How to run facebook ads for clients

Set up your agency Business Manager - never use the client's

Go to **business.facebook.com** and create YOUR agency's Business Manager (not theirs). All client work must be requested INTO your BM, not done from inside the client's. If the client fires you, they revoke access; if you ran from their BM, you lose your own pixel learnings, custom audiences, and creative library across other clients. This is the single biggest agency setup mistake.

Request asset access via Business Manager

From your BM, go to **Business Settings → Accounts → Ad accounts → Request access**. Enter the client's ad account ID (15-digit number from their account URL). Specify the role you need - **Advertiser** for spend authority, **Analyst** for read-only. Repeat for Page, Pixel, and Instagram if applicable. The client's BM admin approves on their end.

# Assets to request from every client:
# 1. Ad Account (role: Advertiser)
# 2. Page (role: Advertiser or Editor)
# 3. Pixel (role: Standard access)
# 4. Instagram account (role: Create ads)
# 5. Catalog if e-commerce (role: Manage)

Set up billing under the client's payment method

Every client's ad account should bill **the client's own credit card**, never yours. Agency-on-the-hook billing creates cash-flow disasters when a client churns mid-month. Inside the client's ad account, **Billing & payments → Add payment method → client's card**. If they want monthly invoicing, set them up on **Monthly invoicing** through Meta (requires $10k+/mo spend).

Run the diagnostic audit before changing anything

Before launching new campaigns, **audit what's running**. Capture: Pixel health (events firing? CAPI installed?), historical ROAS by campaign type, creative library inventory, audience overlap, attribution settings, recent learning-phase exits. Document in a 1-page client audit doc. This is your baseline - everything you change going forward measures against it.

Define the campaign architecture for the engagement

Most client accounts only need three campaigns: **(1) ASC for evergreen prospecting**, **(2) Creative-testing Manual Sales** at low budget for new ads, **(3) Retargeting** for 30-day cart abandoners + 180-day site visitors. Resist building a 12-campaign account 'because it looks sophisticated' - it just fragments learning.

Lock the creative production cadence

**Weekly: 4-6 new creatives shipped, 1 launch per week.** Without this cadence, you'll run out of variants in week 2 and the account will plateau. Standardize: research Monday (competitor ad library), brief Tuesday, produce Wed-Thu, QA + launch Friday. If your client can't supply UGC weekly, this becomes the bottleneck - solve it in the SOW with a stock-clip + AI-generated creative supplement.

Set up reporting at 3 cadences

**Daily (automated dashboard)**: spend, CPA, ROAS, daily pacing. Looker Studio connected to the ad account does this for free. **Weekly (your write-up)**: what changed, what tests are mid-flight, what shipped, what you're recommending next. **Monthly (deck)**: full-month performance vs. goal + strategic narrative + next-month plan. Clients fire agencies that go silent between monthly reports.

# Weekly report template (5 sections):
# 1. Performance vs target (3 numbers)
# 2. What we shipped this week (4-6 creatives)
# 3. Tests in flight (status + day count)
# 4. What we learned
# 5. Plan for next week

Manage scope creep with a change-order process

Clients will ask for things outside the SOW - landing page builds, new offer angles, channel expansion. Have a clean change-order template ready: scope, additional fee, timeline. Send within 24h of the request. **Don't do free work to be helpful** - it teaches the client your time is free and erodes margin until you resent the account.

Build the renewal narrative from day 1

Renewal happens because the client can articulate **what they got** in plain English. Don't wait until month 5 of a 6-month contract to start telling that story. In every monthly report, lead with the one-line outcome ('Q1: scaled spend 2.3x while holding ROAS at 4.1, shipped 47 new creatives, expanded into Reels which is now 35% of delivery'). The renewal slide deck writes itself by month 5.