How To Run A Full-Funnel Ecommerce Account Through BFCM Week via @sejournal, @tonyadam

How To Run A Full-Funnel Ecommerce Account Through BFCM Week Build demand before BFCM with Meta prospecting, give Google budget room for peak sales, and retarget holiday visitors to drive December purchases. This year, Black Friday is Nov. 27 and Cyber Monday is Nov.

30 and winning Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM) week with a full-funnel ecommerce account comes down to addressing three things, done in order. Fill the funnel in early November so there is more demand to capture, give your bidding room to capture it efficiently during the week, and keep selling to that same audience through December.

In September, I covered how to structure a full-funnel ecommerce account before Q4, meaning the exclusions, customer lists, and prospecting budget. This article is the playbook for running that account through peak season, phase by phase.

Fill The Funnel Before Black Friday In my experience, the BFCM weeks that go best in our accounts are the ones where the work started in early November. By Black Friday, every retailer in your category is bidding for the same shoppers.

In our accounts, what converts during Q4, specifically BFCM and Holiday, comes from people who found you in the weeks, or even months before. We see shoppers holding out for your best offers during this time and it’s your job to remind them they were looking, waiting to purchase, and get them to purchase.

Your job leading up to the holidays is building up your prospecting and growing your funnel as much as possible to expand that audience that would convert down funnel during BFCM. Ramp Meta Prospecting In Steps The last thing you want heading into BFCM is your Meta ad sets dropping back into the learning phase.

An ad set usually exits learning after about 50 results in the week after its last significant edit, and Meta notes that ad sets in learning are less stable and usually have a higher CPA. Meta also warns that frequent budget changes can send an ad set back into learning.

So step budgets up gradually through early November, and your prospecting will be stable and spending efficiently before peak week instead of relearning the week it matters most. You don’t want to overpay during a season where you’re already paying above your baseline.

Launch Holiday Creative Before The Week Meta recommends waiting to edit until an ad set is out of learning, because editing an ad, ad set, or campaign during the learning phase resets it.

Build your BFCM creative early and launch it in the days (or week(s), depending on learning) before Black Friday, so the learning happens ahead of peak traffic instead of during it.

On Google, the retailer guidance is to upload new holiday asset groups at least two weeks ahead so they are approved in time, and asset group scheduling lets you switch them on when the sale starts.

Move Your Google Targets Now Google’s retailer guidance notes that a lower ROAS target can help maximize visibility for priority products in the weeks leading up to peak periods, when many people are browsing. So if you plan on lowering ROAS targets to build volume, do it in early November, before Black Friday week.

Keep track of where your targets and budgets started so you know exactly what to reset them to in December, and while you’re at it, decide which date ranges you’ll compare in your January review. Lock The Offer, Including One For New Customers By now, you should have already decided the offer so everything downstream can be built around it.

Merchant Center promotions let you mark an offer for new customers, and Google shows it only when it judges a shopper likely to be new. That puts your best offer in front of the people your prospecting is bringing in, but it does not guarantee that existing buyers won’t see it.

Here is a quick checklist for Merchant Center we use: Use sale_price instead of overwriting price. Keep price at the full value. That is what lets Google show the strikethrough and sale badge, which in the U. S. requires a 5% to 90% discount and a regular price charged for at least five of the past 30 days. Match the site.

The sale price has to match your landing page and checkout, with both prices shown on the page. Mismatches get corrected from your landing page or disapproved, and Google’s automatic fixes are not built for catalog-wide errors. Add a time and time zone to sale dates.

Without them, Google uses midnight to 11:59 PM UTC, so a Pacific brand’s sale starts at 4 PM on Thanksgiving and ends at 3:59 PM on Cyber Monday. Write it like 2026-11-27T00:00-0800/2026-12-01T00:00-0800. Load promotions early. Google reviews every promotion before it shows, and free shipping promotions need a coupon code.

Capture Demand During BFCM Week Once the week starts, the goal is capturing as much of the demand you built leading up to BFCM as you can, at the revenue you need and a ROAS you are happy with. Give Google Room To Spend Google’s retailer guidance is to plan budgets ear