You've decided to hire someone to run your Facebook ads instead of fumbling through Ads Manager yourself. Good call. But the hiring part is where most small-business owners get burned: you pick based on a nice portfolio deck or a cheap quote, hand over the account, and three months later you still don't know if the money worked.
I've managed 85 ad accounts and ₹86.0L (~$103K) of spend, and I've been on both sides of this conversation — the person being vetted, and the person later called in to clean up after someone else wasn't. Here are the questions that actually separate a real specialist from someone reading a course transcript at you.
What does a Facebook ads specialist do, exactly?
Not "post ads." A specialist sets the campaign objective to match how you actually sell (leads, calls, WhatsApp messages, or online sales), builds and tests creative, manages budget across campaigns, and reads the account weekly to cut what's losing money and scale what isn't. If someone's answer is vaguer than that, keep asking.
1. Can I see a real account, not a slide?
A portfolio deck is marketing. A screen-share of an actual Ads Manager account — campaign structure, cost per result, spend over time — is proof. Ask to see one, even with client names blurred.
2. What should they show me before I hire them?
At minimum: the objective they'd set for your business, roughly what cost per result is realistic in your category, and how they'd structure the first month of testing. If they quote you a price before asking what you sell and how, that's a red flag, not efficiency.
3. Who owns my ad account?
This is non-negotiable: you do. The Business Manager, the ad account, the pixel, the page — all of it should live under your business, with the specialist given admin access, not the other way around. If an agency insists on hosting your account inside theirs, walk away. I've taken over accounts where the previous owner had no way to even see historical spend because the account never belonged to them.
4. What results should I expect in the first 90 days?
Be suspicious of anyone promising a number before they've seen your business. A realistic answer sounds like: "the first 2-3 weeks are testing and data collection, and we should know by week 6 whether we're near a workable cost per result." For one education client I run, it took real testing to get leads down to ₹34 (~$0.40) each on 2,766 leads — that number didn't exist on day one, it was earned by killing what wasn't working.
5. How do they report, and how often?
Weekly, at minimum, in plain numbers you understand: spend, cost per result, and what changed since last week. If reporting is a PDF of vanity metrics (reach, impressions) with no cost per result on it, you're not getting managed, you're getting billed.
6. What do they do when an ad stops working?
Every specialist has campaigns that underperform — that's normal, not a scandal. What matters is how fast they notice and what they do next. On a hair transplant clinic account I manage, cost per conversation started at ₹93 and dropped to ₹33 once we moved off a tired audience. The skill isn't avoiding every loss; it's cutting losses fast and knowing why the fix worked.
7. Will they tell me if Facebook ads are wrong for my business?
Some businesses are better served by Google Ads, local SEO, or just better follow-up on leads they already have. A specialist who only ever recommends more ad spend, regardless of what you tell them about your business, is optimising for their invoice, not your result. I wrote about the nine most common reasons Facebook ads underperform in a separate post — if your candidate can't speak to most of that list from memory, they haven't managed enough accounts yet.
8. Freelancer or agency — does it matter?
Less than people think. What matters is who's actually touching your account day to day. A big agency can mean a junior managing you while a senior closes the sale. A freelancer means you get the person who did the work. Ask directly who will be in your account every week.
9. How do they charge?
Flat monthly fee, percentage of ad spend, or a hybrid — all can be fair. What's not fair is a fee structure that rewards spending more regardless of results. Ask what happens to their fee if you need to pause or shrink the budget for a slow month.
10. Can they show their own numbers?
The best test of all: does this person publish what actually happened in their accounts, wins and losses both? I keep mine on my results page — 72,837 leads and conversions across every category I work in, including the campaigns that got cut. If someone can't show you real numbers from real accounts, you're hiring on trust alone.
Where to go from here
None of these questions are tricks. They're just what you'd ask before handing someone your ad budget and your phone number as the business contact. If you want to hire a Facebook ads expert who'll answer all ten without flinching, look at the results first, then get in touch and tell me what you're running now.
Want me to look at your ads?
Tell me your business, your market and what isn't working. I reply personally, usually on WhatsApp or email. I work with small businesses in the US, UK, UAE, Australia and Singapore.