What is Google Ads automatic payment?

No matter how much effort youve put into your Google Ads campaign, if you havent taken the time toreview Googles policies, you can end up facing significant issues that could make your whole marketing plan go haywire. Worst of all, your payment could be declined, and your ad rejected.

Recently, Google has been regulating ad disapprovals. These regulations involve stricter policies to control the quality of visible ads. Now, payment issues seldom happen. But when they do, they can throw you off, and youd naturally be worried about being charged too much or too often.

Has your Google Ads payment declined? Worry not. This article will discuss ways to troubleshoot your payment issues and avoid them from arising in the future.

Common Reason Why Google Ads Rejects Your Ads

Google has the power to suspend your Ads account, which means your ads wont show up at all. As a result, your business will see an overall decrease in leads and conversions. Once Google suspends your account, it may:

• Stop you from developing new content or running any ads, including any existing ads.
• Suspend any linked accounts, including payments and email accounts.
• Suspend Merchant Center accounts linked to your suspended Google Ads account.
• Stop you from making any other accounts in the future.

Google Ads payment declined is perhaps the most common reason your Google Ads account becomes suspended or banned. You should carefully go through the Terms and Conditions and Google Ads Policies to ensure that you have an excellent understanding before you start creating ads.

Ways to Solve Google Ads Payment Declined Issue

To resolve a declined payment, youll need to determine why it was rejected in the first place. Typically, you should contact your bank or credit card company to solve the problem.

To figure out how to get your ads up and running again, you need to identify the type of decline youve faced.

1. Credit Card Decline

Figure out the reason for the decline

Check declined payment info by clicking the tool icon and selecting Billing summary under Billing. Youll see the date of the decline, the amount, and if your Credit Card Company or bank shared the reason for the Google Ads payment declined.

Get in touch with your Credit Card Company or bank

If you cant determine why the payment didnt go through, you should contact the bank that issued your credit card. Google Ads support cant help you with any declined charge.

Heres how you should contact your bank:

• Contact the support phone number on the back of your credit card.
• Tell the customer rep that you were trying to pay for Google Ads online, but your payment was declined. Notify them of the date and the rejected amount.
• The rep will give you the exact reason for the decline and help you solve the problem.

Get your ads running again.

Select one of the options below to get your ads working.

• Retry it in your Google Ads if you fixed the issue with your credit card.
• Enter a new card if you couldnt fix the issue with your original card.

If your card issuer or bank is in the European Economic Area, you may have to follow a different authentication process, such as a one-time code sent to your phone.

Option A: Retry your existing credit card

To retry charging your existing credit card, follow these steps:

• Sign into your Google Ads account.
• Click the tool icon, and under Billing, choose billing summary.
• Click Payment methods.
• Find the credit card with the Fix it link.
• Ensure that all the card details are correct.
• Once youve ensured that the payment method is correct, click Fix it above the credit card details.

Retrying your payment method will automatically trigger a payment for your remaining balance. It may take a few hours to process the transaction.

Follow these steps to do the payment:

• Sign in to your Google Ads account.
• Click the tool icon, and under Billing, select Billing summary.
• Click the Make a payment button.
• Select the payment method youd like to use for this one-time payment, which could be a previously added method or a new payment option.
• Enter the amount youd like to pay. The minimum amount required for your ads to run will be shown next to the minimum payment field. Click Make a payment.
• Ensure all the payment details are correct. Click Make payment.

Option B: Enter different billing information

Use a new credit card for your account following these steps:

• Sign in to your Google Ads account.
• Click the tool icon, and under Billing, choose Billing summary.
• Click Payment methods.
• To edit any info find the credit card you want to update, and click Edit.
• To edit the credit card number or add a new credit card, click Add payment method and enter the latest information.
• Click Save.
• Find the credit card you just entered, and click the Set as Primary link. This process sets the credit card you just entered as your primary payment method.

Solutions for the most common declined payment reasons.

• The account doesnt have enough funds Ensure there are sufficient funds in your account, then retry your credit card.
• Youve exceeded the cards credit limit or single transaction limit Contact your bank to increase the limit, then retry your credit card.
• The card expired Enter a new credit card.
• You entered an incorrect card number or CVV/CVN number Re-enter your credit card info carefully.
• The issuing bank doesnt allow the use of the card for internet or international transactions Contact your bank to allow these types of transactions, then retry the credit card. Or enter a new card that provides internet or international transactions.
• You exceeded the maximum number of charges the card can receive in a period Contact your bank to find a solution, then retry the credit card. Alternatively, you can enter a new card.
• Your bank may not support Strong Customer Authorization It is needed to authenticate your card or payment in the European Union. Contact your bank to find out if it supports Strong Customer Authentication. Otherwise, youll need to use another payment option.

2. Direct Debit (Bank Account) Decline

If your bank account payment appears as declined in your account, your bank may not allow you to charge your account. Heres how you can get your ads running again:

• Determine the reason for the decline
• Contact your bank

Choose one of the options below to get your ads running again.

Option A: Make a payment by credit card or real-time bank transfer

The quickest way to get your ads running again is to make a payment by credit card. A real-time bank transfer is also available in some countries (such as Austria, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden).

Google Ads doesnt recommend using regular bank transfer in this situation as it takes much longer. Payments by credit card or real-time bank transfer usually process within a business day, and your ads will be able to run within 24 hours.

Heres how to make a payment:

• Sign in to your Google Ads account.
• Click the tool icon, and under Billing, choose Billing summary.
• Click the Make a payment button.
• Select the payment method youd like to use for this one-time payment.
• Enter the amount of the payment youd like to make. Click Make a payment.
• Ensure all the payment details are correct, then click Make Payment. If you used a new payment method to pay off your balance, a prompt to re-enable your primary payment method will appear.
• After the payment process, update or re-enable your primary payment method to use it in the future.

Option B: Re-enable your bank account

If you resolved the issue with your bank, and youd like Google Ads to try charging it again for your overdue balance, follow these steps:

• Sign in to your Google Ads account.
• Click the tool icon, and under Billing, choose Billing summary.
• Click the Payment methods link from the menu on the left.
• Find your bank account with the Fix it link.
• Check to ensure that all the bank details are correct.
• Once youve made sure that your bank account will work, click the Fix it link.
• After you re-enable the bank account, your payment will typically process within three to five business days, and your ads will be able to run within 24 hours afterward.

Option C: Add a new bank account

If youd like to use a different bank account for this payment, youll have to change your primary payment option. Youll need to either send Google a new direct debit authorization or verify a test deposit in the new bank account.

Heres how you can change your primary payment option to a new bank account:

• Sign in to your Google Ads account.
• Click the tool icon, and under Billing, choose Billing summary.
• Click Payment methods.
• Find the appropriate payment method, and click Edit.
• Enter your updated information. Youll need to send a new debit authorization or verify the new bank account before your ads can run.
• Click Save when completed.
• Once youve entered your billing information, and Google Ads receives your bank account verification or authorization, Google initiates a charge of the remaining balance.

Solutions for the most common declined payment reasons.

• The account doesnt have enough funds Check your bank account to ensure it has sufficient funds.
• The account owners name doesnt match the info you provided Update your billing info with the correct details.
• The issuing bank doesnt allow using the bank account for online or international transactions Contact your bank to allow these types of transactions.
• The bank account doesnt exist anymore Update your billing info with a different bank account or a credit card.

3. A Declined Payment If Youre Monthly Invoicing

If you recently changed payment settings from automatic payments to monthly invoicing, and have a remaining balance left over, follow these steps to pay off your account:

• Sign in to your Google Ads account.
• Click the tool icon, and under Billing, choose Billing summary.
• Click the Billing transfers from the menu on the left.
• Click the Invoice setup for which youd like to make a payment.
• Click Summary from the menu on the left.
• Click the Make a Payment button to make a payment for your outstanding balance.

How to Re-enable a Declined Payment Method in Google Ads

If your Google Ads payment declined, the option might be disabled in your Google Ads account. Before re-enabling with the steps below, call your bank or credit institution to ensure you can use the payment method in your Google Ads account, if necessary.

• Sign in to your Google Ads account.
• Click the tools icon, and under Billing, click Billing settings.
• Click Payment methods from the left menu.
• Find your payment method, and check to ensure that all details are correct for this payment option.
• Click the Re-enable payment method.

Common Concerns Regarding the Google Ads Payment Charges

Google Ads wont charge you more than your advertising costs. These costs dont include taxes or fees that may apply to some countries. Your charge covers:

Charged amount = Current costs (costs from this billing period) + Outstanding balance (unpaid fees from previous billing periods)

If your total advertising costs are more significant than your payment threshold (the amount that triggers a charge), the extra costs will be added to your outstanding balance for the next order.

Following are some concerns that can help clear your mind about the Google Ads payment charges.

Charged More Than Once in a Month

Charges dont typically happen once a month or at the end of the month. They can occur several times throughout the month and are based mainly on thresholds or the set amount of costs your account reaches. This amount triggers a charge, meaning Google may charge you more than once a month.

For example, if your threshold is $500, Google will charge you every time your costs reach $500 within the same month. If your expenses total $2,000 in a month, youll be charged $500 four times (4 x 500 = 2,000).

Identical Charges

Although rare, if you see two identical charges from Google Ads on your credit card or bank statement, there might be two reasons:

• Authorization request This is a request between Googles billing system and the bank that issued your credit card. It usually disappears within several days.
• Double charge An error can cause a double charge, which means your account is billed twice for the same amount, and neither charge shows pending on your statement.

If your bank statement shows any of these reasons, contact your bank for help.

Charged for More Than Average Daily Budget

Internet search traffic varies from day-to-day. To compensate for these variations and ensure that your campaigns reach their full potential, Google may allow up to 2x more interactions in a day than your average daily budget specifies.

Google Ads call this over delivery. However, Googles system ensures that in a given billing period, youre never charged more than the number of days in that billing period multiplied by your average daily budget.

For example, if you budget US$10 per day, and Google charges for a monthly billing period, the maximum you would pay is US$304.

If Google over-delivers your ads and you accrue more costs in a billing period than your budget allows, a credit will automatically be applied to your account. For instance, if you accrue $100 in clicks in one month, but you have an average daily budget of $2 per day (and, therefore, $60 per monthly billing period), youll receive a $39.2 overdelivery credit.

To check whether youve received any overdelivery credits, follow these steps:

• Sign in to your Google Ads account.
• At the top of the page, click the tools icon, and then under Billing, choose Summary.
• Click Transactions from the menu on the left.
• Click Campaign activity.
• Any credits for the excess activity will be labeled Over delivery credit.

Charged After Already Initiating a Manual Payment

If you use the automatic payment setting and then make a manual payment, Google may charge you on your automatic billing cycle. Heres why:

• An automatic payment was already in progress when you initiated your payment.The automatic payment cycle is punctual, so Google may still charge you if you made your payment when this process was underway.
• You reached the end of your billing cycle Once you make a manual payment, your account returns to its usual billing cycle. Youll receive an automatic charge after your account costs reach your payment threshold.

Charged After Entering a Promotional Code

After yourpromotionalcredit is over, your ads will continue to run, and youll accrue advertising costs. If youve consumed your credit and want to stop accruing fees, pause your campaigns.

Charged Outside Billing Cycle

You might be charged outside your billing cycle in the following cases:

• Youve made a manual payment.
• Google may have recently upgraded your account to a new billing interface.

Charged After You Stopped Your Ads or Canceled Your Account

Once you stop your ads from running by canceling your account or pausing or removing your campaigns, the Google Ads system can take several hours to stop your ads completely.

At this point, you wont accrue any more costs. However, youll be billed for any unpaid advertising costs that accrued before your ads stopped running.

To see whether you have any unpaid advertising costs:

• Click the tools icon, and then under Billing, choose Summary.
• Next, look at your current balance at the top of the page.

Charges on Bank Statement Dont Match Your Google Ads Account

Sometimes, your bank statement charges are different from those you see in your Google Ads account. Here are some common reasons why:

Charges are off by a day or two.

Often this is expected because both Google Ads and banks operate on different systems, so payments dont always happen simultaneously.

Bank charges arent appearing in Google Ads.

If this occurs, heres what you can do to review the two accounts:

• For more than one Google Ads account, check each account to see if the charges appear (in many cases, your 10-digit customer ID number is shown on your bank statement).
• If you still cant determine where the charge is coming from, you can contact Googles support team.

Wrap Up

With such a vast list of ad policies, it can be overwhelming to make an ad thats aligned with Googles standards, resulting in the occasional ad disapproval. Ensure your ads follow Googles standards, and know precisely how to solve any issues quickly and easily.

Ad disapprovals can be challenging and can even suspend an account for repeat offenders. Using these tips andreviewing Google updates, you can resolve any Google Ads payment declined issues and set yourself up to avoid getting stuck with these issues down the line.

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Retail Marketing Strategy Example to Help You Get New Customers During the Holiday Season

The holidays are always a crucial time of the year for marketing teams. For some companies, the entire year depends on a successful holiday season. Its a period of increased demand, more in-store staffing, supply chain pressures, spikes in orders and more.

There is even more on the line this year due to the global coronavirus pandemics disruption to the retail space. Many of these aforementioned challenges (more demand, staffing, etc.) are minimized or altered due to the new normal of the COVID situation.

Throughout the year, companies have experienced temporary and permanent closures, limited inventory, supply chain interruptions, substantial shipping delays and much more. All eyes seem to be on the Internet this holiday season, which means online competition will be through the stratosphere.

This discussion will look at retail marketing strategy examples that are sure to help you prosper during this hyper-competitive time.

Without any further delay, lets get started.

Ecommerce Sales On The Rise, Even Without The Pandemic

While the pandemic has stirred the pot and forced the hands of many businesses to turn to ecommerce in order to stay afloat during these times, it arguably only fast-tracked the inevitable.

Every year, the balance between online and brick-and-mortar sales tipped more heavily in favor of ecommerce. Prior to the pandemic, ecommerce sales were growing higher and faster than in-store sales.

Theres no doubt that this trend would have continued, with or without a global pandemic. However, with nearly all Americans preferring to stay and shop from home, traditional businesses are scrambling to adapt to an ecommerce business model.

That said, this shift shouldnt be seen as a survival strategy. Its about adapting to the future and the expectations of the consumer market. These are changes that started to occur long before anyone was talking about the coronavirus.

When the holidays rapidly approach, retailers need to plan strategically on how best to approach the heavy online competition during this time. With the right plan in place, youll generate sales with plenty of new customers to make it a brighter year.

Setting Goals To Measure Your Holiday Performance

Ecommerce is a different beast compared to in-store retail. This means that you need to develop a marketing plan and set goals unique to the online environment. These goals will dictate what you want to achieve and how youll complete these set objectives.

When you have a clear direction set, it is easier to implement strategies that will drive the performance and results that you want. Its about focusing on what matters most to the growth of your business!

Here are four goal-setting steps to get you started for the holiday season:

1.Define Your Goals:You should have an overarching, primaryobjectivefor this holiday season. It may be a sales number you want to reach, or how many new customers you hope to convert. You can make your goals broad or very specific. A common technique to setting goals is to use the SMART system, which makes sure that your goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-based.

2. Set Your Metrics:Once you have a goal, you need to think about what it takes to achieve that objective and what sort of figures you need to look at to measure progress. Your chosenmetricsneed to align with your goal. For example, if your goal is related to generating new customers during the holiday season, then your metrics would be things like first-time website visits, counting sales from new customers and looking at the value of those transactions.

3. Start Planning:Now you have a direction and the ability to measure progress. Its time to start planning and figuring out what you need to be successful. This step includes deciding who will be responsible for what and how each team member will participate in the holiday program. You should collaborate as a team and start brainstorming what strategies, tactics and actions can be taken to help the company reach its goal, as well as when these steps will be performed.

4. Analyze, Learn, Adjust And Optimize:Ecommerce marketing and sales have the benefit of showing near-instant results. This means that management is a big step in the process. You need to monitor your results every day and see how your goal progress is coming along. Pay close attention to what products, keywords and offers that your customers are using the most. Also, be sure to test new strategies! The fast results of ecommerce allows you to test and compare things like call-to-actions, ad messages, email subjects, landing pages and more.

How To Capitalize During The Holiday Shopping Season

The typical vision of shoppers lining up for the hottest new toys and deals for the holiday season isnt quite. In one report, a third of US shoppers that normally would shop in-store for Black Friday said that they wont this year.

Moreover, many of US shoppers said that they would shop online more on coming years compared to previous years. This also included browsing for gift ideas and doing research online, rather than in-store. So, when customers do shop in-person, you can expect that theyll go right for the products that they need and not browse other aisles.

Here are some specific challenges and trends to be prepared for in this unique year.

1-Prepare For Cyber Week

You could expect Black Friday to be followed up by Cyber Monday, the online shopping equivalent. With more people turning to their computers and other devices to shop this season, you can expect that the usual Cyber Monday will become Cyber Week.

How To Capitalize:Dont put all your eggs in one box, or one day. Instead, plan your cyber sales to extend deeper into the holidays. You can capture early and late holiday traffic by spreading out your ad budget and marketing strategies throughout the season. For Google Ads users, make sure that you have enough budget to keep yourSmart Shopping CampaignsandSmart Biddingstrategies going for the entire month.

2-Frugal Shoppers

Many consumers are entering the holiday season with a particularly tight fist on their wallets. A lot of people have lost jobs or had their income reduced dramatically during this time, which means they arent going to be as willing to spend unless its a very good deal.

How To Capitalize:Be sure to heavily promote sales, price drops and other tactics. People are going to have a keen eye on social media, online ads and other messages to find the best deals possible and save the most money. If your on-sale items arent easily discoverable, you will miss out on valuable transactions!

3-New Digital Shoppers

Some of the shoppers that are making the change from in-person retail to online ecommerce are relatively new to the digital shopping experience. These are people that have shopped online a few times before, but are much more comfortable with the traditional retail experience. This presents a few challenges that your business needs to adapt to.

How To Capitalize:Simplicity is key. If your online shopping experience is overwhelming or includes too many steps, it may get in the way of customers completing sales, especially if they are already uncomfortable with the online environment. Eliminate friction wherever you can by reducing the number of steps it takes for visitors to checkout with their items. Its also crucial that any shopping or search ads you may be running are connected to the right product pages on your website. You dont want customers to have to go digging for what they want!

Its also worth mentioning that recently Google Ads made product shopping listings free. This is a great tactic to take advantage of this holiday season. Since Google is a trusted and popular search tool, even inexperienced online shoppers will feel comfortable buying products theyve connected to through these product listings.

4-Dont Neglect Your Old Digital Shoppers

Just because there are a lot of new customers hitting the online stores instead of the malls and brick-and-mortar shops, that doesnt mean you should forget about your existing customers or experienced online shoppers. With more and more sales occurring online each year, the vast majority of your audiences are well-versed in what to expect and know what to look for.

How To Capitalize:Mobile is always an important area when it comes to online sales. The holidays are an incredibly busy time, pandemic or not, which means that a lot of customers are shopping on-the-go via a mobile device. Be sure that your online shopping experience is flawless when browsed with a mobile device. This means paying attention tomobile site speed, load times, interactivity and more.

5-The New, Hybrid Shopping Experience

Unless your area goes into a lockdown in the next month and a half, you can still expect to see some shoppers arriving in-person. However, as mentioned, these customers will not be browsing, researching and comparing prices like normal. This hybrid shopping experience turns your physical store into a transaction point. By the time the customer walks through the door, theyve already decided what theyre buying. They may have even purchased online and have only come to the store to pick up their order.

How To Capitalize:Pay close attention to your online sales and website activity. What products, brands and categories are customers looking at the most? These activities will also influence what items are most popular at your physical retail locations. If youre running shopping ads on Google, the best sellers report will let you identify these top items.

Its also a good strategy to update your business profile on Google with any new information, especially if you offer additional services during the pandemic, like curbside pickup, contactless transactions, etc. Utilizing local inventory ads will further blend the online with the in-person and allow you to sell in-store items to nearby audiences through the Internet.

6-Understand The Purpose Driven Shopper

One of the most interesting consumer trends is whats known as purpose driven shopping. This is where consumers use their purchasing power as a means of supporting businesses with shared values and ideals. In the ecommerce world, customers have so many options to choose from that simple price and quality comparisons are no longer the only ways to measure products. Todays customers look for businesses that support causes, commit to sustainable practices, get involved in the community, etc.

How To Capitalize:Let customers know about your businessbeyondits products. Develop site pages, social media content and other materials that showcase some of the qualities of your business that are not immediately seen on the surface. Adding these details to your Google My Business page is also a huge benefit. What do you do for your community? What causes do you support? How do you run your business? Answering these questions will help customers feel attached to the purpose behind your brand and products. Need some inspiration? Try to get involved in a toy drive this holiday season. Its a perfect way to give back and demonstrate to your customers that youre fully invested in the giving spirit!

7-Be Ready For The Unknown

Theres plenty to speculate about how this holiday season will go and what sort of consumer trends to look for. However, if the previous year has taught us anything, its that things can change very quickly and unexpectedly. There is no way to tell exactly what this end of year will look like, but adapting to the challenges listed in this section should help you handle the majority of the coming obstacles.

How To Capitalize:Here are a few more details to help you prepare for this holiday season.

• Identify and segment your repeat customers and the newcomers. Be sure to target each appropriately.
• Always monitor your digital strategies and ecommerce performance and look for ways that you can improve.
• Showcase Shopping ads can let you advertise a group of closely related products together.
• Discovery ads can help you build the crucial brand awareness that helps drive long-term sales. These ads can appear on YouTube, Gmail and other popular websites and platforms.
• Pay close attention to what products and pages are attracting the most attention. How can you capitalize on this information both online and in-person?
• Look at other retail marketing strategy examples for this holiday season to find inspiration on how to elevate your own business efforts to the next level.

How Small Businesses Can Deal With COVID-19 During The Holiday Season

Despite all of the aforementioned challenges, the biggest one is still the gigantic elephant in the room: COVID-19. Throughout the pandemic, manysmall businesseshave discovered just how fragile their organization is, especially with lockdowns forcing these companies to shut their doors for extended stretches of time.

Unfortunately, COVID-19 continues to put pressures on the entire globe and, with cases rising again, we could see more rules and stricter guidelines implemented during this holiday season. Take a look below at some of the ways you can manage the biggest challenge of all and offer your customers a safe shopping experience that abides by all of the latest rules.

1-Plan Early And Often

The earlier you start planning, the better. If you havent begun making preparations for the holidays, youre already behind! However, its not too late to start now. Plus, with COVID thrown into the mix this year, any preparations can go out the window. This means that even existing plans will have to be adjusted as the season progresses. As youre making your plan, always have contingencies in place. For example, what happens if your supply chain becomes interrupted? Or, shipping costs suddenly spike?

2-Stay Positive

This is not easy considering the relative nightmare that 2020which means your business was having its busiest time of the year. Thats a good thing! Even though your brick-and-mortar sales may be down, your ecommerce business will be booming! Plus, with talks of a vaccine coming soon, consumer confidence is rising.

3-Strengthen Your Ecommerce

With the majority of consumers reporting that they will increase their online shopping this holiday season, its important that you reinforce your ecommerce strategy. Its like getting your house ready for a holiday party; you need to make sure everything is cleaned, prepared and ready to begin receiving guests.

Here are some steps to get your ecommerce site ready for the holidays:

• Double and triple-check your product pages and online ads to make sure that they are accurate and linked properly.
• Review your Google My Business, Yelp and social media profiles and make sure they include all relevant information that customers may need (store hours, services, phone number, website address, etc.)
• Measure your inventory levels and replenish any products that are running low. You want to have plenty of stock availablebeforethe holiday shopping rush kicks off.
• Sync inventory between brick-and-mortar locations and your online ecommerce store.
• Offer COVID-safe services like curbside pickup, contactless transactions, delivery and more.

Convenience and safety are the two most important factors. You want the shopping experience to be as easy as possible, whether it takes place online, in-person or a combination of both. And, when shopping does happen in-person, you want it to be as safe as possible for both your customers and your staff.

4-Dont Ignore Your Store

Yes, ecommerce is going to take center-stage this year (and probably for years to come). However, thats not a reason to neglect your physical stores. Brick-and-mortar retail is not going anywhere. It will undoubtedly play some role in this years holiday shopping. Again, its important that your store locations follow all of the local, state and federal guidelines with regards to safe shopping during the COVID-19 pandemic.

One of the ways that customers feel safest during these times is a clean environment. Its not just about following all the guidelines, but also showcasing that you are invested in the safety of everyone that enters your store. Here are a few ways you can achieve this:

• Place hand sanitizing stations at key locations, like at the entrance of the store.
• Keep high-traffic areas clean and routinely wiped down for sanitation purposes.
• Take the time to train staff on cleaning and safety processes.
• If your store uses shopping carts or baskets, task someone with wiping down the handles.
• Place arrows on the ground to guide foot traffic and reduce congestion.
• Ensure that staff have masks, gloves and other safety equipment at all times.

5-Manage Your Retail Inventory Ahead Of Time

This point has been stated before in this guide, but it is worth describing in greater detail. Even without the impact of COVID, managing inventory during the holiday season can be a real problem. You want to take necessary precautions well ahead of this crucial shopping period in order to be absolutely certain that you have enough stock.

• Look at your past holiday seasons to better forecast how many sales you expect to have.
• Get in contact with suppliers and get a heads up if they expect to have any delays.
• Be sure to have extra inventory available for items that are involved in promotions and sales; they always sell out quickly!

6-Add An Outdoor Shopping Space

A lot of the concerns that people have regarding COVID have to do with being confined indoors in a space filled with strangers. Individuals are much more at ease when they are outdoors. If possible, think about how you can create an outdoor shopping space in your parking lot, curbside or sidewalk area. You may have to check with local regulations beforehand.

If you have limited space to work with, opt for a curbside pickup booth. Remember, most shoppers already know what products they are interested in. If you can offer a service where they can order online and pick up outside the store, thats an awesome shopping experience during these times.

7-Stay In Capacity Guidelines

This concept of curbside pickup can be a great way to minimize foot traffic inside your store, which will ensure that you stay within the capacity guidelines. For instance, you could offer a service where a staff member retrieves the items for the guest and brings them outside to a mobile POS to complete the transaction. This keeps them from having to enter the store and offers a very COVID-safe experience.

Other strategies to consider are:

• Post your peak and off peak hours on social media and business profile pages. This allows customers to choose when to show up and how to avoid high-capacity times.
• Offer extended hours to ensure that everyone gets a chance to come in, even with capacity restrictions.
• Create a space for a queue to form outside when capacity is at its maximum.

8-Promote Your Holiday Safety!

Youre making all of these extra efforts to produce a convenient and safe experience for customers that still want to shop in-person. Dont forget to let your customers know about them! Update your website, send out a newsletter and publish social media content that communicates how youre approaching safety and cleanliness during the pandemic. This will encourage customers that are on the fence about holiday shopping to feel comfortable with visiting your store.

9-Post Regularly On Social Media

This is another strategy that is effective even without the COVID situation. Many customers rely on social media to get the latest updates about their favorite brands and businesses. This is particularly true during the holiday season. They want to get the latest deals and special promotions. Social media is incredibly effective at managing relationships with customers, whether they are new or old, ecommerce or in-person shoppers. For this reason, you should post regularly on your social media accounts and tailor content to all of your audience segments.

10-Email Communications

Similar to posting regularly on social media, you should also communicate effectively through your email newsletter. This is great for re-engaging past customers that have signed up to receive email communications from your business. Let them know about the COVID-safe environment that your stores offer, as well as any sales or promotions available on your ecommerce site. Emails are exceptional because your customers are much more likely to see these messages. Social media sites, on the other hand, use algorithms to make your posts less visible to users.

Key Retail Marketing Strategy Examples To Get You Started

To help retailers prepare for the upcoming holiday season, here are some key digital strategies to make a success!

Increase Agility And Reduce Costs

There is an unpredictability about the COVID-19 situation that will continue to impact the entire world. For retailers, this could mean significant shifts in buying patterns, preferences, purchasing power/confidence and more. Ecommerce has the unique ability to keep your retail business agile. Its this speed that can counteract the unpredictability and reduce costs in the long term.

There are three things to consider when it comes to having an agile and cost-efficient ecommerce platform.

1. Choose Your Ecommerce Platform Wisely:There are a lot of ecommerce services that all promise to make your online sales more manageable and successful. That said, not every ecommerce platform is built the same. You need a system that is reliable, efficient and built for scalability. If your business changes, your ecommerce platform should have the ability to match your most current needs, whether big or small.

Some business owners opt for a cheap ecommerce service because they undervalue just how important online shopping really is. This will be a costly mistake. If you dont have time to change your ecommerce platform this holiday season, it should be your number one priority in 2021.

2. Effortless To Scale:The boom of holiday shoppers can easily put a strain on your ecommerce site, which results in slower page loads and other issues. Its a well-known fact that the vast majority of shoppers, as high as 91%, will leave a website if the pages are taking too long to load.

If youre still operating with an outdated system, your site will suffer greatly with the added strain of your holiday site traffic. It is time to move from your current system to the cloud. Cloud infrastructure is undeniably more flexible, especially in terms of scalability. When traffic spikes, the system adjusts and doesnt crack under the pressure.

3. Reduce Costs:The flexibility that cloud-based systems offer isnt just about scalability, but also costs. You shouldnt have to invest in fixed hardware to handle the influx ofwebsite trafficfor a single month. That math just doesnt add up!

You wouldnt buy a car just to drive for a two week vacation. You rent a car instead. In a way, a cloud system is like renting the resources you need, when you need them. You can dial up your cloud resources at the start of the holidays and then return to your normal needs once the rush ends.

This is a significant way to reduce your costs during this hectic time, while still ensuring that your site visitors have the best experience possible.

Improve Inventory Visibility

One of the easiest and most substantial ways to damage the customer experience is not having enough inventory of key items. Inventory management is especially crucial during the holiday season. Not only do products move very quickly, but customers dont have the luxury of waiting a week or two for you to receive more inventory. They need items now to have them ready for the holidays.

The best way to protect your retail business from running out of inventory is with an insight-based inventory management solution. With modern inventory management tools and analytics, you can see real-time stock levels and track your inventory across all channels. This level of visibility offers exceptional accuracy and allows you to correct any potential out-of-stock items well before the inventory is actually depleted.

While you can find a successful retail marketing strategy example that still relies on traditional inventory tracking methods, these businesses never had to deal with holiday shopping during COVID-19. This year, the lines between offline and online are going to blur as businesses need to offer creative fulfillment options that allow customers to shop and receive items in a safe way.

Largely what this means is that customers are going to be reserving or buying items online, before making an in-store appointment or curbside pickup to receive the items. This blending of online and offline will create inventory management challenges that require a more sophisticated tool to track and monitor.

Otherwise, you could end up with customers arriving curbside for items that are not available. Thats a great way to ruin your holiday business!

Understand Your Customers

With the majority of people spending the bulk of their time indoors and even working from home, theres more time than ever before to commit to shopping online. This also means that there is more time to research and compare products and companies. In order to stand out in this hunt for value, you need to have a deepunderstanding of your customers. This will help you distance yourself from the competition by offering an exceptional customer experience.

Understanding your customers on a deep, individual level is a three step process that starts with your data and ends with developing personalized communications.

1.Unified Data Strategy:Your data can tell you everything that you need to know about your customer. However, accessing that data, understanding it and implementing the insights gained is a significant challenge. This is a significant distinction. The majority of retailers report that their data availability is good or very good. Yet, 65% say that theiruseof data to improve decision-making is poor or very poor.

The problem that many businesses run into is that you have data from multiple platforms, tools and channels. If this information isnt unified into one, cohesive strategy, it is very difficult to use. Once you gather your data into a single place, then you need to prepare it for analysis. This means getting data from different channels to talk with one another so that they can exist in the same analysis.

2. Optimize Search And Recommendations:Once you have your data collected and unified, you can begin enhancing your shopping experience by providing customers with more of what they love. Pay close attention to overall customer tastes at a large scale. For instance, you can see what items are typically purchased together or most often.

These insights are not very deep within your data, which makes them easy to bring to the surface and use. That said, with baseline product recommendations, you can significantly improve your customer experience and even increase the value of each conversion by encouraging customers to add additional items to their carts.

3. Personalize:As your data and your understanding of that data and how to use it sophisticates, you can dig deeper and find insights that allow you topersonalizeyour strategies for each unique guest. Offering personalized customer experiences is one of the leading trends that business executives and professionals often cite in retail marketing strategy examples.

When selecting a brand or company to do business with, customers are far more likely to choose the one that offers personalized messages and content. Its like the restaurant that remembers your name and your favorite order, which you love coming back to. Individual insights are harder to obtain, but they will produce hyper loyal customers with extremely high lifetime values. A personalized shopping experience ensures that your previous 2020 customers willreturn for 2021, 2022 and beyond.

Provide Better Customer Service At Scale

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a lot of new customer service challenges. Wait times are higher, stores have queues just to get in, supply chains have become disrupted, shipping times have increased and so much more.These pressures will only heighten when the holiday season kicks into fifth gear. If you cant rise to meet these increased customer service expectations, youll struggle to gain a competitive advantage. Luckily, there are a few retail marketing strategies to implement that will empower your customer service at scale.

• AI-Powered Customer Service:With customers researching, comparing and shopping online, having digital customer service agents is crucial. Virtual agents can provide these answers right away, but they need to respond instantly. An AI-powered chatbot can achieve this, while also freeing up your human agents to handle the more complex customer service requests. Chatbots have come a long way in recent years and are great at mimicking natural conversion. They act quicker than humans and provide detailed recommendations based on the users request(s).
• Application Programming Interfaces (APIs):APIs allow you to utilize certain mobile app functions. For example, if you were to look up movie tickets via the voice assistant on your phone and order the tickets within the voice app, thats the work of an API that is giving access and data to the voice assistant. With the right APIs, you can deliver products via mobile apps and produce a new revenue channel altogether. Its an efficient way to provide mobile functions without having to develop your own app.
• Fast, Frictionless Checkout Experiences:One of the strongest expectations of customers is a painless experience at checkout. This is especially true in the online environment because checkout processes are often so clunky and require multiple hurdles. Even the simple process of entering your card info and shipping address can be too time consuming. Take advantage of easier payment and checkout methods, like Google Pay or Apple Pay. These services store this information for the customer and allow them to enter shipping and payment information with one click. This can be a benefit for both the ecommerce sideandyour brick-and-mortar store.

How Can Google Help Retailers

There are so many different ways to prepare for holiday season that knowing where to start can be very overwhelming. Leaning on the support of partners like Google can be a great start that will help you in both planning and executing your retail marketing strategy. Combining Googles services with your existing technologies and strategies will be your recipe for success in coming years.

Why Google? With all of the tools, services and platforms under the Google brand, it is easily the most robust suite of marketing tools to bolster your ecommerce and brick-and-mortar business. In this section, well look at just some of these tools and how they can be the star on the top of the tree for your retail marketing strategy.

Google Cloud

Ready to take your business to the cloud? Remember, a cloud-based infrastructure offers the exceptional agility, scalability and reduced costs that every business could use during these uncertain times. Google Cloud is a broad platform that includes over 90 products. These industry solutions will help you succeed this holiday season and the next.

What can you find within the Google Cloud platform? Not only will you receive cloud management solutions that will help you operate more efficiently, but the Google Cloud is also where youll find APIs for things like Google Maps, Assistant, Images and more.

The sheer size of Google Clouds offerings mean that there is a solution for any and all of your business problems. When it comes to the holiday season, the biggest benefit is the peace of mind that your ecommerce business wont collapse under the weight of this busy shopping time.

Google Ads

When you want to reach prospective customers directly with your products and services, there are few channels on the Internet as powerful as Google Ads. Deep targeting options allows you to find almost any audience segment, no matter how niche or specific.

Not to mention, Search and Product Listing ads allow you to capitalize on Googles mammoth search engine. Meanwhile, you can use Display Ads to reach audiences on YouTube and Gmail. Essentially, Google Ads allows you to turn some of the Internets most popular websites into a powerful channel to connect with target audiences and convert sales.

Google Ads also brings a lot of useful features to marketers. Smart Bidding options, for example, mean you can spend less time agonizing over your ad placement bids. Ad extensions are another great feature that add details like a business address, phone number and other information to your ad messages, thereby giving customers more ways to connect and interact.

Google My Business

There are many instances where customers are not searching for specific products, but general information about your business. Theres no better way to collect and share this information than with aGoogle My Business listing. When a customer searches for your business on Google, theyll see an organized breakdown of all of your business essential details in an info pane at the top of the results.

A Google My Business listing includes basic information like your business address, phone number, website link and hours. It also displays other important details, such as frequently asked questions and answers, peak hours, reviews, pictures and special services, like in-store pickup, curbside pickup, delivery and other options.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, these extra details are crucial for drawing business to your brick and mortar store. Customers want to know that youre open, but they also want to plan their in-store shopping trips carefully to maximize their safety. With your Google My Business listing, customers can see your business off-peak hours, as well as what services you provide to create safer transactions.

Wrap Up

Finding success in the holiday season this year and moving forward will be based on your ability to adapt to the uncertainty and unpredictability you had experienced in 2020. The lingering effects of the pandemic indicate that shoppers will continue to prioritize ecommerce. But, there will still be shoppers that show up in-person, too.

The best retail marketing strategy example to follow for the holiday season is a hybrid approach that incorporates ecommerce and brick-and-mortar business into one, cohesive strategy. This means allowing customers to research and shop online, but then receive their purchases and interact in-person at your safe and convenient brick-and-mortar store.

These are trends that will persist long after the holiday season. So, even if holiday business doesnt boom this year because of COVID-19, adopting the strategies discussed in this guide will help you into the next year and beyond.

At the end of the day, holiday shoppers still expect many of the same things that they always do: great offers and sales, amazing customer experiences, flawless service, etc. If you can deliver those, while also blending your online and offline experiences together, youll overcome many of the challenges that the pandemic will inevitably bring to the holiday season.

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