Why you should test your BFCM creative during October Prime Big Deal Days
Amazon's October Prime Day, officially called Prime Big Deal Days, lands on October 6 and 7, and even if you don't sell on Amazon, it's the best testing window you'll get before Black Friday. Prime Day puts shoppers everywhere into buying mode, and that mindset doesn't stay on Amazon. It follows people into every feed they scroll, including yours.
That spillover is called the halo effect, and it gives you a stretch of ready-to-buy shoppers about seven weeks before everyone starts fighting over the same attention. Use it to find out what your audience actually responds to now, so you're not guessing when it counts.
Black Friday is an expensive place to start learning
If Black Friday is the first time you find out your creative isn't working, every decision gets made under pressure: which hook, which format, which offer, and where to put your budget, all at the most expensive time of year to get it wrong. Testing in October won't predict exactly what wins in November, but it gives you real evidence before the stakes go up.
And the results can surprise you. One of our clients asked us to fix an ad they thought looked like a mistake, and it went on to pull over 42x return on ad spend (ROAS), the best performer in their whole account. Nobody would have picked it on gut feel, which is exactly why you test.
How to test during October Prime Day
- Pick one piece of creative.
- Choose something you think has potential and make a few versions of it, rather than trying to test everything at once.
- Change one thing at a time.
- Try a different hook, format, trend, or way of showing the offer, but only one change per version, so you know what actually made the difference.
- Watch for the strongest response.
- Look at the signals that matter for your goal, like saves, shares, clicks, or sales, and look for a pattern rather than one lucky post.
- Push the winners into paid.
- If something clearly lands with your audience, give it a little ad spend and let it work harder. Then carry what you learned into Halloween and Black Friday.
Your customers have already written your hooks
You don't need a clever new idea to test, because the customer content I wrote about last week is full of them. Read through your reviews, comments, DMs, and customer service questions, and look for the words people use to explain why they bought, what problem it solved, or what surprised them. If several customers are saying the same thing, that's a hook worth testing.
Sources
- Amazon (2026). "Prime Big Deal Days 2026 is set for October 6-7, 2026". aboutamazon.com
- Marr Media Group (2026). "The ad our client thought was a mistake". marrmediagroup.com
- Marr Media Group (2026). "Your customers are creating content you're not using". marrmediagroup.com
