Google Shopping Automated Promotions Tips

Today I explain how to gain the most out of the new automated promotions feature in Google Shopping.

Which attributes are collected to create the automated promotions?

Unfortunately, there is no official listing other than Sale Price and Free Shipping. However, after digging deep, we have found a lot of info regarding Price Drop, which we will cover in this article.

Google Attributes
- Sale Price & Effective Date
- Free Shipping
- Price
  - Price Drop

Do all features show at the same time?

Not all automated promotions will show at the same time and or in the same section. When we search on Google Shopping, only one promotion will be visible in the results. So it is vital to ensure your promotion is the most tempting compared to your competitor. More promotions might be visible once you click on view details. However, we need to gain that initial click. So what the customer sees first is the most critical factor.

The key to success is to calculate what the customer pays. However, if you can beat your competitor, choose for the latter; however, note that not every promotion, even if it is cheaper, is necessarily better for the customer.

Here are some things to consider

Somebody that wants next-day delivery will not benefit from free delivery.
A percentage might sometimes sound better than a sale price of 25% off vs. $5 off. I prefer 25% even if it is the same.

What if I have all of the features enabled? Which one is shown?

The one that has historically a better performance will be shown most or all the time.

Sale Price

If you want to show the sale price, you have to add the sale price and the sale price effective date inside your data feed, and you can find out more on how to submit the values on Google’s Specification Page. Alongside these attributes, you also need to ensure you adhere to Google’s Landing Page Policy.

Once you have completed these tasks, your sale price might be shown.

Free Shipping

When you have free shipping, you can submit it either in the data feed or in the Merchant Center settings. This will allow your ads to show up with an extra tag (free shipping). A good tip is to try and match your competitors. You want to compete against your competitor, and a study to choose which promotion is more successful is vital.

Price Drop

The price drop feature is an exciting part of automated features. However, the requirements for getting this promotion listed are unknown, so I have collected some research and found the following.

A price drop is considered if the price has been stable for a long time. For example, if a product was selling at $40 for a long duration (30 – 60 days or more), it suddenly drops. Google will consider this as a price drop. The unknown about this is how long a price must be stable before the price drop is triggered. My only suggestion is to try with one product after 30 days, two months, etc., then if it does not work, try again with another product with three months.

Another factor is the popularity of the product. Suppose the impressions during a month are only 100 impressions, then this would not be eligible for a price drop. As the requirements are not met again, my only recommendation would be to have a high CTR between 2 and 3% and high enough impressions.

The percentage at how much the price needs to be dropped to be eligible is unknown, so I have based this on what you must do with Google Merchant Promotions Feed. Here the requirement is 5% or more.

Let’s check what we need