Where you can DIY your BFCM strategy (and know when it's okay to call in backup)
Let's get something out of the way first: you don't need an agency for every single part of Black Friday/Cyber Monday. (Yes, we are an agency and we are telling you this.)
If you’re a business or brand that is looking at making your biggest return this November, you would have already started frameworking your BFCM sale model for 2026. And if you haven’t…well, you won’t want to miss the next part.
The good news is that a huge chunk of the groundwork for a strong BFCM campaign can be done in-house, by you, right now, with tools you already have. But there are also a few areas where we watch brands burn the most time, money, and sanity trying to go it alone and in the dark.
So we've split it down the middle: what you can realistically DIY, and where it's worth putting your hand up for help so you can maximise your marketing efficiency and avoid any complaints from finance when they ask you about outsourcing 😉.
PART ONE: THE DIY LIST
1. WORK OUT YOUR OFFER (WITH YOUR ACCOUNTANT ON SPEED DIAL)
Your offer is the headline of your whole campaign, so it deserves more thought than "what did everyone else do last year?"
Nobody knows your business better than you, except maybe your accountant. Before you commit to anything like a generous ‘40% Off Sitewide’, sit down with them and run the real numbers. That means cost of goods, shipping, payment fees, returns, and what you're realistically paying to acquire each customer during the most expensive advertising week of the year. A 30% off that makes you money and fewer sales will always beat a 50% that clears you of your whole inventory and leaves you with less money in the bank.
Then, think about the format. Sitewide percentages, tiered spend-and-save, bundles, gifts with purchase, and early access for your VIPs all work differently depending on your margins and your customer.
What to do now: Book that accountant chat ASAP this month, and walk away with your offer and your "absolutely not going below this" number.
2. FIND YOUR HEROES
Not every product deserves the spotlight during BFCM. Your Shopify data will tell you which ones do.
If you’re an e-commerce brand, jump into your analytics and look at your sales by product (both last BFCM or last sale event, and the last 90 days), your sell-through rates (STR), and your current inventory. You're looking for your consistent best sellers, your healthy-margin products, and the "gateway" products that tend to bring new customers in the door.
One trap to avoid: don't treat BFCM purely as a clearance sale for slow movers. Shoppers come for the good stuff and will more likely add your cheaper/slow movers for that extra hit of dopamine.
What to do now: Shortlist 3-5 hero products, calculate their estimated STR inclusive of your BFCM offer, then check you've got the stock (and the reorder lead times) to back them if they fly.
3. PRIME YOUR PEOPLE
The customers who convert fastest in November are the ones who already know, like, and trust you. You can't build that relationship in a weekend - especially when you’re already competing against the BIG DOGS in your industry who already have aggressive return on ad spend (ROAS) goals and hefty budgets to support them.
That means posting consistently from NOW (and yes, we know it’s only October). Reply to your comments and DMs, show up in your community, and give people a reason to join your email and SMS lists before the sale (early access is a great one). When your sale goes live, you want to be the brand they're already waiting on, not the one they're meeting for the first time.
What to do now: Lock in a posting rhythm you can actually keep between now and November, and start building out a healthy list of email or SMS subscribers who feel like actual community members instead of just another address that will unsubscribe in a week.
PART TWO: WHERE BRANDS CALL US IN
1. CAMPAIGN STRATEGY & ROLL-OUT
Knowing what you're selling is one thing. Knowing how much to spend, when to scale, and which campaigns deserve the budget is where things get tricky.
How much should go into warming up audiences before the sale, and how much during it? When do you push spend, and how fast, without tanking your results? How do you soften the blow of the post-sale hangover, and how quickly can I get my revenue back to business as usual?
This gets even harder if it's your first BFCM, because there's no historical data to lean on. That's where our benchmarks and over a decade of combined BFCM experience from years of client campaigns fill the gap.
One of our fashion clients came to us for their first-ever Black Friday. With zero historical data to work from, we delivered a 301.26% increase above their usual monthly Meta Ad Revenue over the BFCM period.
2. FINDING THE RIGHT CREATORS, FAST
This was the biggest thing brands came to us for last year, and it's easy to see why.
Finding creators isn't the hard part. Finding the right ones is. That means creators who fit your brand, speak to your actual customer, make content that converts, and are available before everyone else books them out. By November, the good ones are busy, and their rates have climbed.
It's even tougher when you need something specific. One of our FMCG clients, Unrefined Nutrients, needed creators who were mums with kids in a particular age range, which is a pretty tight niche to fill. In under four weeks, we ran their BFCM strategy session, shot 45 pieces of content in a single 4-hour shoot, and locked in 5 aligned creators.
3. THE POST-BFCM HANGOVER
Cyber Monday ends and a lot of brands just… stop. Ad costs are still high, customers have spent, and Christmas is suddenly around the corner.
The brands that keep momentum plan for this before the sale even starts. That looks like:
Having Christmas creative ready to go the moment BFCM wraps
Moving your messaging from "sale" to "gifting," including shipping cut-off reminders.
Deciding if you retarget people who browsed during BFCM but didn't buy - do you have something compelling enough to make them buy after sale?
Setting up post-purchase flows that turn one-time bargain hunters into repeat customers.
Scaling spend down strategically instead of going dark overnight.
With brands experiencing the hit of being underprepared for the Christmas season last year, we have already begun working with new clients this year who are leaning into our services to help them with their post-sale and end-of-Q4 strategy.
4. A SECOND SET OF EYES
Maybe you've got the DIY list handled, and you're confident running the show. Sometimes you just want someone to look over your plan, poke holes in it, or maybe want insight into what other brands in the industry are doing to secure their results and what you can do to keep up.
That's exactly what our one-to-one mentoring is for. You stay in the driver's seat, and we sit in the passenger seat with the map.
SO, WHERE SHALL WE MEET YOU?
Whether you're going full DIY, calling in backup for one piece of the puzzle, or handing us the keys, our BFCM packages are built around exactly these moments. Spots fill up fast as the calendar does, so don’t let your competitors beat you to it.
