A Facebook ads setup is a one-off build of everything Meta needs before your first pound of ad spend: the business portfolio, the ad account, your Facebook Page and Instagram account, the tracking and the basic audiences. I build it inside accounts your business owns, test it, and hand it over with a written record, so you or your team can run the ads yourselves from a clean start.
What a proper setup fixes
Many small business ad accounts grow by accident. Someone boosted a post from their personal profile, a freelancer added a tracking code years ago, and the Instagram account is linked to a Page nobody can find in settings. It works until something breaks, and then nobody knows who owns what.
After a setup, the answer to every ownership question is your business. The ad account bills in pounds on London time, the Pixel records the actions that matter, it only fires once a visitor has agreed to marketing cookies, and at least two people in your organisation can get back in if one of them leaves.
Who this is for, and who it is not
The setup suits UK businesses that plan to run their own Facebook and Instagram ads, or an in-house marketer who has been handed the job and wants the plumbing done right first. It also suits a business that is about to hire an agency and wants to own the assets before anyone else touches them.
It is not the right service if you want someone to plan, launch and adjust campaigns every month; that is ongoing Facebook ads management, which starts by putting the same foundations in place. If your account already exists and you mainly want to know what is wrong with it, a paid review of the account will tell you more for the money than starting again.
What the setup includes
Business portfolio and access
Meta now calls the old Business Manager a business portfolio. I create one in your company’s name, or tidy the one you have, and add your people with their own personal profiles. Admin rights go to at least two trusted people, everyone else gets only the access their job needs, and two-factor authentication is switched on for anyone with admin rights.
Ad account, billing and settings
The ad account is created inside your portfolio with pounds as the currency and London as the time zone, because both are awkward to change later and a wrong time zone quietly shifts every daily report. Your own card or PayPal goes on as the payment method, with your business address and, if you are VAT-registered, your VAT number in the billing details so the invoices suit your accountant.
Facebook Page and Instagram account
Your Page and your Instagram professional account are brought into the portfolio as assets the business owns, rather than shared from a former employee’s or an agency’s portfolio. Ads can then run from both, and comments and messages land somewhere your team can see them.
Pixel, events and domain
I create the Meta Pixel in your portfolio and install it through Google Tag Manager or your platform’s own integration, never both at once. It records the standard events that match how you make money: a purchase, a lead form, a booking or a contact. I also complete domain verification, which proves to Meta that the website is yours and gives you control of how links to it appear in ads.
The deeper server-side work, sending events through the Conversions API and checking match quality, is a separate tracking service. For most businesses starting out, a correctly installed and consent-aware Pixel is the right first step.
Consent for UK visitors
Under PECR, the Meta Pixel sets cookies that are not strictly necessary, so it needs a visitor’s consent before it runs. I connect it to your consent management platform so it fires only after marketing consent is given, and I test that it stays silent when a visitor declines. If your site has no consent banner yet, I will tell you that first, because adding the Pixel without one puts the risk on your business, not on Meta.
Starter audiences and naming
I build the audiences you will almost certainly want: recent website visitors and people who engaged with your Page or Instagram. A customer-list audience is only possible if you hold the list with a lawful basis to use it this way, so whether it is included is part of the scope we agree before work starts. Campaigns, ad sets and audiences get a simple naming pattern so reports stay readable a year later.
Decisions to make before anything is built
A few choices shape everything after them, so I ask about them on the first call rather than guess. Who in the business should own the portfolio, and who is the second admin? Will you ever bring in an agency? If so, they should be given partner access to your assets, not asked to host the assets in their own portfolio. Whose card pays for the ads, and does finance need invoices in a particular name?
The other choice is what counts as a result. A shop counts purchases and their value; a clinic counts booked appointments; a trades business may care most about calls. The events I set up follow that answer, because the campaigns you build later can only optimise for actions the Pixel actually records.
How I run the setup
- Access call. We go through what already exists, who can log in to what, and what counts as a conversion for you.
- Build. I create or clean up the portfolio, ad account, Page and Instagram connections, Pixel, domain verification and audiences, working through access you grant me, never through your password.
- Test. I check every event fires once, with consent and only with consent, using Meta’s test tools and real visits on desktop and mobile.
- Handover. We walk through the account together, and I remove my own access afterwards unless you ask me to keep it.
Mistakes this prevents
- An agency or freelancer owning the ad account or Pixel, so the history and audiences leave with them.
- A single admin, so one lost phone or one resignation locks the business out.
- The Pixel installed twice, through a plugin and through the theme, so every lead or sale is counted double.
- Tracking that fires before a visitor has consented, which breaches PECR however good the rest of the setup is.
- An ad account left in US dollars or on another time zone, so spend and daily figures never match your bank or your shop.
What you receive
- A business portfolio, ad account, Page and Instagram account that your business owns, with named admins.
- A working, consent-gated Pixel with the events agreed on the access call, tested and verified.
- A verified domain and a set of starter audiences.
- A short handover document listing every asset and its ID, who has access, which events fire and where, and how to check them.
- A walkthrough of the account so your team knows where everything lives.
Before you launch, my Facebook and Instagram ads checklist takes you through the campaign-level checks, and the UTM link builder tags your ad links so GA4 shows which campaign sent each visit. If the page your ads point to is not ready, a landing page built for ad traffic is often worth more than any change in the ad account.
Price and next step
Each setup is quoted after a free first call, in GBP, and the scope and fee are agreed in writing before any work starts. Ad spend is paid by you directly to Meta and is never part of my fee.
If you would like your Meta accounts built properly before you start spending, get in touch with a line about your business and what already exists, and I will tell you whether a setup is the right service or whether you need something else first.