Black Friday Tips & How to Set up Promotion Extensions on Google Ads & Google Merchant Center

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End of October and Black Friday creeps up super, super fast and every

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single year, no matter how much you prepare for it, it comes up quickly.

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So we're gonna try to help you prepare as much as you can.

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I would say that my best tip that I give clients is to keep your.

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Promoting as simple as possible because the more that you create in terms

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of complications, , the harder it is for your promotion to be approved

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through Google Merchant Center.

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Hey everyone.

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Welcome back to another episode of Gads Girls.

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My is Mel joining us today we have Leandro, you know, and

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then we also have Carmen she's another CM here at Solutions eight.

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And she's also the manager of the copywriters.

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Hey guys, I'm excited to be on the show with you guys today.

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We're all together.

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Finally, the three dads, girls.

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The three of us, the three Canadian dad girls, Carmen's in Vancouver

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and Landro and I are in Edmonton.

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Right.

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Canadians are taking over everyone we are.

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YouTube channel is Canadian now.

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Oh, I was gonna say, what are we talking about today?

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Yes.

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Awesome.

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We are talking about the best topic that digital marketers all love.

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Black Friday, . It's end of October and Black Friday creeps up super, super fast

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and every single year, no matter how much you prepare for it, it comes up quickly.

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So we're gonna try to help you prepare as much as you can for Black Friday,

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especially if you're an e-commerce.

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All right, awesome.

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So we are looking at the Google Promotions for Merchant Center, I guess quick guide.

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So this will tell you what's allowed, what's not allowed and just give you

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some, I guess, general tips on getting your promotions approved within gmc.

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So, I don't know, Carmen, do you wanna run us through it?

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Sure.

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So I'll just talk about the first one.

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The simplest and easiest one is obviously giving a dollar value, a monetary

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discount or a percentage discount.

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So it could be anything from 20%, 10%, or even $40 off a given amount.

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And then there's also the one where you can have a maximum discount that you give.

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So you're giving a maximum of $40 off a certain promotion

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that you're giving for black.

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Would wanna go through the rest.

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Yeah.

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There's also a free gift option if you wanna add a free gift.

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And we're gonna share this document with you in the description of the

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video so you'll be able to access it.

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I think this comes directly from Google, so they update it as they

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every year with all the new topics.

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Mm-hmm.

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. We can scroll down a bit.

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There's a lot of things that are allowed and a lot of things that are not allowed.

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So this is why we recommend getting your promotion set up as quickly, as early

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as possible before Black Friday because it can take a few days for these to get

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approved and if they get disapproved, then you have to start all over again.

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So it's important to follow these guidelines as closely as possible so

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that you're not stuck the very last minute with the disapproved promotions.

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So you'll see vague discount.

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Store credit points back, doesn't work.

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Some of these are pretty vague, like overly restrictive.

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That's a very vague thing to say.

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But you'll be penalized by, by Google if you follow these.

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Yeah, it looks like if you're just offering a discount to, somebody who's

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in the military that's not allowed or only offering discounts to people who are

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paying with PayPal, that's not allowed.

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So yeah, all promotions restricted to a subset of users, so you can't do that.

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And then I did notice Yeah, there's another one.

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Oh, I was reading a lot of people get really excited when they're putting

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in the name of their promotions in GMC and they'll put, explanation

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marks and they'll put like stars and things to grab people's attention.

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But you have to be super simple.

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You just gotta say what it is.

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Be very clear.

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Don't use any weird acronyms or anything or you will run the risk of

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getting disapproved, unfortunately.

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I would say that my best tip that I give clients is to keep your.

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Promotion as simple as possible because the more that you create from

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the complications, the harder it is for your promotion to be approved

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through Google Merchant Center.

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Mm-hmm.

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. And also one thing that we talked about between the three of us is that you don't

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have to run a sale for Black Friday.

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You don't have to.

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If you're a newer business and.

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Putting up a 20% off your products is going to really hurt you in the long run.

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It might not be the best option.

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You could do something like add on a free gift where, it costs you 60 cents

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to make it or something like that.

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But it's still going to be that value add.

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We have a, I have a tea client and I was on a call with them the other day with

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John and they were just saying, you.

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They're still like very new in the early stages.

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But one of their tea boxes, boxes of different teas cost them very little

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to make, but it would be a really great thing to add on when they're

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selling, other tea products like their users, mugs, whatever it is, as car.

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So tea, good time.

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I was like, speaking of the Carmen, she's not drinking beer.

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It's 10 in the morning here, but she's drinking green tea outta a.

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Stein of tea.

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Yeah, it's a leader Stein , literally from Germany that I

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brought back a few years back.

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Oh, nice.

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another tip of Black Friday for if you work in an agency is

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drinking helps , after hours.

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I was just telling everyone here that I worked in a different agency

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before and I got hired mid-November and right before Black Friday,

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and I thought it was so weird.

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Nobody was talking to me.

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Everyone was just busy and.

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There's just a weird environment and I realized quickly that, oh, it's,

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black Friday Times, and agencies are very strange and stressful times.

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So hopefully these tips will help you be a little bit less stressed.

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The other thing is also not to try and launch a website or launch Google Ads

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like literally during the month of Black Friday because I think you're just going

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to stress yourself out way too much.

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And then even your as is not gonna be approved in the end anyway.

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Yeah, that's very important.

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And I think also there's other things that you can do other than so you have to do

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your GMC promotion, but you can also add extensions, promotion extensions within

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Google Ads, which is very quick to do.

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So I'm gonna show you guys how to set up a, what used to be called a

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promotion extension in Google Ads.

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So this'll apply to leg gen and e-commerce campaigns.

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So if you go into ads and assets.

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Now, so this is what is different.

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It used to be ads and extensions, but recently they changed it to assets.

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So there's all different types of assets that you can add to your campaigns,

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but we're gonna talk about the promotion one, so you can find it here.

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I'm gonna set up a different one.

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So ad promotion, you can add them to the account campaign or ad group.

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What I've found is if you add it to the account, you have to

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also apply it to the campaign.

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So that's super important.

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It's easy to just add it to the account and assume that it's working,

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but they have to be applied to campaigns or ad groups as well.

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We're gonna create anyone, so there's all kinds of options here for whatever

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type of motion that you're running.

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And today we're gonna do Black Friday.

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You choose your language, your currency, and then here is where you get to

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choose what type of offer you're giving.

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So whether it's a dollar discount, a percent discount, up to a dollar

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discount, or up to a percent discount.

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So these are the four options.

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There's no real flexibility outside of these.

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So today, let's say we're offering $20 off.

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What's the right on Black Friday?

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Let's do black high Feel.

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Oh no.

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John always picks the red high heel shoes.

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. I should have done red.

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Red would've fit red here.

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So you only have 20 characters, so that actually ends up being really difficult.

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Sometime is, is playing within that 20 character limit.

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But you'll see here on the side preview exactly what it shows up.

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So you can see that that's what's gonna show up on, like, bolted onto

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your, your ads and then a final url.

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Add that in there.

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I'm just gonna.

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Add a random one there.

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Promotion details.

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You could do either promo code or orders over.

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So if you do a promo code, you can enter it in and it'll enter in the

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exact promo code right there in the app and then orders over it.

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Just help you just add that exact message right here.

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So that gives you a bit.

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More clarification, and here's somewhere that's really important.

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So the displayed promotion updates, this is what shows up as the dates that are

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your ads are actually going to show.

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So let's say I'm choosing October 23rd to October 31st.

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That's what's gonna show up here.

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But that doesn't mean that the ads are gonna show up during these times.

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This is simply the messaging on the ads.

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So that's a big mistake that people make, is thinking that, okay, I've

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set these dates, my ads are, my asset extensions are gonna stop.

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On October 31st, but that's not the case.

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So you have to go down into, advanced options.

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And this is where you set the date range.

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So this is super important.

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So you can set let's say we want it to end on October 31st.

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You can even play around with certain days of the week that they show or time of.

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That's the time of day, but make sure that you have an end date.

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Otherwise, these could continue to run forever and ever until you, you catch it.

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So that is very important.

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This is not a glitch.

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I'm interrupting you're watching because I need to remind you that I'm always

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looking for people to join our team.

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So if you're passionate about Google Ads and you wanna work with the best

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Google Ads agency on the planet, please go to so late.com/apply.

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Speaking of working with the best Google Ads agency on the planet, if you're

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having trouble with Google Ads and you want professional, That's what we do.

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You can go to so late.com, that's s o l eight.com to apply for your

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free, no obligation action plan.

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And if I've given you any level of value at all, maybe think about giving me a

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thumbs up and subscribe to our channel.

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That's how we choose the YouTube algorithm, so they actually know

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that I know what I'm talking about.

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If you have questions, comments, concerns, or confessions, hit me below the comments.

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And now back to your regularly scheduled.

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What's um, interesting about this is within Google Ads, we really

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only have the option to do monetary discount or percentage offset, right.

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For this promotion extension up to, percentage discount.

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Yeah.

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So within the merchant center you also have, the free gift and shipping.

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So I guess the promotion extension will only be applicable if you're

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running the percentage off, right?

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Mm-hmm.

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. Yeah, carmen, do you wanna run us through how to set up the promotion

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extension, or sorry, the promotion and dmc we did the extension already.

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. All right, so lemme just share.

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All right, so we're inside of, actually, I'll just back up a little bit.

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We're inside a Google Merchant Center here, and if you go into marketing and

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then click promotions here, this is where all of your promotions will lie.

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And this is a page that I check quite often during Black Friday because I'm

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like checking, Hey, is it under review?

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Has it been banned?

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And anyways, there's a lot of time spent here just praying to

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the Google Market Center guides.

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Okay, so after you click into the new promotion here, Go into country,

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whichever country that you're trying to set up your promotion for.

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So I'll choose United States.

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The majority of our clients are there.

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Language, English, and then, Here is where you get to play with the

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different promotion categories.

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There is, like I mentioned, the amount off monetary discount percentage off.

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This is where you can have the free gift where inside of the promotion

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extension, Melissa was just talking about does not have the free gift.

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And here you can also offer free shipping.

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So I guess I'll just go in and offer a free gift since we already did

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the, A percentage discount with, so you gonna get free gift here.

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Click on whatever your free gift description is, You can even

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add a minimum purchase amount.

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So say you only want to give people these black high heels.

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If they buy a hundred dollars worth of products on your

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store, you can create this as.

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And then you also do minimum purchase quantity, but these

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both, both of these are optional.

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So you click next and then you get to take into this page here.

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So it's important to note that you have to have a promotion title and promotion.

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Id.

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So if you don't have these, then Google Merchant Center won't approve it.

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So I'm just gonna make mine up right now and call this Black

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Friday twenty twenty three.

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And then the promotion ID is what they determine.

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Here.

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If you wanna have specific products that you want to have a promotion on

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instead of sitewide, then you have to add this, promotion it here, so that it's

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associated with those specific products that you want to run the promotion for.

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So I'm just gonna call it F 23.

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So I talked about this one here where you have to have the specific promotion id.

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Then you can also choose all products, which is when you have a

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Sitewide promotion for your campaign.

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And then you can also create custom filters, which I'm

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not gonna go into today.

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It's a bit longer.

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And, but you can create custom filters for specific product categories that

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you wanted to create a promotion for.

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And then here you have the promotion code.

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But you can also do 2323 and then again, you have your date

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range of let's say 28th to 31st.

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And again, you can change your start time and end time for these campaigns.

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And then afterwards you just click create promotion.

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And that's as simple as it is to create a Black Friday promotion

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in Google Merchant Center.

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Super simple.

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I think people will very much appreciate that.

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Thank you Carmen.

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Alright.

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Is there any other tips or anything we wanna kind of go over?

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I think we've got, we did the promotion extension.

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We did how to set it up in Google Merchant Center.

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I think we're good.

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We'll share this document in the descriptions for you guys to all read.

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And if you have any specific questions or anything that we forgot to cover, just put

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it in the comments and we will get back to you and answer them as quickly as possible

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so that you're all set for Black Friday.

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Awesome.

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Well remember to comment, click, subscribe, do all of those things for

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us, and we'll see you next time on another episode of The Dance Girls.

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Bye.