Solved: BFCM Meta Ads Budget Split Confusion

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out about your Meta ads ahead of BFCM. It's a common situation to be in, getting a bit twitchy with budgets in the quiet period before the storm. I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance on how to get things back on track and set up for a successful sale.

Honestly, the first thing I'll say is you need to stop worrying so much about the 'learning phase' and take decisive action. Let's walk through it.

We'll need to look at this "learning phase" panic...

Right, first things first. Let's talk about the learning phase. It seems to cause a lot of anxiety, but honestly, for an established account with campaigns that have been "performing great for a long time," it's overblown. Meta's algorithm isn't a delicate flower that withers at the first sign of change. It has a huge amount of historical data on your account, your customers, and what works.

You made a mistake by dropping the budgets too sharply. We've all done it. But the solution isn't to now be timid and "slowly slowly" increase them back. That's actually worse. You're just prolonging the instability and feeding the algorithm confusing signals. You're telling it "I'm not confident, I don't know what I want." This indecision will cost you more in the long run than a short, sharp shock.

The best thing you can do is rip the plaster off. Set the budgets right back to where they were when things were working well. Yes, performance might be a bit rocky for a day or two, but the system will stabalise much quicker than if you try to nudge it along with tiny increments. You have a proven setup that was working. Trust it. Get it back to that state now, so it has time to settle before the real BFCM push begins. I've seen this so many times; decisive action is almost always better than hesitant tweaking.

I'd say you need a clear Pre-BFCM Prospecting Strategy...

You're absolutely right that you should be pushing more TOF right now. The period leading up to a major sale isn't about maximising your ROAS today; it's about investing in your ROAS for next week. Your primary job is to feed the funnel. You want to reach as many new, relevant potential customers as possible so that when your sale hits, your MOF and BOF audiences are packed with people who are already familiar with your brand and interested in your products.

Right now, your funnel is inverted. With BOF getting the most budget, you're essentially just talking to the same small group of people who are already very close to buying. That's not a growth strategy; it's just harvesting the lowest hanging fruit, which will soon run out. You need to be farming, not just hunting.

I would recommend a very aggressive TOF-heavy split in the run-up to the sale. Something like:

• Top of Funnel (TOF): 60-70% of budget. This is your investment. Focus on your best-performing interest and lookalike audiences. The goal is to drive cheap, relevant traffic and engagement. You're building your future customer base.
• Middle of Funnel (MOF): 20-25% of budget. Retargeting users who have engaged but not visited the site or specific products. Think video viewers, social media page engagers. Keep the brand top-of-mind.
• Bottom of Funnel (BOF): 5-10% of budget. A maintenance budget for your hottest audiences—add to carts, initiated checkouts. You don't want to neglect them, but they shouldn't be your focus until the sale is live.

This approach primes the pump. You're spending money now to build massive, warmed-up audiences that you can then convert at a much higher rate and lower cost once your irresistible BFCM offers are live. It's a strategic investment, not an expense.

You probably should flip the script entirely during the sale...

Once your Black Friday sale officially kicks off, your strategy and budget allocation needs to do a complete 180-degree turn. The investment phase is over; now it's time to cash in. All those people you've been warming up in your TOF campaigns are now ready to be converted with your special offers.

During the sale period (from Black Friday through Cyber Monday), I would recommend flipping your budget split to heavily favour your MOF and BOF campaigns. This is where your highest ROAS will come from. These are people who know who you are, have shown interest, and are now being presented with a compelling reason to buy *right now*.

Here’s what the split should look like during the sale:

• Top of Funnel (TOF): 10-20% of budget. Don't turn it off completely. You still want some new blood coming in, and sometimes you can catch lightning in a bottle with new customers during a major sales event. But it's no longer the priority. This is more of a maintenance budget.
• Middle of Funnel (MOF): 40-50% of budget. This is your new powerhouse. Hit your website visitors, video viewers, and social engagers hard with your best sale messaging. Remind them of the products they looked at. Show them your best deals.
• Bottom of Funnel (BOF): 30-40% of budget. This is pure conversion. Target your 'Add to Cart' and 'Initiate Checkout' audiences with urgency-driven creative. Use Dynamic Product Ads. Remind them what they left behind and that the special offer is for a limited time. This audience is primed to buy, and you need to give them every opportunity.

This aggressive shift ensures you're spending the majority of your money on the people most likely to convert. I remember one women's apparel client we worked with who saw a 691% return during their main sales week, precisely because we shifted almost 80% of their budget into retargeting the audiences we'd spent the previous two weeks building. It's a proven eCommerce playbook for a reason.

You'll need a solid offer, not just a solid budget split...

Look, we can talk about budget percentages and funnel stages all day, but I need to be brutally honest with you. None of this matters if your offer is rubbish. The number one reason I see campaigns fail, especially during a competitive period like BFCM, isn't because the budget split was 40/40/20 instead of 30/50/20. It's because the offer wasn't compelling enough to make someone stop scrolling and pull out their wallet.

You need to ask yourself some hard questions:

• -> Is my discount genuinely competitive and exciting? A lame 10% off isn't going to cut it when your competitors are screaming about 40% off or "buy one get one free."
• -> Is the value clear? Your ads need to instantly communicate the deal. No confusing codes, no complicated tiers. Just a simple, powerful offer.
• -> Have I created real urgency? Why should they buy from you *today* instead of waiting? Limited stock, a countdown timer, a bonus for the first 100 customers—these are the things that drive immediate action.

Your creative needs to reflect this. For your TOF ads, the focus might be on brand and product discovery, introducing the upcoming sale. For MOF/BOF, it needs to be pure direct response. Show the product, show the discount, and have a massive "Shop Now" button. No messing about.

We've worked on campaigns for everything from subscription boxes to cleaning products, and the pattern is always the same. The ones that smash it, like a subscription box client that hit a 1000% ROAS, do so because they have a killer product-offer combination that is communicated brilliantly through their ads. The ads just amplify what is already a great deal.

Before you get too lost in the weeds of budget allocation, take a step back and make sure your core offer is as strong as it can possibly be. That's the foundation of a successful BFCM.

So, what's teh action plan?

To put it all together, this is what I would do if I were in your shoes right now. No more hesitation, just clear, decisive steps to get you ready for your biggest sales period of the year. This isn't the time for 'wait and see'.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

Following this plan will give your campaigns structure and a clear strategic purpose at each stage of the BFCM process. It moves you from reacting to budget fluctuations to proactively shaping your customer journey and maximising your returns.

This is a high-level overview, of course. The devil is in the detail of audience selection, creative testing, and daily optimisations. A period like BFCM is where having an expert eye on your account can make a massive difference, catching small issues before they become big problems and identifying opportunities to scale that you might miss.

If you'd like to go through your account and BFCM strategy in more detail, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation where we can review everything together. It might be useful to have a second opinion before you commit your full budget.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh