Solved: Structuring a Black Friday Retargeting Campaign

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out about your Black Friday retargeting strategy. It's a smart move to focus on this, as retargeting is where you'll likely see a big chunk of your holiday sales come from. I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts and a bit of a framework to work from.

The main thing is to stop thinking about "retargeting" as one big bucket. Instead, you need to segment your audiences based on how close they are to buying and then decide whether to stack them or keep them seperate based on your budget and their size. Let's get into it.

We'll need to look at structuring your audiences properly...

Right, so the first mistake I see a lot of people make is lumping all their warm audiences together under one big "retargeting" umbrella. An Instagram engager from 170 days ago is miles away from someone who added a product to their cart yesterday. They have completely different levels of intent, and you need to treat them that way.

The best way to think about this is using a sales funnel model: Top of Funnel (ToFu), Middle of Funnel (MoFu), and Bottom of Funnel (BoFu). Your goal with retargeting is to focus on the MoFu and BoFu segments, because these are the people who already know who you are.

Let's map your current audiences to this structure:

• FB and IG Engagers (180 days): This is a classic MoFu audience. They've shown some interest, they've liked a post or watched a bit of a video, but they might not have even visited your site. They're aware of you, but not necessarily ready to buy.
• Website Visitors (180 days): Also MoFu. They took the step to click through, which is a stronger signal than just an engagement. Still, they could have just been browsing.
• View Content (top 25%): This is a slightly warmer MoFu audience. These are website visitors who've shown more interest by looking at specific product pages. This is a better signal than just a generic website visitor.

You're missing the most valuable group: the BoFu audiences. These are the people who have shown clear buying intent. They are your absolute priority for Black Friday. These include:

• -> Added to Cart (ATC)
• -> Initiated Checkout (IC)
• -> Added Payment Info

These folks were on the verge of giving you money and got distracted. Your Black Friday offers are the perfect excuse to bring them back and get them over the line. Here’s a way to visualise how it all fits together.

I'd say you should structure your campaign based on intent...

Now to your core question: separate ad sets or one big stacked ad set? There are pros and cons to both, and the right answer depends on your budget and goals.

Separating Audiences:
This is the "old school" way of doing things. You'd have one ad set for Website Visitors, another for IG Engagers, another for ATC, etc.

• Pro: You get very clean data. You can see exactly which audience is performing best and what your Cost Per Purchase is for each specific group. This is great for learning and long-term optimisation.
• Con: It fragments your budget and data. If your audiences are small (e.g., you only have 2,000 people in your 'Add to Cart' audience), the ad set might struggle to exit the learning phase and perform well. You can end up with high CPMs and poor peformance.

Stacking Audiences:
This is where you put multiple related audiences into a single ad set. For example, you could stack all your BoFu audiences (ATC, IC, Added Payment Info) together.

• Pro: It consolidates your data and budget. You give Meta's algorithm a much larger pool of high-intent users to work with. The algorithm can then find the lowest-hanging fruit (the cheapest conversions) within that entire stack. This is almost always better for smaller budgets and is more stable.
• Con: You lose some clarity in your reporting. You won't know if the conversions came from the ATC audience or the IC audience specifically. Tbh, for a sales event like Black Friday, you probably care more about the final ROAS than knowing exactly which micro-audience converted.

My Reccomendation for Black Friday: Stack 'em.

Given that Black Friday is a short, intense sales period, you want to give the algorithm as much fuel as possible to get results quickly. I would definately go with a stacked approach. The loss of granular reporting is a small price to pay for better, faster performance when time is of the essence. You're not trying to run a scientific experiment; you're trying to make sales.

Here's how I'd prioritise and stack them, from highest priority to lowest:

1. BoFu Stack (Highest Priority): Add to Cart (e.g., last 30 days) + Initiated Checkout (last 30 days) + Viewed Cart (last 30 days). These are your hottest leads. Hit them hard with your best offers.
2. MoFu Stack (Medium Priority): Website Visitors (e.g., last 90 days) + View Content (last 90 days). Exclude anyone from the BoFu stack to avoid overlap. These people need a bit more convincing.
3. Wider MoFu Stack (Lowest Priority): Facebook Engagers (last 90 days) + Instagram Engagers (last 90 days). Exclude everyone from the BoFu and MoFu stacks. This is your biggest but least-qualified audience. Use this if you have the budget and need more scale.

Notice the time windows. For BoFu, I'd keep it tight (e.g., 30-60 days) because their intent is recent. For MoFu, you can go a bit broader (90-180 days).

You probably should use CBO for this...

This leads directly into the CBO (Campaign Budget Optimisation) vs. ABO (Ad Set Budget Optimisation) debate. Tbh, for this kind of campaign, it's almost a no-brainer.

ABO (Ad Set Budget): You set a specific budget for each individual ad set. If you had an ad set for ATC with £20/day and one for Website Visitors with £30/day, Meta would spend exactly that. It gives you manual control.

CBO (Campaign Budget): You set one budget at the campaign level (e.g., £100/day), and Meta automatically distributes that budget across all the ad sets within the campaign, giving more money to the ones that are performing best in real-time.

For a fast-moving campaign like Black Friday, CBO is your best friend. Imagine your BoFu ad set is getting amazing results and a great ROAS. With CBO, Meta will see this and automatically shift more of the total campaign budget to that ad set to maximise your sales. With ABO, you'd have to manually spot this trend and adjust the budgets yourself. By the time you do, you might have already missed out on sales. Let the machine do the heavy lifting here.

So, the ideal structure would be one single Retargeting Campaign with CBO enabled. Inside that campaign, you'd have your 2-3 stacked ad sets (BoFu, MoFu, etc.). CBO will then work its magic and allocate your funds where they'll get the best return.

You'll need a clear idea of your numbers...

Before you even launch, you need to know what a "good" result looks like. The most important metric here is Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). It's a simple calculation: Revenue from Ads / Amount Spent on Ads. If you spend £100 and make £500 in sales, your ROAS is 5x. Knowing your target ROAS is critical for making decisions on the fly during the Black Friday weekend.

What can you afford to spend to acquire a customer? This depends entirely on your profit margins. If you don't know your numbers, you're flying blind. Use this calculator to play around with some scenarios.

This is the main advice I have for you:

Here’s a summary of the structure I would recommend you test for your first proper retargeting campaign. It balances simplicity with effectiveness, perfect for a high-stakes event.

To wrap up, running a successful retargeting campaign, especially during a period as competitive as Black Friday, is about more than just turning on an ad. It's about a methodical approach to audience segmentation, budgeting, and messaging. It can feel like a lot to manage when you're also handling the operational side of a sales event.

Getting it right can be the difference between a record-breaking weekend and a lot of wasted ad spend. If you feel like you could use an expert eye to review your setup or manage the campaign to ensure you're getting the best possible return, it might be worth considering some professional help.

We offer a completely free, no-obligation initial consultation where we can take a look at your ad account and strategy together. We can often spot opportunities for quick wins and help you build a solid plan for events like this.

Hope this helps you get started!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh