How should you plan for the 11.11 sale?
A good 11.11 sale plan starts four weeks out and does three jobs in order: lock in the offer and stock, get the store ready for traffic and payments, and set up ad creative and budget around the sale days. Because 11.11 lands only a few weeks before Black Friday, it also works as a useful rehearsal.
In 2026, 11 November falls on a Wednesday. Marketplaces and big brands in Turkey usually spread their discounts over a few days, so planning a short window such as 9-11 November is more realistic than a one-day sale.
How is 11.11 different from Black Friday?
11.11 started as Singles' Day in China and has become the opening of the November sale calendar in Turkey. Black Friday, called Efsane Cuma locally, is the real peak at the end of the month. Running the same offer on both teaches customers to wait for the last discount. We recommend going into 11.11 with a narrower, clearer offer and saving the big discount for Black Friday.
| Topic | 11.11 | Black Friday |
|---|---|---|
| Role | Rehearsal and early sales | The busiest sales period of the year |
| Offer | Selected categories or bundles | Broader discounts and promotions |
| Ad competition | High, but below Black Friday | At its peak |
| Goal | Build new audiences, test the store | Turn those audiences into sales |
| Tracking | Confirm the setup works | Make decisions on reliable data |
For the full November plan, see our Black Friday ad plan for ecommerce brands. This post focuses only on the 11.11 window.
When should you start preparing for 11.11?
Four weeks is enough for most ecommerce brands; starting in mid-October keeps things calm. Adapt this timeline to your brand:
- Four weeks out: offer and stock. Decide which products go on sale, the discount type and how deep your stock is. Keep low-margin products out of the discount and add value with bundles or gifts instead.
- Three weeks out: store and payments. Run speed tests, talk to your payment provider about peak-day capacity and publish the sale landing page.
- Two weeks out: creative and feed. Prepare sale creative, add promotion data in Merchant Center and test that price changes flow correctly into your product feed.
- One week out: audiences and warm-up. Send a teaser to your email and SMS lists and refresh site visitor and cart abandoner audiences.
- Sale days: monitoring. Check sales, stock and tracking every hour, and shift budget during the day toward campaigns that leave profit.
- After the sale: review. Feed what you learned into your Black Friday plan.
How do you plan the ad budget for 11.11?
Start from your expected revenue divided by your break-even ROAS. Example: if your pre-ad profit margin on sale products is 30% after the discount, break-even ROAS is 3.33. If you're aiming for 600,000 TL of ad-driven revenue over a three-day window, the most you can spend and still break even is about 180,000 TL. Spending less than that makes a profit more likely.
The point people forget: discounts cut margin, and lower margin raises break-even ROAS. A product that makes money at a 2.5 ROAS in a normal week can lose money at the same ROAS with a 20% discount. Recalculate your targets on the discounted margin.
Should you use seasonality adjustments in Google Ads?
According to Google's help page, seasonality adjustments tell Smart Bidding that conversion rates will change sharply during a short event, and they work best for events of 1-7 days. The 11.11 window fits that. Google also says Smart Bidding already handles seasonal events, though. Use an adjustment if your conversion rate genuinely jumped on these days in past years; if you're not sure, leave it out.
How should you set up Meta ads for 11.11?
Adding sale creative to existing campaigns that have finished learning usually works better than launching new ones. A new campaign enters the learning phase and may not finish it within a three-day window. A structure that works well: reach a broad audience with engaging content the week before, then show offer-led ads to that audience and to cart abandoners during the sale.
State the discount plainly in the creative: "25% off" or "buy 2, get 1 free". A vague "big deals" message gets lost in a crowded feed.
How do you get your store ready for 11.11 traffic?
If the site slows down on the day you raise ad spend, you lose money at the most expensive moment. web.dev recommends an LCP under 2.5 seconds, INP under 200 milliseconds and CLS under 0.1 for a good experience. Countdown timers, large banner images and pop-ups added to the sale page can easily push those numbers out of range. Test all of them on mobile before the sale.
Other things to check:
- Have checkout and installment options been tested with real test orders?
- When stock hits zero, does the product drop out of ads and the feed automatically?
- Are delivery times and return terms clearly shown on the sale page?
- Is customer support ready for the busy days?
What should you watch when showing sale prices?
Under Turkey's price labelling regulation, amended in 2022, the pre-sale price in a discount must be the lowest price charged in the 30 days before the discount. Raising prices a few weeks before the sale and then showing a "discount" on 11.11 creates legal risk and erodes customer trust. If you have a legal question, check with your lawyer.
If you plan to use promotions in Google Merchant Center, remember that Google reviews promotions against its policies before showing them, so don't leave them to the last day.
Treating 11.11 as a Black Friday rehearsal means managing the offer, budget and store prep as one plan. We build that plan with brands as part of our growth strategy service. To see how ready you are for November, you can ask Performetic for a free growth audit.
Key takeaways
- Start 11.11 prep at least four weeks ahead: offer and stock, store and payments, creative and feed, audiences and warm-up.
- Go into 11.11 with a narrow, clear offer and save the biggest discount for Black Friday.
- Discounts cut margin; recalculate break-even ROAS on the discounted margin.
- Adding sale creative to campaigns that have finished learning is usually safer than launching new ones in a short window.
- In Turkey, show the pre-sale price as the lowest price of the previous 30 days.