Black Friday is on 27 November. Here is what UK small businesses should build now across Google Ads, Meta and email, and when, so campaigns are approved and learning before the peak.
Black Friday is on Friday 27 November this year, with Cyber Monday following on 30 November. For a small business, most of what decides how those days go happens weeks earlier. Ads need approving, new campaigns need time to learn, product feeds need processing and email lists need to be in good shape before anything is sent.
If you have already worked through our Google Ads year-end checklist, your tracking, audiences, wasted spend and budgets should be in order. This guide picks up from there. It covers what to build across Google Ads, Meta and email, and when, so everything is approved, learning and tested before the peak weeks rather than during them.
1. Fix your dates and your offer first
Every platform asks for exact dates: when a sale price starts and ends, when a promotion runs, when a countdown hits zero. Agree them before anyone builds a single ad.
- Black Friday: Friday 27 November
- Cyber Monday: Monday 30 November
- Your offer dates: the exact start and end, including the time and whether the offer runs through the weekend
- Your last order date for Christmas delivery: set it from Royal Mail's or your courier's published last posting dates, with a day or two in hand
- Your switch-over date: when ads move from delivery to gift cards, click and collect or January offers
Keep urgency honest. Under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, falsely claiming that an offer is only available for a limited time is a banned practice. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) gives the example of a countdown clock that runs out, only for the offer to carry on and the clock to restart. If your ads say the sale ends on Monday, it needs to end on Monday.
2. Google Ads: build the seasonal campaigns now
Leave time for ad review. Google reviews most ads within one business day, but some take longer. Building your Black Friday ads in October means a disapproval is an inconvenience, not a lost weekend.
Use start and end dates. You can build a campaign now and give it a future start date, which you can change at any time until the campaign begins. Add an end date too. The campaign stops at 11.59pm in your account's time zone, so a Cyber Monday campaign will not quietly keep running into December.
Add a countdown to your responsive search ads. A countdown customiser updates your ad text as the deadline approaches. In a headline it looks like this: Sale ends in {COUNTDOWN(2026-11-30 23:59:59,5)}, where the final number is how many days before the end the countdown starts showing. Google recommends keeping at least three headlines without a countdown. Only count down to a deadline that is real.
Give Performance Max time to settle. Google's own advice for big sales events is to give a new Performance Max campaign two to three weeks to adapt before making changes. If you plan to launch a new one for Black Friday, it needs to be live by early November at the latest.
Load your seasonal assets early. Promotion assets, sitelinks and seasonal ad copy are covered in the checklist. Get them in during October so they have cleared review before the offer goes live.
If you sell products through Google Shopping
Time your product data. Google Merchant Center recommends submitting new product data three to five business days before a sales event, but no earlier than 30 days ahead. For a sale starting on Black Friday, that means roughly 20 to 24 November. An initial feed review can take up to 72 hours.
Schedule sale prices in the feed. Use the sale price attribute with a sale price effective date, so the discount switches on and off by itself. Include a time and time zone. If you leave the time zone out, Google uses UTC.
Set up Merchant Center promotions. Promotions show a special offer link, such as a percentage off or free delivery, on your Shopping ads and free listings, and UK retailers are eligible. Submit them at least 24 hours before the start time, ideally during working hours from Monday to Friday. Review typically takes around 12 hours but can take up to 24.
Check your site can take the traffic. Google can disapprove products if your landing pages error or time out when crawled. Check with your developer or host that the site can cope with a spike, and avoid changing how prices are displayed just before the sale.
3. Meta: give Facebook and Instagram time to learn
Understand the learning phase. When you launch a new ad set or make a significant edit, Meta's delivery system goes back into learning. Meta says an ad set usually exits learning after about 50 results in the week after its last significant edit, and that performance is less stable during learning, usually with a higher cost per result.
Know what counts as a significant edit. Any change to targeting, ad creative or the optimisation event counts. So does adding a new ad to an ad set, pausing an ad set for seven days or longer and changing the bid strategy. Budget changes may count, depending on how big they are. In practice, that means:
- Launch your seasonal ad sets well before Black Friday week, not on the day
- Load all your Black Friday creative at the start, rather than adding new ads mid-sale
- Raise budgets in sensible steps, rather than one huge jump on the Friday morning
- Avoid pausing a working ad set for a week or more in the run-up
Submit ads early and schedule them. Meta reviews most ads within 24 hours, although some take longer. You can set a future start date, and the ad will go through review but not deliver until then. Meta recommends not editing targeting, creative, optimisation or the billing event while an ad is in review. You can schedule an ad set to run on specific days and times, with a lifetime or daily budget.
Check your Meta tracking
The checklist covers Google tracking. Meta needs its own check in Events Manager.
Pixel and Conversions API. The Meta pixel tracks actions in the browser, and the Conversions API sends them from your server, which makes it less vulnerable to browser restrictions and ad blockers. If you send the same event, such as a purchase, from both, make sure they share the same event name and event ID so Meta counts it once.
Event match quality. Events Manager scores your server events from 0 to 10 on how well they can be matched to Meta accounts. Email address and click ID are the highest-priority details to send, hashed and with the right consent.
Audiences and billing
Website custom audiences. Most website audience rules can look back up to 180 days, and up to two years for purchase events, so you can build a list of autumn browsers now and retarget them in December. Use an exclusion-only custom audience to keep recent buyers out of prospecting campaigns.
Customer lists. Meta's terms make you responsible for having the rights and a lawful basis to upload a customer list, and for removing anyone who has opted out.
Billing. If a payment fails, Meta pauses your ads and disables the ad account until the amount due is paid. Add a backup payment method, check card expiry dates and make sure the card has enough headroom for a busy week.
4. Email: sort your list and your sending set-up
Email to people who already know you can be your best-value channel over the peak, but only if you are allowed to send it and it lands in the inbox.
Know who you can email. Under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR), you need specific consent to send marketing emails to individuals. The exception is the soft opt-in: people who bought, or talked about buying, a similar product or service from you, and who were given a simple way to opt out when you collected their details and in every message since. It does not cover bought-in lists or new contacts.
Business contacts are different. You can email companies, limited liability partnerships and government bodies without consent, but the ICO says it is good practice to keep a do-not-email list of any that object. Sole traders and some partnerships count as individuals, so the consent rules apply to them.
The stakes are higher than they were. Since 5 February 2026, the ICO can fine organisations up to £17.5 million or 4% of global turnover for breaching PECR. The ICO notes that its email marketing guidance is under review following the Data (Use and Access) Act, so check it before your campaign goes out.
Make sure your emails arrive
Google's sender guidelines apply to everyone sending to personal Gmail accounts.
- All senders: set up SPF or DKIM for your sending domain, and keep the spam rate shown in Postmaster Tools below 0.3%
- Sending more than 5,000 messages a day to Gmail: set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC, align your From address with your SPF or DKIM domain, and support one-click unsubscribe alongside a visible unsubscribe link
Ask your email platform to confirm your domain is authenticated now, not the night before your Black Friday send. Then plan the sequence: an early-access email for existing customers, a launch email, a reminder and a last-chance email, followed by a delivery cut-off email in December. Suppress people who have already bought, so your best customers are not chased about a deal they have just used.
Your countdown to Cyber Monday
Now to the end of October
- Offer dates, last order date and switch-over date agreed and written down
- Google Ads seasonal campaigns built with start and end dates, and ads approved
- Countdown customisers added, pointing at your real end date
- Any new Performance Max campaign live, with time to settle
- Meta pixel, Conversions API and deduplication checked in Events Manager
- Meta website and exclusion audiences built
- Email list checked for consent and the soft opt-in, and your sending domain authenticated
November, before the sale
- Shopping product data and scheduled sale prices submitted three to five business days before the sale
- Merchant Center promotions submitted at least 24 hours before they start
- Meta seasonal ad sets running with all creative loaded, and Black Friday ads scheduled
- Backup payment method added to Meta, and card limits checked
- Email sequence written, tested and scheduled
Black Friday to Cyber Monday
- Budgets raised in planned steps, with no new ads added to ad sets that are working
- Landing pages, stock and prices checked each morning
- Offers ending when your ads said they would
- Christmas ads and delivery messaging ready to replace the Black Friday ones on Tuesday 1 December
Want help getting your seasonal campaigns ready?
Our paid advertising team plans, builds and manages Google Ads and Meta campaigns for UK small businesses. If you would like a hand getting your Black Friday and Christmas activity set up while there is still time to test it, tell us what you are planning and we will come back with a clear plan. Prefer to talk? Call us on 01509 357412.
