How to Prepare Before Hiring a Facebook Ads Agency
THE 5 THINGS that a meta ads agency needs to get you results faster
Thinking about handing your Facebook and Instagram ads to an agency? You’re in good company. Plenty of our best clients ran their own ads first, learned a lot, and then decided their time was better spent elsewhere.
Here’s something most people don’t hear before they sign: there are five things that make the first few months with an agency go faster and cost less.
You don’t need all of them on day one. A good agency will help you fill the gaps. But the more you have ready, the sooner your budget goes into growth instead of setup.
Before hiring a Facebook ads agency, it helps to have:
Your key numbers: average order value, margin per order and break-even ROAS
A Meta Business Portfolio you own, so the agency joins as a partner
Tracking that works: the Meta Pixel and Conversions API recording purchases with their value
Material for creative: product photos and videos, reviews, and someone willing to appear on camera
Room to test and grow: a starting budget, plus the stock and cash flow to handle more orders
Below, we explain why each one matters and what it does for you.
1. Know your numbers
The most useful thing you can bring to a first call is a few numbers about your business:
- Average order value (AOV): total revenue divided by number of orders, ideally over the last 90 days
- Margin per order: what’s left after product cost, shipping, payment fees and fulfilment
- How often customers come back: total orders in the last 12 months divided by unique customers
Why your social media advertising agency needs them
These numbers tell us how much you can afford to pay for a new customer and still make money. From your margin we can work out your break-even ROAS (return on ad spend), the point where an ad neither makes nor loses money on the first order. The formula is simple: break-even ROAS = 1 ÷ contribution margin. With a 40% margin, break-even ROAS is 2.5.
Without these numbers, nobody can say whether an ad is working. Decisions end up based on industry averages or a figure someone heard on a webinar.
What it does for you
Every decision about your account is made against your own profit. You’ll always know when an ad is earning its keep. And we won’t switch off ads that look average but are quietly making you money, which happens more often than you’d think.
Don’t have these figures handy? Our free workbook walks you through each calculation, and we can work through them together on a call.
2. A Meta Business Portfolio that you own
A Meta Business Portfolio (formerly called Business Manager) is the official home for your business on Meta. It holds your ad account, Facebook Page, Instagram account and Pixel in one place, in your company’s name.
The ideal setup:
- The portfolio is created in your company’s legal name
- Your ad account, Page, Instagram and Pixel all sit inside it
- At least two trusted admins, both with two-factor authentication turned on
- A business payment card added
- Your domain verified
Why your agency needs it
This is the container for everything we work with. It lets us join as a partner, with exactly the access we need to manage your ads and nothing more.
What it does for you
You always own your ad account, your data, your ad history and your audiences, whoever runs your ads. If you ever change agencies or bring ads in-house, everything we built together stays with you.
A good rule for choosing any agency: they should ask to be added as a partner, never to take ownership of your ad account or Pixel.
Set up from a personal profile, or not sure what you have? We can help you move things into the right structure as part of onboarding.
3. Tracking that works
Tracking means Meta can see when someone who saw your ad goes on to buy. It works in two layers:
- The Meta Pixel: a small script on your website that reports actions like viewing a product, adding to cart and purchasing
- The Conversions API (CAPI): the same events sent directly from your store’s server to Meta, which recovers many of the events ad blockers and browser privacy settings stop the Pixel from sending
On Shopify, the official Facebook & Instagram app sets up both. On WooCommerce, the official plugin does the same, though it’s worth testing carefully.
Why your agency needs it
Tracking is how Meta’s algorithm learns who buys from you, so it can find more people like them. It’s also how we measure results. A purchase should show up in Meta with its correct value, and the Pixel and CAPI should be deduplicated so each sale is only counted once.
If you sell in the EU: the Pixel needs visitor consent through a cookie banner before it fires. That means Meta sees fewer conversions than actually happen. It’s a normal part of running ads in Europe, and we plan around it.
What it does for you
The algorithm learns faster, your results are more stable, and you can trust the numbers in your reports. Every budget decision rests on real sales, not guesses.
Not sure whether your tracking is right? Completely normal, and green ticks in Events Manager don’t always mean it is. We audit tracking as the first step of every engagement anyway.
4. Material for creative
The ad itself, the image or video people actually see, does most of the work. Helpful material to share includes:
- Product photos and short videos, especially of the product in use
- Customer reviews, testimonials and before/after results
- User-generated content (UGC) you have permission to use
- Someone from the business who’s happy to appear on camera now and then
- Brand guidelines, and any offers you’re willing to run
Phone footage is fine. Native, real-looking video often outperforms polished studio content on Facebook and Instagram.
Why your agency needs it
Ads tire out quickly once your audience has seen them a few times. The accounts that keep growing are the ones testing new creative regularly, so we’re always looking for the next winner before the current one fades. Real material from your business gives us more angles to test: a founder story, a product demo, a customer review, a clear offer.
What it does for you
Ads that look and sound like your brand. More ideas tested each month, so more chances to find ads that sell. And your customers see the real you, which tends to convert better than stock imagery.
Starting with very little? Tell us what you have and we’ll suggest what to shoot first.
5. ROOM to test and grow
The last piece is room to test: a starting budget that gives Meta enough data to learn, plus the stock and cash flow to handle more orders once ads start working.
How much budget to start with
Our rule of thumb is a daily budget of 1.5 to 3 times your target cost per acquisition (CPA), per ad set. If a new customer is worth up to €20 to you, that’s roughly €30 to €60 a day for each audience you test. Lower budgets can work, but learning takes longer and results are noisier.
We also keep around 15 to 25% of spend for ongoing testing of new ads and audiences.
What to expect in the first 30 days
The first month is mostly about learning. Daily results swing up and down, so we judge performance over 7-day windows and only make decisions once an ad has spent enough to give a fair verdict. Meta’s reported revenue also won’t exactly match your store’s numbers. That’s normal for all ad tracking, and we report against both.
Why your agency needs it
A test needs enough budget and time to give a real answer. Too little, and promising ads get switched off before they’ve had a chance.
Once something works, we scale it in steps of roughly 20% every few days. Growth means more orders, so your fulfilment and cash flow set the real ceiling.
What it does for you
A fair test instead of an early verdict. And when an ad takes off, you’re ready to make the most of it instead of running out of stock or cash.
Not sure what budget is realistic for you? We’ll work it out together on the call, based on your own numbers.
Is now the right time to hire an agency?
One honest note: Meta ads are an amplifier. They work best when you already have a product people buy, whether online, in person or through word of mouth.
An agency is likely a great fit if:
- Your product or offer already sells
- You have most of the five things above, or you’re ready to put them in place
- You’d rather spend your time running the business than running ads
If you’re still testing whether there’s demand for your product, ads can get expensive quickly. We’d rather tell you that upfront than take your budget. In that case, our free workbook is the better starting point, and we’d love to hear from you once you’ve got some sales under your belt.
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