Black Friday is on November 27 this year. I'm not preparing a launch for it this year, so I'm watching from the side. In past years October was when the work started: we agreed on the offer about a month before, made new creatives just for that week, and raised the ad budget a lot, about twice the usual.
Below is what I would go through if you are launching this year, on Meta or Google.
Decide whether you take part at all
Some businesses I work with sell high-value products and position themselves as brands that never discount. They skip Black Friday, and that works for them. I can't say they get more orders that week, but a sale would break what their customers pay for.
Count the numbers before you pick the discount
Take the cost of the product, delivery, payment fees and the ad cost per order, and see how much margin is left at each discount level. With a digital product, the cost of one more copy is close to zero, so Black Friday is a real chance to sell a lot. In e-commerce, every unit costs you money, and the numbers decide how far you can go.
The discount doesn't have to be clever
On Black Friday people come ready to buy, and they buy a lot. In my experience even a plain discount works well that week. You don't need a complicated offer. You need a discount your margin can carry.
Have the ads ready a week before
About a week before the sale, the creatives should be approved and the audiences chosen. A week ahead is enough. Leaving it for Black Friday itself is too late.
Make the creatives new. That week everyone runs Black Friday ads, and an ad people have scrolled past for months gets lost between them. On Meta this matters most, because people scroll a feed full of Black Friday offers.
If you usually target a narrow group, Black Friday is also a good week to test a broader audience. People who never looked at your brand are shopping too.
Put the offer on the website too
The ad brings people to the site, and the site has to say the same thing. We wrote the Black Friday offer on the website, where people saw it as soon as they landed, and added a countdown timer to the end of the sale. The countdown works well: people see how much time they have left to buy at that price.
A Black Friday campaign from my work
A few years ago I ran Black Friday ads for a company that sells marketing courses online. The offer was a plain discount. Selling one more seat costs the business almost nothing, so the discount could be one people noticed, and the campaign brought back about 10 times its ad spend.
My tip: if you raise the budget for Black Friday week, and we used to raise it about twice, have new creatives ready for that money a week before the sale. Extra budget on an ad people already know won't stand out in that feed.
If you want a first frame for your Black Friday video, I explain how I build one in AI Ad Creative: The First Frame Decides Everything. If you'd like me to check your account before the sale starts, book an audit.
