set up promotions. Or contact our support team for further assistance with setting this up today. Feel free to let us know if you have any additional suggestions on promotions.