MBA1375 Q&A Wednesday: Where should I start with running Facebook ads?
2 Feb 2026 · 9 min
Omar Zenhom answers Carter's question on starting with Facebook ads. Set up Business Manager and a pixel, start with retargeting to site visitors, use AdEspresso for split-testing, and budget $100 to $500 in month one to measure what works.
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Visit Dell.com deals. Hey oh. Welcome to the $100 MBA show where you mind your business every day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online and today's episode is a Q and A Wednesday episode. On our Q and A Wednesday episodes, I answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. If you have a question you want to ask, just email me over at Omar MBA Net and I'll make sure we answer right here on the show. Today's question is from Carter and Carter asks, I want to start spending money on paid ads with Facebook. Where do I start when it comes to running Facebook ads? Good question Carter. Running paid ads can be intimidating. A lot of people lose a lot of money quickly and that's a big fear for a lot of people and rightfully so. So in today's episode I'm going to walk you through the first steps I would take if you're new to Facebook ads where you can spend your money wisely, how to do it, how to test it out and see an roi. That's your goal here is just to get a return on investment. If you spend $100 then you make more than $100 in sales from those ads. I'll be recommending tools and which type of ad to start with. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Before I begin, I highly Recommend you go to100mba.net show there you can search the word Facebook across all our episodes, over 1300 episodes. And we've went into detail with Facebook ads in the past strategies. We even went into some advanced Facebook marketing. So check it out. There's some episodes you can check out there, but today we're just going to cover getting started, where to get started. So when it comes to Facebook ads, we have to also recognize the fact that Facebook owns Instagram. So when you run Facebook ads, you can also run ads on Instagram using Facebook's business manager. So if you just Google Facebook business manager, you will see how to sign up with your Facebook account, how to hook up a credit card, and that way you can start running ads via Facebook. You're gonna need a page that's linked to that account. So you can't just run ads without a business page. So that's the first thing you have to do. First have a business page and then have that business page run ads. Now when it comes to paid marketing, especially on Facebook and Instagram, there are several different types of ads you can run. You can boost posts that you have on your page. That means like a post that you've posted on social and you want to give it more exposure. You can, you know, throw some dollars at it. You can target certain audiences. You can target people that are on an email list. You can target lookalike audiences where Facebook will look at an email list that you have and find people that are similar with similar interests as those people. Yeah, it's pretty detailed and you really go into the weeds. There's lots you can do with Facebook to really get niche. In fact, small funny story, a friend of mine, Mario Brown, for his wife's birthday, he ran ads on Facebook just to her. So she would see ads saying Happy birthday to her on Facebook all day. That's how targeted you can get, but with options. There are obviously opportunities for you to lose money. So I'm going to tell you where you should get started. One of the easiest ways to to get started with Facebook and what they call low hanging fruit when it comes to paid ads is retargeting. Retargeting is basically serving ads to people that have gone to your site already. So basically Facebook gives you something called the Facebook pixel. It's just a Few lines of code that you would put on your website in the header tags. And that basically allows Facebook to know when somebody's gone to your website. This is what cookies are. You know, you've seen those warnings say, hey, this website uses cookies. Well, cookies allows you to track anybody that comes to your property to your site. And what that does is it allows you to serve ads on Facebook and Instagram to those who've already been on your site. Ever see something on Amazon or you were shopping around for a particular item and then started seeing it on Facebook and Instagram? That's retargeting. This is the business setting up ads to people that have been on their site. Now, the reason why this is actually low hanging fruit or a good place to start is, is that your conversions are a little higher. Why? Because these are not cold customers. It's not cold traffic. People have been to your site already. They know who you are. So when they see your ad, if they click it, there's a good chance that they're interested in learning more and that you can close them on whatever you're advertising, whether it's a free ebook, whether it's a video course, whether it's the product itself. So retargeting is a definitely the best place to start when it comes to Facebook marketing. And you can create your own ads using the Facebook business manager, but there are tools there that make it a little bit easier to create several different kinds of ads, different kind of variations of headlines. I mentioned Adespresso before. It's a great tool, starts around $50 a month, and it basically asks you to write, you know, five headlines, give me five images, five bodies of text, and they will do all these different variations of those different pieces of information, run those ads and see which ones convert the best, and then just double down on the ones that work. It's basically an algorithm that allows you to automatically split test hundreds of different kinds of ads. So with adespresso, you can set that up and do retargeting. And this is really where I would start. I would start with just a few hundred dollars for your first month. No more than $500 is what I say. $500 that you can part with. What you're trying to do here is get an roi, see what works. So with Facebook, you can say how much you want to spend every day. So you could split that $500 over the course of the next few weeks. Maybe like $125 a week. You can even say how much you want to spend every day and that makes sure you don't go over budget. My advice is run ads, something that is an easy low barrier of entry. Opt in that you can get somebody's contact so you can build that lead and build that audience. So you may want to run an ad to a free course or a free guide. All they need to do is give their name and email address so they can get on your CRM. And then from there, once they're on your list, then you can have an email sequence with more value and then obviously an offer to your product later on. A free trial is great if you have software. The reason why I recommend this is because your conversion rates will be higher. It's a lot easier for somebody to sign up something for free of value than somebody who's gonna have to put up some money, a few hundred dollars of a purchase. Even with retargeting, this will be a great way for you to get an roi. And that's really where I would get started. Carter with Facebook marketing retargeting. Use adespresso. Have a set budget, don't spend more than $500 a month for your first month or so and see where it goes. Once you feel comfortable with that, once your team feels comfortable with running Facebook ads that first month or two, then you can branch out the different types of ads.
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To wrap up today's Q and A Wednesday question from Carter, how to get started with Facebook ads. Retargeting is my go to advice people that have been to your website already are going to be more interested in what you have to offer. It also allows you to be top of mind and to really drill home that brand awareness. I also want to mention that retargeting is the least competitive ads as well. When you run ads against interests or people, then you're competing with other ads that are targeting the same groups or people. But when you retargeting, you're just really serving ads to people that have been to your site. Yes, you're competing with ad space, but it's not as competitive as competing with other people trying to find new audiences. I hope that helps and I hope that answers your question here on Q and A Wednesday. Carter, if you are listening right now and you have a question, email me over at omar@100mba.net so I can make sure I answer your question right here on the show on Q and A Wednesday. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Marketing, especially paid marketing, is something you're gonna need to take the time to learn and to adjust and tweak. It's never once and done. You have to kind of experiment and see what works. And things don't last forever. You can run an ad that does well for maybe a month, but after that its efficacy just goes down. Maybe even a couple weeks. You gotta try something new, new audience, new ad, new copy. You know, big brands, they don't run the same commercials they do every year, right? So you can't run the same ads as well. You gotta keep experimenting with new stuff. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.
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