How to Use (Meta) Facebook Ads Manager: The Ultimate Step-by-Step Guide

Facebook and Instagram have become essential sales channels for small businesses. With just a modest budget, social media advertising lets you reach the right people and turn casual browsers into loyal customers.

That said, opening Meta Ads Manager for the first time can feel a bit overwhelming. Between the dashboards, ad formats, and targeting tools, there’s a lot to take in.

But don’t worry—running Facebook ads is easier than it looks. In the guide below, we’ll walk you through how to create effective ads in Ads Manager and set your campaigns up for success.

What Is Meta (Facebook) Ads Manager?

Meta Ads Manager is the central hub for creating and managing ads across Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms in the Meta ecosystem. It’s where you can launch campaigns, define your target audience, upload creative assets, and fine-tune your ad settings—all with the goal of boosting performance and getting the most from your budget.

Key Features of Meta Ads Manager

Meta Ads Manager is packed with powerful tools to help you plan, run, and optimize your campaigns. Here’s what you can do:

Monitor live ad campaigns across Facebook, Instagram, and more—all in real time.
Edit or duplicate ads on the fly to test new ideas or scale what’s working.
Set budgets and define audiences to stay in control of your spend and reach.
Upload custom audiences, like your customer list or email subscribers, for more personalized targeting.
Track performance with easy-to-read graphs and tables that make reporting a breeze.
Retarget website visitors using dynamic ads that bring them back to your products.
Refine your audience with detailed filters like age, location, interests, and even job title.

Whether you're testing your first ad or optimizing a full campaign strategy, Ads Manager gives you the tools to make smart, data-driven decisions.

Why Use Facebook Ads?

Facebook ads are a powerful tool for reaching the right audience at the right time. Thanks to Meta’s rich user data, you can target campaigns with precision—tailoring your ads to the exact demographics, interests, and behaviors of the people you want to reach.

By adding the Meta Pixel to your website, you can track visitor activity and connect it back to their Facebook profiles. This allows you to retarget people who browsed your site but didn’t quite make it to checkout—giving you a second chance to turn interest into a sale and reduce cart abandonment.

With Meta holding the second-largest share of the global digital ad market (right behind Google), Facebook ads have become a must-have in any ecommerce marketing toolkit. If you're selling online, this is a channel you can’t afford to overlook.

Before You Start: What You Need to Use Meta Ads Manager

Getting started with Meta Ads Manager is a simple process, but there are a few things you’ll need to have in place first.

Start by creating a Facebook Business Page—this is required to access Ads Manager. If you don’t have one yet, set up a new page with your brand name and logo. You can always come back later to fill in additional details like your bio, contact info, and business hours.

Once your business page is live, you’ll automatically gain access to Ads Manager.

If you’re also marketing on Instagram, make sure to link your Instagram account to your Facebook page. This integration makes it easy to run ads across both platforms. Just note that to advertise on Instagram, you’ll need to switch to a professional account (business or creator).

Lastly, don’t forget to add a payment method to cover your ad costs. Then, take a moment to double-check your Advertising Settings and Ad Account Settings to ensure everything’s accurate before launching your first campaign.

Facebook Ads Terminology: What You Need to Know

Before you dive into your first campaign, it’s helpful to understand how Meta Ads Manager structures your ads. Here’s a quick breakdown of the three core components:

Campaigns At the top level, campaigns define your main advertising objective—whether that’s driving traffic to your website, generating leads, or boosting sales.
Ad Sets Each campaign can include multiple ad sets. This is where you define your target audience, budget, schedule, and placement. Think of ad sets as containers that organize your ads based on who you want to reach.
Ads These are the individual creative pieces your audience will actually see—like images, videos, and captions. You can experiment with different formats to find what clicks best with your audience.

Understanding this structure will help you stay organized and make smarter decisions as you build out your campaigns.

How to run ad campaigns using Ads Manager

1. Create a New Campaign

The first step to launching a Facebook ad campaign is starting fresh with a new campaign. Head to the Campaigns tab in Ads Manager and click the green Create button in the top left corner.

This is where you’ll set the foundation: choosing your campaign’s objective and selecting a billing method.

Your campaign objective defines the overarching marketing goal Meta will optimize for. You can choose from six core objectives:

Sales
Leads
Engagement
App promotion
Traffic
Awareness

Each objective tells Meta how to deliver your ads. For example, if you choose Awareness, your ads will be shown to as many people as possible. Select Engagement, and Meta will prioritize people more likely to like, comment, or share your content.

Take a moment to understand these objectives and choose one that aligns with your business goals—not just your short-term targets.

A great example of this strategic shift comes from Sydney So Sweet, a children’s clothing retailer. CEO Jen Greenlees initially ran ads with a sole focus on sales. But over time, she noticed it wasn’t fueling long-term growth. When she switched to optimizing for engagement instead, the brand’s Facebook presence flourished.

“As a store owner, it’s easy to get caught up focusing on sales as your only goal,” Jen explains. “But by increasing our overall engagement on Facebook, we’ve actually seen a greater return on our conversion ads.”

You’ll also decide how to pay for your ads—Reservation or Auction.

Reservation offers more predictable performance and placements.
Auction, on the other hand, gives you flexibility and potentially lower costs, but with more variability in results.

Choosing the right combination of objective and payment method sets the tone for a successful campaign—so it’s worth taking your time here.

2. Select Your Campaign Details

Next up, it’s time to customize your campaign settings.

Start by naming your campaign—something clear and descriptive that will help you stay organized as you create more campaigns over time.

You’ll also be asked if your ads fall under a “special ad category,” which includes content related to credit, employment, housing, social issues, elections, or politics. If your ads touch on any of these topics, you’re required to disclose it here to comply with Meta’s transparency policies.

From there, you’ll have the option to enhance your campaign with a few smart features:

A/B Testing: Test different versions of your ads to see what resonates best with your audience. It’s a great way to fine-tune your approach and learn what works—fast.
Advantage Campaign Budget: This feature lets Meta automatically distribute your budget across ad sets based on performance. It helps ensure your money goes where it’s most likely to deliver results, reducing waste on ads that aren’t pulling their weight.

These tools are designed to give your campaign a smarter start, so it’s worth exploring how they can support your advertising goals.

3. Choose Your Ad Set Goals

With your campaign details locked in, it’s time to create your first ad set—the level where you define how and where your ads will run.

Based on your chosen campaign objective, Meta will present specific options that align with your goal. For instance:

If you selected Awareness, you’ll decide whether to focus on reach (showing your ads to the widest audience possible) or impressions (showing your ads multiple times to a more targeted group).
If your goal is Traffic, you’ll choose where to drive that traffic—be it your website, app, or social media profile.

Next, you’ll choose where your ads will appear with two placement options:

Automatic Placements (recommended): Meta uses its algorithms to place your ads across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and the Audience Network in a way that maximizes results for your budget.
Manual Placements: If you prefer more control, you can handpick where your ads appear—ideal if you have a clear sense of where your audience spends time.

This step is all about strategy—matching your ad’s purpose with the right delivery method to get the most out of your campaign.

4. Set Your Ad Budget

If you enabled Advantage Campaign Budgeting in the previous step, your overall budget is already set. If not, you’ll now choose either a daily or lifetime budget within the Ad Set settings.

A daily budget is the average amount Meta can spend each day. Note that Meta may spend slightly more or less on any given day—up to 75% over your daily limit—depending on performance opportunities.
A lifetime budget sets a fixed total to be spent over the entire duration of the campaign, giving you more control over the long-term spend.

Now comes the big question: How much should you invest in Facebook and Instagram ads?

According to ecommerce expert Ezra Firestone, a good rule of thumb is to reinvest 10–30% of your revenue back into advertising. So, if your store brings in $100, consider spending $10 to $30 on Facebook ads.

That said, you don’t need to break the bank to get started. Meta allows low-budget campaigns, with a minimum spend of just $1 per day in many cases. This makes it easy to test a new ad for a few days, gather data, and make informed adjustments before scaling up.

It’s also important to remember that your ad spend isn’t just about driving immediate sales. You're also building brand awareness, growing your audience of warm leads, and creating future sales opportunities with people who’ve visited your site, watched your videos, or joined your email list.

As Ezra puts it, “Facebook advertising is one of those things where you’ve got to be willing to consistently spend over time.”

Finally, you’ll select your campaign start date. Setting an end date is optional, but it’s a smart way to keep your budget in check and avoid accidental overspending.

5. Build Your Audience

Now it’s time to define who you want to see your ads. Meta Ads Manager offers three main audience types to help you connect with the right people:

Custom Audience: Target people who already know your brand—like past customers, website visitors, or email subscribers—by uploading your own lists or using the Meta Pixel.
Lookalike Audience: Reach new potential customers who share similar traits and behaviors with your existing audience, helping you expand your reach with high-quality prospects.
Advantage+ Audience: Let Meta’s AI do the heavy lifting by automatically finding the best audience for your ads based on your campaign objective and data signals.

Choosing the right audience type can make all the difference in how well your ads perform, so take a moment to consider which approach fits your goals best.

Custom Audience
Custom audiences are made up of people who’ve already shown interest in your business or products.

You can create a custom audience using data from your own sources—like the Meta Pixel tracking visitors on your website or a list of customer emails. You can also include people who have interacted with your Facebook page or other Meta platforms, giving you a ready-made group of warm prospects to target with your ads.

Lookalike Audience
A lookalike audience is built from an existing custom audience. Meta uses the data from your current audience to find new people who share similar traits and behaviors. This helps you reach fresh potential customers who are more likely to be interested in your ads.

You can choose how closely these new audiences match your original group, with similarity levels ranging from 1% to 10%. A 1% lookalike is the closest match—smaller but often more relevant—while higher percentages cast a wider net.

For best results, try creating multiple lookalike audiences at different similarity levels to see which performs best for your campaign goals.

Advantage+ Audience
Let Meta’s artificial intelligence do the heavy lifting by finding new potential audiences based on your selected parameters and insights from past interactions.

When you create an Advantage+ audience, Meta begins with the audience suggestions you provide, focusing first on the closest matches before broadening the search to discover even more relevant people.

Detailed Targeting
No matter which audience type you choose, you can fine-tune your ads with a range of demographic filters, including:

Gender
Age
Location
Language
Interests (like hobbies or preferences)
Demographics (such as education level, income, or relationship status)
Behaviors (like device usage or shopping habits)

As you adjust these settings, you’ll see an estimated audience size appear on the right side of the screen. It’s smart to start with a broad audience and then narrow your targeting as you gather insights from your campaign data.

Whichever audience you build, take the time to explore Meta’s rich options for demographics, interests, and behaviors. Whether you aim for wide reach or a niche group, these detailed settings play a key role in boosting your ad’s effectiveness.

6. Build Your Ads

With your campaign and ad set ready, it’s time for the most exciting part—creating your actual ads.

How your ads look and feel plays a huge role in capturing attention and driving results. After all, people scroll through crowded news feeds every day, so an ad that’s blurry, poorly written, or just doesn’t stand out won’t get the engagement you’re aiming for.

Start by choosing your ad format:

A single image or video
A scrollable carousel of images or videos
A full-screen collection showcasing multiple products

Next, upload your creative assets and craft your ad copy. Depending on your campaign goals, you can add headlines, descriptions, and even music to make your ad pop. Plus, Meta’s AI tools can help you generate different versions of your copy to see what resonates best.

You’ll also have the option to include a call-to-action button and link directly to your website or app—making it easy for people to take the next step.

Hector Gutierrez, CEO of JOI, shares a smart tip:

“People get burnt out when they constantly see the same ads. Create a collection of ads for the same campaign and switch up images and colors on a single offer to keep engagement high.”

Mixing up your visuals keeps your audience interested and helps your campaign stay fresh over time.

7. Review Campaigns and Publish

No matter which ad format you choose, take a moment to carefully review your ad in the preview screen. Facebook’s ad specifications can vary across devices, so make sure your visuals and text look great on tablets, desktops, and smartphones.

Before hitting publish, double-check everything—the images, videos, and ad copy should come together to tell a clear, compelling story that speaks directly to the audience you want to reach.

Once you’re confident your ad is ready, click the Publish button to submit your campaign for Facebook’s approval. While the review process can take up to 24 hours, most ads get approved within just a few hours.

How to Report Ad Performance with Ads Manager

Launching your campaign is just the beginning—monitoring its performance is key to making sure your ads hit the mark and deliver the results you want.

Head over to the Ads Reporting tab inside Ads Manager, where you’ll find a dashboard packed with important metrics like reach, impressions, and your campaign’s main goal (such as link clicks). You can filter the data to focus on what matters most, whether by ad set or individual ad creative.

Use the dropdown menu to pick from premade reporting dashboards or create your own custom pivot table with the metrics that matter most to your business.

Here are some best practices to get the most from your Facebook ad reporting:

Break down your data. Analyze when conversions happen by day, time, action, or delivery format. If an ad isn’t pulling its weight, don’t hesitate to remove it from the ad set.
Run A/B tests. Experiment with different copy, visuals, and audiences to find what truly resonates. Savannah Sanchez, founder of The Social Savannah, says, “Having a volume of effective ad creatives is the only way to scale an ad account. It’s not about hacks—just consistent weekly testing and learning what works.”
Give your ads time. Run campaigns for at least two weeks to give Meta a chance to optimize delivery. Track click-through rates and purchases to decide whether to keep, invest more in, or scale your ads.

If your first campaign doesn’t quite hit the target, use the Ads Reporting tab to dig into what’s going on. Often, small tweaks to your creatives or targeting can make a big difference.

And if your core audience is engaging, you’re definitely on the right track—just keep refining and experimenting to unlock even better results.

Final Thoughts

Facebook is a powerful tool for small business marketing. Master your Facebook ad campaigns, and you’ll unlock a direct path to your ideal customers’ feeds—helping your brand stand out and grow.

Facebook Ads Manager FAQ

What’s the difference between Meta Ads Manager and Meta Business Manager?
Meta Ads Manager is the tool you use to create, manage, and analyze your ad campaigns. It lets you build ads, adjust settings, and track performance. Meta Business Manager, on the other hand, is designed for managing your overall business presence—handling your Facebook Business Pages, user permissions, and broader account settings.

How do I use Facebook Ads Manager, step by step?
If you’re new to Facebook advertising, here’s a simple step-by-step guide to get you started:

Log into your Ads Manager account.
Select your campaign objective, like boosting engagement or driving sales.
Set your campaign budget and schedule.
Define your target audience using filters like age, gender, location, and interests.
Create your ad by picking the format and adding your creative content.
Submit your ad for Facebook’s review.
Monitor your ad’s performance and make adjustments as needed.

Is Facebook Ads Manager free?
Yes! Using Facebook Ads Manager itself is completely free. You only pay for the ads you run, based on the budget you set. Facebook offers different billing options, including reservation and auction methods, so you can choose what works best for your goals and budget.