Facebook ads for small business: how to run your first campaign

How Facebook ads work for a small business

Facebook ads for a small business are set up in Meta Ads Manager. Depending on the objective, one campaign can place ads on Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, Threads and Meta Audience Network. For the Instagram placement, a business Instagram account is not required.

Every campaign has the same three layers: campaigns contain one or more ad sets, and ad sets contain one or more ads. The table shows what you set at each layer.

Which objective to pick

Ads Manager offers six objectives, and you can choose only one objective per campaign. The Sales objective finds people likely to purchase your goods or services, which fits a seller who wants orders.

• Sales: for a store with the Meta Pixel installed, when the goal is orders.
• Traffic: for sending visitors to a page when a purchase is not the immediate goal.
• Leads: for sellers who take custom orders, or who collect email sign-ups before a launch.
• Engagement: for messages, if buyers order through Messenger or WhatsApp.
• Awareness: for a new shop or a launch, when reach matters more than clicks.
• App promotion: for businesses with their own app.

What you need before you run Facebook ads

Set these up before the first ad starts spending money.

1. A Facebook Page. At the ad level you choose the Facebook Page and Instagram account that represent your business in the ad, and boosting a post needs a Facebook Page.
2. An ad account with a payment method. With PayPal or most credit and debit cards, you are charged automatically when spend reaches your payment threshold.
3. A store with its own checkout. Since September 2025, Facebook and Instagram shops send customers to your own website to complete the purchase, so the ad needs a product page that can take payment.
4. The Meta Pixel on that store. The Pixel is a piece of code that you put on your website, and it logs actions such as adding an item to the cart or making a purchase. On WordPress, Shopify, Joomla and other website platforms, Meta's partner integrations capture website events without manual code editing.

How to run Facebook ads, step by step

These steps assume one product or one collection, and a daily budget you can afford to lose while you learn what works.

1. Create the campaign

   In Ads Manager, start a new campaign and choose the objective. For a store with the Pixel installed, that is Sales.

2. Set the budget and schedule

   Choose a daily or a lifetime budget and a start date. The budget sits on the ad set, or on the campaign if you use Advantage+ campaign budget, which allocates the budget across all ad sets. The minimum is set by Meta and may vary by country and objective, and you should see an alert in Meta Ads Manager if the budget doesn't meet the minimum.

3. Choose the optimisation event and audience

   At the ad set, choose the optimisation event for ad delivery, usually a purchase recorded by the Pixel. Start with a broad audience: the country you ship to and an age range that fits the product.

4. Leave placements on the recommended setting

   Meta recommends Advantage+ placements, because it lets the delivery system try to make the most of your budget. Exclude a placement only when you have a reason, such as an ad that does not fit a vertical screen.

5. Make the ad

   Upload an image or video, write the primary text and headline, and link to the product page itself rather than the home page. For an image in Facebook Feed, Meta's Ads Guide suggests a 4:5 ratio at 1440 x 1800 pixels, primary text of 50-150 characters and a headline of 27 characters.

6. Publish and wait for review

   After you publish, the ad is reviewed against Meta Advertising Standards before it runs on Facebook or Instagram. Meta reviews most ads within 24 hours, and you can see the status in the Delivery column of Meta Ads Manager.

How much Facebook ads cost and how Meta bills you

Meta sells ad space through an auction system where ads compete for impressions based on bids and performance. You set the budget. Meta usually charges based on the number of impressions your ad receives, unless you pick another option when you create the ad, so you pay for the ad whether or not anyone buys. Budgets come in 2 types: daily and lifetime.

A daily budget is a daily spending target over the course of a calendar week, so spend changes from day to day. Meta may spend up to 75% over the daily budget on some days, with no more than 175% of the daily budget in a day and no more than 7 times the daily budget in a week ending Saturday. In Meta's own example, a USD 100 daily budget spends no more than USD 700 in one calendar week. With ad set budget sharing turned on, Meta may spend up to 210% of the daily budget in a day, and the weekly limit in the same example becomes USD 840.

A lifetime budget is how much you are willing to spend over the entire run-time of the campaign or ad set. Meta says lifetime budgets can be useful if you don't want to exceed a certain amount of overall spend, while daily budgets can be useful if it is important to spend roughly the same amount each day. You can stop an ad at any time, by pausing it in Meta Ads Manager. If you set a cost per result goal, Meta advises a daily budget of at least 5 times the cost per result goal.

How much to spend at first depends on what one sale is worth to you. Example, with assumed numbers: a $35 candle costs $12 to make, $7 to ship and $1.50 in payment fees. That leaves $14.50, the most one sale can pay for ads before the order loses money. If Ads Manager reports a cost per purchase above $14.50, the orders the ad brings lose money on average.

What to do after the ad goes live

A new ad set starts in the learning phase, the period when the delivery system still needs to learn how an ad set may deliver and perform. During it, ad sets are less stable and usually have a higher cost per action. Meta says an ad set usually leaves the learning phase after about 50 results in the week after the last significant edit.

Significant edits send an ad set back into learning. Meta's list includes any change to targeting, any change to ad creative, adding a new ad to your ad set and pausing an ad set for 7 days or longer. Budget changes depend on their size: in Meta's example, a change from $100 to $1000 may send one or more ad sets back into learning. A budget change does not send the ad back to ad review, though, because Meta says changes to an ad's bid amount, budget or ad set schedule will not trigger review.

Meta's advice is to wait to edit your ad set until it is out of the learning phase. Fix anything broken straight away, such as a wrong link or a sold-out product. Once the ad set is out of learning, read the numbers below.

• Cost per purchase, compared with what one sale leaves you after costs.
• Purchases reported in Ads Manager, checked against the orders in your store. A large gap can mean the Pixel is not firing on the order confirmation page.
• Click-through rate on each ad. If one version gets far fewer clicks than the others, pause it and keep the rest.
• How often the same people see the ad. When clicks fall week after week while spend stays the same, it is time to test new creative.

Boosting a post or running ads in Ads Manager

Boosted posts are ads you create from existing posts on your Facebook Page. Meta says boosted posts let you focus on website clicks, Page engagement and local business promotions, while in Ads Manager you can choose objectives like leads, app promotion and sales.

Meta says an Apple service fee of 30% of the total ad payment before taxes and local fees may apply when you boost in the Facebook app on an iPhone or iPad. To avoid it, Meta suggests you boost on facebook.com from a computer or a mobile web browser.

A boost suits a post your followers already react to. When the goal is orders from your store, build the ad in Ads Manager with the Sales objective and the Pixel.

Check the Ad Library before you write the first ad

Meta's Ad Library shows all active ads, and anyone can view and search it. Search for shops that sell what you sell and look at what they run. For a shop ad that runs only in the US and is not about social issues, elections or politics, the library shows only the date the ad started to run. That is enough to see which active ads started months ago and are still running.

• The format: a single image, a short video or a carousel of products.
• The first line of the primary text.
• The offer: free shipping, a bundle, a first-order discount or none at all.
• The landing page: a product page, a collection or a quiz.

Use what you find to choose a format and an angle. Write your own copy and use your own photos.

Where Nation fits

Questions about Facebook ads for small business