How to Run Facebook Ads: A Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners

Running a first Facebook ad comes down to five steps: prepare a Page and an ad account with a payment method, choose the objective that matches what you want, set the audience and daily budget, build the ad and submit it for review, then read the results and adjust. All of it happens in Meta Ads Manager, which is organised in three levels: campaign, ad set and ad.

This guide on how to run Facebook ads follows the order you will really do the steps in and explains the reason behind each setting. Button names and menu positions in Ads Manager change often. Someone who understands what each field is for can follow a new screen without hunting for a fresh tutorial every time.

What you need before running Facebook ads

Four things have to be in place before creating the first ad.

• Facebook Page: ads run in the name of a Page, not a personal profile. The Page should have a profile picture, contact details and some posts, because people who see an ad often visit the Page before deciding.
• Business portfolio: Meta's central space for holding Pages, ad accounts and team permissions in one place. A solo advertiser can start without one. A business with staff or several admins should set it up from the start so the assets belong to the business and are not tied to one person's personal account.
• Ad account: this holds the campaigns, the spend history and the billing settings. Creating it means choosing a country, currency and time zone. Get these right the first time, because all reporting and billing depend on them.
• Payment method: added in the billing and payments section of the ad account.

The payment method has a detail beginners should know before choosing. Meta splits payment into two types. The first is automatic payments, which applies when you add a credit card, debit card or PayPal. The system charges when spend reaches a set threshold and on the monthly bill date. The second is manual payments, where you add funds to the ad account first and the system deducts from the balance as ads run.

Meta states that the payment method added when the first ad is created determines the payment setting, and that an account may be locked into automatic payments or prepaid funds depending on that choice, although some advertisers have access to both on the same ad account. For Thailand, Meta says a manual payment method can only be added if it was chosen when the account was first set up. A beginner who wants spend capped at the amount topped up has to decide at this step.

Choosing the objective that matches your goal

The first step in creating a campaign is choosing an objective, which tells the system what result you want. The system then shows the ad to people likely to take that action. Ads Manager has six objectives. The table below summarises the five most businesses use, based on Meta's descriptions. The sixth, App promotion, is for getting people to install or use a mobile app.

A common mistake at this step is choosing an objective that produces attractive numbers but does not match the business goal. If you want sales and choose Traffic, the system finds people who like clicking links, which is a different group from people who buy. To choose, ask what you want a person to do first after seeing the ad, then pick the objective closest to that action that the account has data to support.

Sales on a website comes with a condition: the site has to send purchase data back to the system through the Meta Pixel or the Conversions API. Without it the system has no signal to learn from. A beginner with no website, or with no measurement installed, should start with an objective that can be measured inside the platform.

Setting the audience and a daily budget as a beginner

Both settings live at the ad set level.

Audience

Current Ads Manager uses Advantage+ audience by default. Meta describes it as an automated, AI-powered way to find the most relevant audience. It starts from the advertiser's suggestions and expands beyond them when the system sees better results. The advertiser can still set limits the system cannot cross through audience controls, such as location, minimum age, language and excluded audiences.

For a beginner the first thing to get right is location. A shop that delivers only in Bangkok and the surrounding provinces should not let its ad run nationwide. For interests and behaviours, two or three broad suggestions are enough. Slicing the audience very narrowly on day one gives the system few people to choose from and slows learning.

Daily budget

Budgets come in two forms: a daily budget, which is the average you are willing to spend per day, and a lifetime budget, which is the total for the whole period. Meta does not publish one minimum figure that applies to every case. The system does have a per ad set minimum calculated per day, and it shows a warning on screen when the budget entered is too low. Meta also states that this minimum applies to lifetime budgets, so a five-day campaign needs at least five times the daily minimum.

A practical way to think about budget comes from the learning phase. Meta explains that an ad set is flagged as learning limited when it is unlikely to get around 50 results in the week after its last significant edit. Results here means the event the system is optimising for, such as a link click or a purchase. The right budget therefore depends on what one result costs.

An illustrative example to show the method, not a market price: if the result you want costs about 20 baht each, getting 50 in a week takes roughly 1,000 baht a week, or about 143 baht a day. If a result costs 300 baht each, the budget needed is 15,000 baht a week, which is beyond many beginners. In that case Meta suggests optimising for an event that happens more often, such as add to cart in place of purchase.

A beginner should start with one ad set and a budget that can run for at least a week. Meta recommends running an ad for at least seven days so the system sees every day of the week. Splitting a small budget across several ad sets leaves each one with too few results to learn from.

Building the ad and submitting it for review

The ad level is what people see: the image or video, the primary text, the headline, and the call-to-action button with its destination. A beginner should prepare at least two or three clearly different creatives, such as a single product shot, the product in use and a short video, so there is something to compare.

Check three things before publishing. Preview the ad in vertical and horizontal placements to confirm nothing important is cropped. Open the destination link on a phone to confirm it loads and loads quickly. Reread the text to confirm it says what is being sold, the price and what to do next.

After publishing, the ad goes into review against Meta's Advertising Standards. Meta says most reviews finish within 24 hours, though some take longer, and an approved ad can be reviewed again. If the ad has to start on a promotion date, submit it at least one or two days ahead.

Boost post vs Ads Manager

Both routes produce ads: Meta notes that a boosted post is still an ad and appears on the bill as one. They differ in how many options you can adjust. Meta describes boosting as suited to quick, simple ads, and Ads Manager as the tool for more detailed, customisable campaigns with advanced audience targeting.

• Boost post: started from an existing post on the Page. Goal, audience, budget and duration are chosen on one screen. It suits pushing a post that is already getting a good response to more people.
• Ads Manager: the full list of objectives, control over placements, several ads in one ad set for comparison, and reports that can be broken down by dimension.

Boosting has a limit worth knowing. Meta states that once a boosted post has been reviewed and published as an ad, its text, image or video cannot be edited. To change it you create a new post and boost that. Results for a boosted post are shown in the Ad Centre tab of the Page, and Meta notes that a boosted post is identified as an ad on the bill.

Anyone who intends to learn advertising properly should start in Ads Manager from the first campaign, because it shows the three-level structure and what each setting affects. Keep boosting for when speed matters.

Can you run Page ads from a phone?

Yes, in several ways. The first is the boost button under a post in the Facebook app while acting as the Page. The second is creating an ad in the Meta Business Suite app, for which Meta provides mobile ad creation steps. Both let you choose the goal, audience, budget and duration on a phone screen. Meta also has a separate Meta Ads Manager app for creating, editing and monitoring campaigns on a phone.

The limit is that the phone screen shows fewer options than Ads Manager on a computer. Building a campaign with several ad sets, setting up measurement and reading multi-column reports are far easier on a large screen. A workable routine is to build and configure on a computer, then use the phone to check results and switch ads on or off during the day.

Which result to read first: CPM, CTR or CPR

Beginners often open the report and face so many columns they do not know where to start. This reading order finds problems quickly.

1. CPR (cost per result): Meta defines it as the amount spent in the selected period divided by the number of results, where results depend on the objective. It answers the main question, which is what the thing you wanted cost. Read it first and compare it with the cost the business can accept.
2. CTR: the click-through rate, clicks divided by impressions. Ads Manager has a version that counts all clicks and a version that counts link clicks only. If the goal is website visits, use the link click version. CTR shows how well the creative catches the attention of the people who see it.
3. CPM: Meta defines it as the amount spent divided by impressions, multiplied by 1,000. The example in Meta's documentation is 50 dollars spent for 10,000 impressions, which is a CPM of 5 dollars. It shows the price of reaching the chosen audience.

The three are read together to find the cause. If CPR is high, check whether that comes from low CTR or high CPM. Low CTR points at the creative or the offer, and the fix is a different image, video or text. High CPM points at an audience that is narrow or heavily contested by other advertisers, and the fix is a wider audience. If CTR and CPM both look normal and CPR is still high, the problem usually sits after the click, such as a slow page or a long checkout.

Do not judge on first-day numbers. The system is still learning and the figures swing a lot. Wait for several days of data and a reasonable number of results before comparing creatives.

Mistakes that get ads rejected or burn budget

Why an ad fails review

Every ad is reviewed against Meta's Advertising Standards, which cover the image, the text, the targeting and the destination page. Causes you can check yourself before submitting are exaggerated result claims, products in a prohibited or restricted category, and a destination page that does not open or does not match the ad. When an ad is rejected, Meta lets you edit and resubmit it, create a new ad, or request another review if you believe the rejection was a mistake. Requests go through Meta Business Support Home.

Why the budget runs out with nothing to show

• The objective does not match the goal: the system does what it is told. Ask for people who like posts and you get likes, not sales.
• Editing the ad too often: a significant edit restarts the learning count. Changing budget, audience or creative every day never lets the system settle.
• Too many ad sets for the budget: Meta suggests combining ad sets when each one gets too few results.
• Audience too narrow: CPM rises and the same people see the ad repeatedly.
• No end date or spending cap: a daily-budget campaign with no end date keeps spending. An account with a card attached should always have an account spending limit or a campaign end date.
• Destination not checked: a broken link, a form that does not submit or nobody handling the enquiry wastes every paid click.

What advertisers in Thailand should also know

An ad account set to Thailand with Thai baht as its currency has local manual payment options. Meta's Help Center lists PromptPay, TrueMoney and KBank KPlus in this group. The list can change, so check the options shown in the account during setup. These options make the account prepaid, which suits small businesses that want a clear ceiling on spend, in exchange for having to top up so ads do not stop.

Creatives should be written in the Thai customers really use and state the price in baht with delivery terms, because that is what Thai buyers look for before tapping. Businesses that close sales in chat have an ad format that sends people straight into a chat, with its own setup and metrics that sit outside this guide.

Many Thai businesses advertise on more than one platform. Once Facebook ads have settled, the next step is looking at what each channel does along the customer's path. An overview of cross-platform planning is on the Social Ads service page.

Frequently asked questions about running Facebook ads

What is the minimum budget for Facebook ads?

Meta does not publish a single minimum that applies to every case, but the system has a per ad set minimum and warns on screen when the budget is too low. A practical way to set the budget is to estimate the cost per result and budget for a chance at around 50 results in a week, the threshold Meta uses for the learning limited status.

Should a beginner use Boost post or Ads Manager?

Use Ads Manager if you want to learn advertising properly, because it offers every objective and lets you compare creatives. Boost post suits pushing an existing post quickly, with the limit that text and images cannot be edited after review.

How long does ad review take?

Meta says most reviews finish within 24 hours, though some take longer. Submit ads at least one or two days before a promotion starts. If an ad is rejected, edit it according to the reason given or request another review through Business Support Home.

Which number should I look at first?

Look at CPR, cost per result, first, because it shows what the result for your objective cost. Then use CTR and CPM to find the cause. Low CTR points at the creative, and high CPM points at the audience.

Can I switch from prepaid funds to a card later?

According to Meta, an ad account may be locked into automatic payments or prepaid funds depending on the payment method chosen when the first ad was created, although some advertisers have access to both on the same ad account. Check the payment settings of the account to see which applies, and give the choice at first setup some thought.

Summary and next step

A first campaign that works depends on a handful of decisions: a payment method that matches how you want to control spend, an objective that matches what you want people to do, enough budget and time for the learning phase, and reading CPR before anything else. When the first campaign ends, its data is the starting capital for the next one: which creative and which audience delivered results at an acceptable cost.

Businesses that want specialists to handle account structure, measurement and ongoing campaign adjustment can look at Relevant Audience's Facebook Ads service and read the scope on the Facebook advertising for business page before contacting the team.