Should You Hire a Facebook Ads Agency or Manage the Adverts Yourself?

If you're thinking about advertising your business on Facebook or Instagram, you've probably wondered whether you actually need an agency.

After all, Facebook makes it relatively easy to start advertising. You can create an advert, choose a budget and have something running without ever speaking to a marketing professional.

So why pay somebody else to do it?

It's a fair question, particularly when you're running a business and watching what you spend.

The answer depends on three things: your budget, your time and what you need the advertising to achieve.

And there are plenty of situations where I'd recommend managing your own adverts rather than hiring an agency.

Let's look at both options.

Can you run Facebook and Instagram adverts yourself?

Absolutely.

You don't need an agency to advertise on Facebook or Instagram.

Meta, the company that owns both platforms, provides advertising tools that businesses can use directly.

You can create campaigns, choose where your adverts appear, set budgets and review performance through Meta Ads Manager.

You can also use the simpler option of boosting an existing Facebook or Instagram post.

But there's a difference between getting an advert running and knowing whether it's doing a good job.

Imagine you're a bathroom installation company.

You put £300 behind a Facebook advert showing a recently completed bathroom.

You get plenty of likes, some comments and a handful of messages.

That's encouraging.

But the important questions are what happened next.

Did anybody request a quotation? Were they looking for the type of work you offer? Did any of them become paying customers?

Those are the questions you need to answer, whether you're managing the advertising yourself or paying an agency.

When managing your own Facebook adverts makes sense

There are several good reasons to do it yourself.

1. Your advertising budget is small

If you've only got £200 or £300 available for advertising each month, paying an agency several hundred pounds on top may be difficult to justify.

You could end up spending more on management than on actually showing your adverts.

At that stage, a small, controlled experiment might make more sense.

You can learn the basics, test whether people respond to your service and decide whether advertising deserves further investment.

Just remember that a very small test may not produce enough information to make a confident decision.

2. You're comfortable learning new things

You don't need to be a marketing expert to start learning Meta Ads Manager.

There are free training resources, including Meta's own learning materials.

If you're interested in advertising, enjoy working with numbers and have the patience to learn through testing, developing that knowledge can be valuable.

You'll also understand more about how potential customers discover your business.

3. You have time to manage the adverts properly

Advertising isn't necessarily something you can set up once and completely forget.

You'll need to check that the adverts are running, respond to problems, review enquiries and make sensible changes when the evidence supports them.

You may also need to create new images, videos and advertising messages.

If you have time available and enjoy doing that work, managing it yourself could be a reasonable option.

4. Your business isn't ready for a large advertising commitment

If you're newly established, haven't yet proven demand for your service or are still working out your pricing, I'd be cautious about paying an agency.

Advertising can help attract potential customers.

It can't automatically fix an unproven offer, poor customer service or a business model that doesn't make financial sense.

Sometimes the best decision is to get those fundamentals right before investing in paid advertising.

What does a Facebook Ads agency actually do?

A good agency should be doing considerably more than clicking a few buttons.

Depending on the service you've agreed, that could include:

Understanding the business

Identifying the customers you want, the services you're promoting, what a customer is worth and what the advertising needs to achieve.

Planning the campaign

Deciding who the adverts should reach, what they'll say, where interested people should go and how results will be measured.

Creating the adverts

Developing advertising copy, images, videos or other creative material designed to encourage the right people to respond.

Setting everything up

Configuring the advertising campaign, budgets, relevant tracking and the agreed route for customers to enquire or book.

Managing and improving the campaign

Checking that adverts are delivering, reviewing performance, testing changes and identifying problems.

Looking at the actual business results

Establishing whether enquiries are genuine, whether they progress into appointments or quotations and whether they become customers.

Different agencies include different services, so it's important to establish what's covered before signing an agreement.

Some specialise in paid advertising. Others offer websites, search engine optimisation, social-media management and several other services.

Neither approach is automatically better.

What matters is whether you're paying for work that your business actually needs.

The hidden cost of doing it yourself: your time

This is something business owners often overlook.

If you manage your own advertising, you aren't paying an agency fee.

But your time still has a value.

Imagine you run a building company.

You spend ten hours each month learning the advertising platform, preparing adverts, checking results and making changes.

If that time could otherwise have been spent on chargeable work worth £60 per hour, the opportunity cost could be £600.

That's a hypothetical calculation, not an estimate of how long every campaign takes to manage.

And if those hours would otherwise have been quiet evenings rather than paying work, the financial calculation changes.

But the wider point remains.

Doing something yourself isn't always the cheapest option once you consider what else you could be doing with that time.

This applies to plenty of things in business.

You could do all your own bookkeeping, build your own website or design your own leaflets.

Sometimes that's sensible.

Other times, paying someone who knows what they're doing allows you to focus on the work that actually earns your business money.

Advertising is no different.

When hiring a Facebook Ads agency makes more sense

There are a few circumstances where I'd seriously consider outsourcing.

You're already spending money but don't know what's working

Perhaps your adverts generate enquiries, but you're not sure whether those enquiries become customers.

Or your costs seem to be increasing and you don't understand why.

An experienced advertising partner should be able to investigate what's happening and help you make more informed decisions.

That doesn't automatically mean replacing everything you've already built.

Sometimes the existing adverts are fine, and the biggest improvement is needed in how enquiries are handled.

You have a proven service and room to grow

If you already know people want your service, you understand roughly what a customer is worth and you can take on more work, advertising may be a realistic way to support growth.

At that point, getting the advertising right becomes more commercially important.

An agency may be able to help you develop a more consistent approach rather than relying on occasional boosted posts.

Your time is better spent running the business

If you're already busy managing staff, delivering work, responding to customers and preparing quotations, learning an advertising platform might not be the best use of your week.

Outsourcing can give you back that time.

Although you'll still need to contribute.

A good agency will need information about your business, feedback on the enquiries and input into the services being advertised.

You want someone accountable for the advertising

When you're managing your own adverts, every decision sits with you.

With an agency, you should have somebody responsible for explaining the advertising strategy, monitoring delivery and recommending what to do next.

That doesn't remove the commercial risk of advertising.

But it should mean somebody is paying proper attention to how your budget is being used.

Will an agency actually get better results?

Not necessarily.

Hiring an agency doesn't guarantee that your advertising will perform better than if you managed it yourself.

Some business owners become extremely capable advertisers.

And some agencies are better than others.

An agency needs to justify its cost through some combination of improved results, better decisions, reduced workload and useful specialist knowledge.

Here's one way to think about it.

Imagine an agency costs £550 per month.

If each new customer generates £800 in gross profit, one genuinely additional customer per month could cover that management fee.

But that's only a useful comparison if the agency actually helps generate a customer you wouldn't otherwise have won.

You also need to account for any setup charges, advertising costs and the time you still spend handling enquiries.

The agency shouldn't take credit for customers who would have come to you anyway.

Ultimately, the question isn't simply whether an agency produces enquiries.

It's whether the additional value you receive justifies what you're paying.

What should you ask before hiring a Facebook Ads agency?

If you're thinking about outsourcing, there are several questions worth asking before handing over your advertising budget.

Who owns the advertising account?

Where practical, your business should own its advertising accounts and assets.

An agency can normally be given permission to work on them without needing to own them.

That matters because you don't want to lose access to your advertising history or business assets if you change agencies.

Never hand over your personal Facebook password as a substitute for proper business access.

What exactly is included in the fee?

Does the agency create the adverts?

Is video production included?

Will it help improve your enquiry forms or website?

How frequently will performance be reviewed?

What happens if something needs changing?

These are sensible questions, and a good agency should be happy to answer them.

How will you know whether the adverts are working?

Be cautious if the entire reporting conversation revolves around clicks, views and the number of enquiry forms submitted.

Those figures can be useful, but they don't necessarily show whether the advertising has generated profitable work.

Ask how the agency will measure enquiries, appointments, quotations and customers.

Also ask what information it will need from you.

What happens if the results are disappointing?

Advertising involves testing and uncertainty.

There will be campaigns that don't perform as hoped.

What's important is whether the agency has a sensible approach to identifying problems, reviewing the evidence and deciding when to change or stop something.

Can they explain the strategy without confusing you?

You shouldn't need to understand every technical setting inside Meta Ads Manager.

But you should understand who the adverts are aimed at, what they're offering, what you're spending and what success would look like.

If somebody can't explain those things in ordinary language, I'd be cautious.

Is a freelancer another option?

Yes.

You don't necessarily have to choose between managing everything yourself and hiring a full agency.

An independent Facebook advertising specialist may offer a more focused service.

That can work well if you already have someone producing your creative, managing enquiries and looking after the website.

The important questions remain the same.

What work are they responsible for?

What do they charge?

How will you measure the results?

And who makes sure the different parts of the customer journey work together?

Choose the arrangement that suits the business rather than assuming the biggest team is automatically the best one.

How much does The Enquiry Works charge?

At The Enquiry Works, we specialise in paid Facebook and Instagram advertising for established UK service businesses.

We aren't a general social-media management company.

Our focus is helping businesses attract suitable enquiries and understand which of those enquiries become paying customers.

Our standard pricing is:

• £495 one-off setup fee

• £550 per month for ongoing management

• A minimum advertising budget of £750 per month, paid directly to Meta

• An initial three-month management commitment

Additional work outside the agreed scope is quoted and approved separately.

That means the minimum initial three-month commitment is £4,395 before applicable platform fees, taxes or any additional agreed work.

We don't charge a percentage of your advertising spend.

You can read our full pricing and what's included here.

But before recommending a campaign, we'd want to understand your business.

We look at what you sell, the customers you want, what they're worth, your available budget and whether you have room to take on more work.

If advertising doesn't look commercially sensible, we'd rather tell you than take your money.

So, should you hire an agency or do it yourself?

Here's how I'd approach the decision.

Do it yourself if:

• Your advertising budget is relatively small.

• You're happy spending time learning the platform.

• You have a straightforward service and a simple advertising objective.

• You're comfortable testing things and accepting that not every experiment will work.

Consider hiring an agency if:

• You have an established business with room to grow.

• Advertising is becoming an important financial investment.

• You're too busy to manage it properly yourself.

• You want support with strategy, creative and measurement.

• You need to understand whether enquiries are turning into actual customers.

And if you're not sure which option makes sense, start with the economics.

What is a new customer worth?

How many additional customers would you need to make the advertising worthwhile?

Could you realistically handle those customers if they arrived?

Those questions matter far more than whether you understand every feature inside Meta Ads Manager.

The bottom line

You don't need an agency to run Facebook and Instagram advertising.

You need a sensible plan, a service people want, enough budget to test properly and a way of understanding whether the advertising is creating commercial value.

For some businesses, managing it themselves will be the best option.

For others, paying somebody to take responsibility for the advertising can be money well spent.

At The Enquiry Works, we help established UK service businesses plan, create and manage their Facebook and Instagram advertising, with a focus on real customer outcomes.

If you're considering outsourcing your advertising and want to know whether it makes financial sense, we're happy to have an initial look.

Find out if we're a good fit

Free initial assessment. No obligation.

Related reading: 7 Expensive Meta Ads Mistakes to Avoid Before Hiring an Agency

Written by Liam Carlton, founder of The Enquiry Works. Financial examples are illustrative and do not represent guaranteed advertising results.