Black Friday is a party, not a sale. Here's how to throw a good one.

Meet Larry (please don't be Larry)

Every November I meet a Larry. Lovely bloke. Runs a perfectly decent business. On the morning of Black Friday he switches his ads on, sticks a giant SALE sign in the window, and spends the afternoon wondering why it's so quiet.

Larry isn't lazy. He's late. By the time he opens the doors, the party's been going for weeks, everyone already has a drink in their hand, and the ad auction is packed with businesses that planned all this back in October.

This year Black Friday lands on Friday 27 November 2026, with Cyber Monday on Monday 30 November. If you're reading this in October, congratulations. You're early. Larry hasn't even found his SALE sign yet.

The 85-second version is in the video above. This is the long version, with a calculator, a plan for your type of business, and a few things the ACCC would quite like you to know.

Black Friday is a season now, not a day

Black Friday started as an American day-after-Thanksgiving thing. Australia has adopted it with the enthusiasm we usually save for a long weekend, and it has quietly grown into something much bigger than a single Friday.

The Australian Retailers Association and Roy Morgan forecast a record $6.8 billion in spending over the four days from Black Friday to Cyber Monday in 2025. Zoom out and it gets bigger again: CommBank iQ found Australians spent $23.8 billion across the two-week Black Friday period in 2025, up 4.6% on the year before, with $8 billion of it online.

Two weeks. Not one day. And the deal hunting starts earlier every year. Click Frenzy's main event runs from 27 to 30 October this year, a full month before Black Friday, so your customers are in shopping mode well before Larry is.

Black Friday isn't a sale. It's a party. And a good party starts weeks before the doors open.

That's the whole idea behind everything below. Think of your Black Friday like a party you're throwing. The guest list, the invites, the door, the music, the clean-up. Get the order right and the night runs itself. Get it wrong and you're standing next to a cheese platter, alone, at 9pm. Ask Larry.

The five-step Black Friday party plan

Step 1, October: send the invites

Start your ads now, while the auction is quieter. Meta's own holiday guidance for small businesses says to start early so the ad system has time to learn who your buyers are, and nobody wants a learning phase on the busiest weekend of the year.

More importantly, grow your own list. Email and SMS sign-ups, a VIP list, a "get early access" form on your site. When everyone's bidding up the same ad space on the big day, your own list costs exactly what it cost in July. It's the best-value guest list you'll ever have.

Step 2, the week before: VIPs through the side door

Give your list early access, a couple of days ahead of everyone else. Maybe a small free gift. They feel special, which they are, and your orders don't all land at once, which your packing table and your delivery driver will both thank you for.

Step 3, Black Friday: the doors fly open

One simple headline offer. Not seven. A "spend more, save more" tier works nicely, something like 15% off over $100 and 25% off over $200, because it lifts the order value instead of just giving money away. Add free shipping over a set amount, because shipping is where carts go to die.

Step 4, Cyber Monday: last drinks

Don't just repeat Friday. The people who didn't buy on Friday saw your offer and passed, so give the fence-sitters a new reason: a bundle, a bonus, a different product. Then set a real deadline. Midnight means midnight.

Step 5, December: the thank-you cards

This is the step everyone forgets, and it's where the money hides. Pivot straight to Christmas with gift cards and delivery cut-off dates, and give your brand-new customers a genuine reason to come back in January. A Black Friday customer who never buys again was expensive. One who comes back three times was a bargain.

If you're posting from Adelaide, Australia Post's 2026 Christmas cut-off for Parcel Post is Tuesday 22 December within SA, Monday 21 December to the other eastern states and Tasmania, Friday 18 December to WA and Thursday 17 December to the NT. Express Post runs until Wednesday 23 December. Put those dates on your site before your customers have to ask.

Before you pick a discount, run the numbers

Here's the bit nobody puts on the poster. A discount doesn't come out of your price. It comes out of your profit.

Say you sell something for $80 and it costs you $40 to make, pack and post. You make $40. Take 25% off and the price drops to $60, but you still pay the same $40, so you now make $20. Same work, same packing, same customer emails, for half the money per box. You need to sell twice as many just to stand still.

So before you print the 40% OFF sign, put your own numbers into the calculator below. The second tab builds you a dated plan for your type of business, with boxes to tick off.

If the calculator gave you a fright, good, that's its job. Try a smaller discount, a spend more, save more tier, a gift with purchase, or free shipping instead. They still give people a reason to buy now, without quietly halving your profit.

The ideal Black Friday strategy for your type of business

The party plan works for everyone, but the party looks different depending on what you sell. Here's how I'd run it.

Online stores

You're the business Black Friday was built for, which also means you're up against everyone. Your edge is the list you build in October and the offer you can actually afford. Pick one headline offer, check the maths, and make sure your Meta Pixel and Google Ads conversion tracking actually fire on a purchase before you spend a cent. Then retarget everyone who visited or abandoned a cart. If you're unsure where to start, our guide to Meta ads for Australian businesses covers the setup.

Test your checkout on your own phone, on mobile data, the week before. Then do it again on your partner's phone. You would be amazed how many sales die at a payment button nobody has pressed since February.

Restaurants and cafes

Black Friday was invented by shops, but hospitality gets a slice too: CommBank iQ saw spending on food catering (cafes, restaurants and takeaway) rise 8.8% over the 2025 Black Friday fortnight. You just have to be a bit cleverer than a shop. Don't discount your Friday night service. You'd fill it anyway, and you'd just be paying people to sit in seats you already had. Sell the future instead. That's the trick behind the best Black Friday restaurant deals.

• Gift cards with a bonus: buy a $100 gift card, get a $20 bonus card. It's extra value, not a discount on tonight's menu, and gift cards double as Christmas presents.
• Christmas functions: lock in the end-of-year bookings while people are in a deal mood.
• A set menu for the quiet nights: if Tuesdays are slow, that's where the deal belongs.

One rule to know: gift cards bought since 1 November 2019 must be redeemable for at least three years, with the expiry date shown clearly. Be just as clear about when any bonus card expires, and run the terms past your adviser if you're unsure.

Put the offer on your Google Business Profile and Instagram, and brief the team so every person on the floor can explain it in one sentence. If your waiter needs a whiteboard, the offer's too complicated.

Local services and trades

Please don't discount your hourly rate. Once you've told people your time is worth 30% less, they remember it in March. Package something instead: a pre-summer aircon service, a gutter clean before bushfire season, a car detail, a three-session pack. Add a bonus rather than cutting the price, set a genuine limit on the number of slots, and take the bookings now for work in December or January.

Your past customers are your VIP list. A text that says "you get first pick of our Black Friday slots" will out-perform almost any ad, and it costs about nine cents.

Shops with a front door

Bricks and mortar has something online stores can't fake: an actual room people can stand in. Use it. Run a VIP shopping night the week before, with early access, a drink and a small gift. Keep the same price in store and online so nobody feels dudded, offer click and collect, and make sure your Google Business Profile has your extended trading hours. Small Business Saturday follows Black Friday on 28 November, and shopping local is a story people genuinely like to be part of.

Professional services and B2B

You might be thinking, "I'm an accountant, what's Black Friday got to do with me?" Fair point. Skip the discount entirely. Run a Black Friday that gives instead of cuts: a free review, a bonus session, an end-of-year planning call for clients who book before Christmas. Or ignore the whole thing and enjoy the quietest inbox of the year. Nobody has ever been sacked for not running a Black Friday sale on tax returns.

Keep it honest (the ACCC is watching)

This one isn't a joke. In April 2026 the ACCC said it was investigating retailers after a sweep of 50 businesses found around half made concerning Black Friday claims, including countdown timers that didn't match the real end of the sale and misleading "was" and "now" prices.

It's not just talk, either. In September 2026 two retailers paid penalties after their Black Friday discounts kept running past the advertised end date and countdown timer, and an electronics retailer paid $99,000 and admitted its strikethrough "was" prices were misleading. The ACCC spotted that one during a Black Friday sweep.

• Your "was" price has to be real. It should be a price you genuinely sold at, for a reasonable time, not one you invented on Thursday night.
• If your sale ends Monday, end it Monday. A countdown that magically resets is exactly what the ACCC goes looking for.
• Don't fake scarcity. "Only 3 left" should mean only three left.
• If you say sitewide, mean sitewide. A "sitewide sale" with a page of exclusions in the fine print is on the ACCC's list.
• Show the real price. If a fee is unavoidable, it belongs in the total price people see, not as a surprise at checkout. That's already the law, and new rules on drip pricing and subscription traps start on 1 July 2027.

Your Black Friday checklist

Give yourself a point for each one you've already done.

Score: 8 to 10, you're throwing the party of the year. 5 to 7, solid start, get the invites out this week. Under 5, you're at risk of becoming Larry. Good news: it's not too late.

Black Friday's a party. Don't be Larry.

Send the invites early. Let the VIPs in first. Open the doors with one offer you can afford. Call last drinks with a new reason and a real deadline. Then send the thank-you cards, because that's where next year's customers come from.

If you'd like a hand with the invites, the Meta ads, the Google Ads or a landing page that actually turns clicks into sales, come and talk to us. We'd much rather start in October than get the panicked call on the Thursday. Although, in fairness, we answer those too.