Black Friday and Cyber Monday (aka BFCM, aka the Super Bowl of eCommerce, aka the Hunger Games for ad space) are closer than you think.

While half the internet is still posting poolside photos and pretending summer will never end, smart D2C brands are quietly doing the most unsexy but most profitable thing: building their Q4 campaigns right now. Because here’s the truth no one puts on Instagram: if you wait until October to “start prepping for Black Friday,” you’re already too late.

That’s where the 90-Day Full-Funnel Framework comes in. It’s not some shiny new ad hack or a “one weird trick” blog post. It’s a proven structure that takes you from September testing to November scaling, so your campaigns don’t just survive the holiday ad chaos—they crush it.

Why September Is the Make-or-Break Month

Let’s get real. Q4 ad costs are about as forgiving as TSA during Thanksgiving weekend. Everyone is bidding for the same eyeballs: Target, Walmart, your competitor who “doesn’t really get ads but wants to try,” and you. CPMs rise, inventory gets crowded, and creative fatigue hits faster than your patience when Mariah Carey starts playing in November.

September is the calm before the storm—the last window you get to test messaging, validate creative, and build audiences while CPMs are still reasonable.

Marketers who spend September testing don’t just enter November with “ads.” They enter with battle-tested campaigns that already know which hooks, formats, and offers convert. And as HubSpot pointed out, the brands that start early consistently win the biggest share of wallet during holiday shopping.

Why Full-Funnel > Spray-and-Pray

A lot of brands think they can “just boost a post” or “spin up some ads” when November rolls around. Here’s the thing: that worked in 2016. Today, with Meta Advantage+, Google Performance Max, and AI-driven placements, media buying is practically automated. That’s not a bad thing, but it means the funnel and the creative are the only real growth levers left.

We said it in our blog on Meta’s New AI Ad Tools, and we’ll say it again: automation can make you efficient, but it can’t save a bad funnel or weak creative.

Think of your funnel as a three-act movie:

• Act 1 (Top of Funnel): Grab attention with scroll-stopping hooks.
• Act 2 (Middle of Funnel): Build trust with credibility, reviews, UGC, and education.
• Act 3 (Bottom of Funnel): Close the deal with urgency, irresistible offers, and retargeting.

Skip a step, and your campaign feels like a movie with no ending—confusing and unsatisfying. (Looking at you, Game of Thrones finale.)

The 90-Day Timeline (Broken Down)

Here’s how the framework plays out:

September: Test Mode Activated

• Throw hooks, headlines, and creatives into the mix.
• Figure out which angles get clicks vs. which get ignored faster than an “I just joined a new MLM” text.
• Use this data to start building warm audiences before CPMs spike.
  

October: Middle-Funnel Magic

• Retarget the audiences who engaged with September ads.
• Serve credibility-focused creative: think customer reviews, before-and-afters, product explainers.
• Warm up prospects like a crockpot—you want them simmering, not frozen, when November hits.

November: Conversion Olympics

• Deploy urgency-driven creative. (Yes, countdown timers work. No, you don’t need five of them in one ad.)
• Stack retargeting sequences that guide users through to purchase.
• Scale spend behind your proven creative so you’re not guessing when every dollar counts.

This isn’t reinventing the wheel. Google has been evangelizing full-funnel strategies for years—see Think with Google’s playbook on why holistic funnels outperform one-off campaigns. The difference here? Timing. If you start in September, you enter November with tested ads, warm audiences, and a battle plan. If you wait until November, you enter the fight with… hope.

Creative: The Funnel’s Secret Weapon

Let’s talk creative. Because here’s the thing: the funnel won’t matter if your ads look like they were made in MS Paint.

We’ve seen $5K budgets outperform $50K ones purely because the creative hit harder. In “Why Your Ad Creative Is the Real Growth Lever”, we explained why ad creative isn’t just “icing on the cake.” It is the cake.

Scroll-stopping creative is the difference between your brand becoming someone’s “I’ll come back later” tab and someone’s “Take my money now” impulse buy. And during BFCM, when your audience is drowning in a tidal wave of ads, sharp creative is the only thing that keeps you afloat.

Here’s the play:

• Test multiple hooks. Humor, pain points, urgency, FOMO—see what lands.
• Use UGC and native-feeling content for mid-funnel. (It’s the digital version of word-of-mouth.)
• Save your most polished, urgency-driven creative for bottom funnel.

Because no matter how good your offer is, if your creative doesn’t make people pause mid-scroll, they’ll never even see it.

The Big Risk of Doing Nothing

Maybe you’re reading this and thinking: “We’ll just wait until October. We’ll figure it out.” Cool. But by then, costs will already be climbing, your competitors will be running tested ads, and you’ll be spending your budget on experiments while they’re cashing in.

Waiting is the biggest risk. The brands that walk into BFCM unprepared are the ones left staring at dashboards that look like a sad flatline graph while muttering, “But our discount was so good…”

TL;DR (But Seriously, Read This Twice)

• September = test your creative and messaging.
• October = warm up audiences with credibility and trust.
• November = go full send with urgency and proven creative.
• Automation handles placements. You handle creative + funnel. That’s the lever.
  

The Bottom Line

BFCM isn’t a time to wing it. It’s a time to scale what’s already working. That’s why the 90-Day Full-Funnel Framework exists: to get you testing, learning, and locking in your best ads before the chaos hits.

At Good On, we’ve helped D2C brands go from “we should probably start planning” to fully structured campaigns live in under two weeks. And yes, we also create the ad creatives that convert fast—the ones that stop the scroll and start the action.

So if you’d rather hit November with a winning playbook than scramble through Slack threads asking “does anyone have a creative idea??”—reach out to us. We’ll build the funnel, craft the ads, and get you BFCM-ready.

Your audience is already scrolling. Let’s make sure they stop—for you.