Marketing
Mykyta Hryhorenko
CEO & Co-founder
Most people start too late
Let me start with how this usually goes, because I think a lot of you will recognize it.
It's the middle of November. You look at the calendar and realize Black Friday is two weeks away. So you pick a discount, put together a few new ads, double the budget and hope it works. Then the week comes, everything costs way more than usual, your new ads haven't had time to find their footing, and the results are fine. Not terrible. Just fine, for a lot of money.
Nothing in that plan is stupid. You just did all of it too late.
This year Black Friday is November 27. If you're reading this in October, good. You still have time, and right now time is the most valuable thing you've got. Let me explain why.
Why ads get so expensive in November
Ads on Meta and Google work like an auction. Every time someone opens Instagram, a bunch of businesses compete to show that person an ad, and the price depends on how many of them want the same person.
Now think about what happens in November. Every store in the country wants to sell something before the holidays. Big brands and small ones raise their budgets at the same time, and they're all chasing the same people scrolling the same feeds. So prices go up. They climb all month and usually hit the top right on Black Friday week.
What that means for you is pretty simple. A thousand dollars in October buys a lot more attention than a thousand dollars on Black Friday. So anything you still need to test or figure out, do it now while it's cheap.
There's another reason, and I'd say it's the bigger one. On Black Friday every store is yelling "30% off" at once. If someone has never heard of you, your discount is just one more ad in a pile of a hundred. But if they saw you a few weeks ago, visited your site, maybe even signed up for your emails, your sale isn't noise anymore. It's something they were kind of waiting for.
I like to think of it as two halves. October is when people get to know you. Black Friday is when they buy.
What to do in October
If you take only one thing from this article, take this part.
First, find out which ads actually work. Make a few ads that are really different from each other (a different idea, a different opening, not the same video with a new color) and run them now. By the end of October you'll know which ones sell. On Black Friday you just take the winners and add your offer. No guessing.
You also don't want to launch something brand new on Black Friday itself. When an ad is new, Meta is still figuring out who to show it to, and Meta's own number for getting through that stage is about 50 conversions in a week. Most small stores won't hit that in a few days, so a campaign started on Black Friday is often still "learning" when the sale is already over. If you want to go deeper on testing, we wrote a separate piece on it: Why Your Winning Ad Stopped Working.
Second, start collecting people. October ads don't need to sell anything. Their job is to get the right people to notice you, so that by Black Friday you have someone to talk to. The best thing you can build here is an early-access list, people who leave their email or phone number to hear about your sale first. When the sale starts, you message them for free. No auction, no peak prices. For a small store, that list is honestly one of the most underrated things you can have this time of year.
Third, do the math on your discount before you announce it. I'll show you a quick example, because this one catches a lot of people.
Say you sell a product for $80, and it costs you $32 to make and ship. You keep $48. Now you put it at 30% off. The price is $56, and you keep $24. If ads cost you $25 per order that week, you lose a dollar on every sale. You'll see plenty of orders and a nice revenue number, and you'll still end the weekend with less money than before.
A big revenue number on Black Friday doesn't mean you made money. Always check what's left after the discount and the ads.
If 30% off doesn't work on your numbers, you don't have to do it. A bundle, a free gift on bigger orders, or a discount that kicks in above a certain cart size can feel just as exciting to the customer and leave you with a lot more. We went deeper into this in Why Your ROAS Looks Great But Your Business Isn't Growing.
Two weeks before: the boring stuff
I know, nobody likes this part. But these are the things that ruin a Black Friday when they go wrong, and every one of them takes a few minutes to check.
Buy something from your own store and make sure the purchase shows up in Meta and Google. If tracking breaks during the sale, the platforms stop learning right when you need them most.
Send your Black Friday ads for review about a week early and schedule them. That week everyone is uploading ads at once, and review can get slow.
Go through your site on your phone, the way a customer would. Does it load fast? Does the discount code work? Do you have enough stock?
Then stop changing things on the site. No new apps, no new theme, no quick fixes the week before the sale.
If you're not sure your tracking is set up right, start with How to Set Up Conversion Tracking That Doesn't Lie to You. Out of everything on this list, that's the one I'd never skip.
During the week: don't touch it
This part is short, but it's the hardest one.
Your ads will cost more than you're used to, and the numbers will jump up and down every day. You'll want to change something. Please don't.
Every big change can send an ad back into that learning stage, and Black Friday week is the worst possible time for it. Check your numbers once a day, not every hour. And look at your real sales in Shopify next to how much you spent overall. Meta and Google both like to take credit for the same orders, especially in busy weeks, so their reports will look better than reality. We explained why in Why Meta, Google Ads and GA4 Show Different Revenue Numbers.
The only reason to step in is if something is actually broken: the site is down, tracking stopped working, or an ad got rejected. Everything else can wait until Tuesday.
After the sale is over
Most people who buy from you on Black Friday came for the discount. If you never talk to them again, you basically paid the most expensive ad prices of the year for one order.
But if you send them a thank-you, help them get the most out of what they bought and give them a reason to come back after the holidays, some of them turn into regular customers. That's where Black Friday really pays off, and a lot of stores never get there because they stop thinking about it the day the sale ends.
So if I could give you one piece of advice, it would be this: open your ad account this week and start the October part. November goes a lot smoother when you do.
