Tis the season for holidays sales!  As 2018 quickly rushes to a close, businesses everywhere are in full-swing trying to make the most of the busiest shopping time of the year. Online sales are projected to grow again this year, and for many businesses, Google Shopping campaigns will be a major factor in overall sales.

In order to make sure your Google Shopping campaigns are optimized for this most wonderful time of the year, here are 3 key ways you can set up your business for success:

1 .Promote Your Discounts

There will be lots of sales going on during the holiday season, and savvy shoppers will be looking for the best deals.  So, you want to make sure you’re promoting any discounts you’re offering, especially in your Google Shopping campaigns.

This is important, because the GoogleShopping arena is full of competition, and you want to make sure you stand out from all other contenders.  You definitely don’t want to be the only seller who is not offering a special promotion.

Luckily, there are multiple ways to make your offer shine.  You could be offering the cheapest price or free shipping.  If your product is of high quality, shoppers will likely still want to see what kind of deal they could get – they’ll probably be happy to pay the extra cost if they perceive that it is worth the value. Ultimately, you want your offer to spark engagement, driving potential customers to your site to see the full range of what you have available.

ProTip: Be sure to opt-in to MerchantPromotions in Google Merchant Center. Merchant Promotions is the feature that enables you to distribute promotions with your Google Shopping ads.

2 .Opt-In to Google Seller Ratings on ShoppingAds

Many online shoppers will be searching for guidance as to which goods and brands they should choose – your job is to persuade them to choose yours.

To make this possible, you want to opt-into Seller Ratings on Shopping ads in Google Merchant Center so that you can gather customer reviews. Social proof is always a powerful persuasive factor in successful marketing.

Seller ratings are also important because Google has begun to rank brands based on their seller rating when shoppers search for the “best” or “top rated” version of a product.  The rankings are determined both by the quality (the ratio of 5- to 1-star reviews) and also the quantity (how many reviews you’ve received overall).  Forth this reason, it’s important to collect as many positive reviews as you can on your site.

ProTip: Create fun incentives to encourage customers to leave you a review, for example, a giveaway or sweepstakes. Even if you sell many products offline, you should still encourage shopping time to visit you online and leave a review. More good reviews = more potential new customers.

3 .Set-Up Custom Labels

One of the best ways to optimize your Google Shopping campaigns is to set up Custom Labels. With custom labels, you’ll be able to subdivide the products in your campaign using values that make the most sense for your offers.  For example, you can use custom labels to identify products as “clearance” or “best-sellers.”  Once you set up these values, you can use them to monitor your campaigns and bid more strategically.

For example, once you set up a product group for “best-sellers” you’ll be able to raise the bids for just these items without having to raise the bids on less popular variations that you know won’t sell as well.

ProTip: Make sure you know where you’re bidding on new releases and best-sellers. If you can’t identify these products, you may be missing out businesses everywhere sales.