The Facebook Business Manager is a collaborative platform for those in charge of operating or monitoring Facebook advertising for a business. It was designed to segregate personal user accounts from those of businesses and make professional collaboration much easier. That’s one of the main Facebook tools for business.
Moreover, for digital marketing professionals, this platform facilitates the creation and maintenance of separate accounts for every business for whom they manage Facebook ad campaigns.
This means digital marketers can have separate ad accounts for each of their clients.
Likewise, it makes things easier for those managing multiple businesses to separate their campaigns and even assign different roles. So, basically, the Business Manager enables centralized control of multiple user accounts. Through this, the administrator can assign specific permissions and limit access based on the user’s job function.
What is the difference between Facebook Ads Manager and Business Manager?
The difference between the Facebook Ads Manager and the Facebook Business Manager is that the Ads Manager is used to create and manage ads.
The Business Manager on the other hand is used to manage and organize all assets and information (including ad accounts) for one or multiple businesses separately from personal content.
In this post, I will focus on Business Settings within the Facebook Business Manager.
What is Facebook Business Manager?
The Facebook Business Manager is a tool that allows you to manage all of your business ad accounts, pages and assets in a single place across multiple people and organizations.
Think of it as a centralized hub where you can manage all of your clients or brand accounts and assets in an efficient manner.
You can also group assets into a line of business to leverage Facebook’s new attribution tool. More about that later.
Why choose Facebook Business Manager?
You should use the Facebook Business Manager if you are managing multiple Facebook pages, ad accounts or apps across clients or if you are working with a team of people across assets.
The Facebook Business Manager provides one central location to help you to stay organized and maximize efficiency across all of the moving pieces related to advertising with Facebook.
You need more than one ad account.
Create separate ad accounts for every client or business you serve, pay for ads with different payment methods and organise by objective for reporting.
You need to request access to Pages or ad accounts.
If you have clients, you can request access to their Pages and ad accounts to become an analyst or advertiser.
You need to assign permissions to a lot of people working together.
You can allow specific, role-based access to ad accounts, Pages and other assets that your business manages, as well as easily see who’s working on what.
You need business-level insights and reporting.
See the performance of your ads across different ad accounts and get reports of the assets and people your business is responsible for.
How to Navigate Facebook Business Manager
Add your Facebook page to the Business Manager
In your Facebook Business Manager, you can add, delete, or assign Facebook pages but only if you are the administrator. Adding a Facebook page literally means claiming its ownership so you can add one only if you own it.
We shall soon figure out the step-by-step process to connect a Facebook page to the Business Manager, but before that let us look into the prerequisites.
Prerequisites to adding a Facebook page to Business Manager
You can add a Facebook page to your Facebook Business Manager only when you have administrative rights to both the accounts. If you don’t have admin rights, you must request administrative access and remain an administrator for a period of seven days.
If someone else has administrative control over this Facebook page in their Business Manager, you would have to wait until that person deleted it. Only then, you would be able to add that Facebook page to your Facebook Business Manager account.
If that particular page is linked to an Instagram business account, you would also have to add this account to your Facebook Business Manager. So, basically, Facebook’s goal is to centralize control over all Facebook and Instagram assets through the Facebook Business Manager.
What do you get with Facebook Business Manager?
Stay up to date with your business
Add everything connected to your business
In Business Manager settings, add your Pages, ad accounts and more. Then add people to the assets they need to work on.
Access audiences and more across your business
Gather your audiences, images and other items that people in your business will use to build ads and Page posts.
Create a Facebook Business Manager
Business Manager is a Facebook tool that helps you organise and manage your business. When you join Facebook Business Manager, colleagues can’t view your personal Facebook profile unless you approve their friend requests. Colleagues can only see your name, work email address and the Pages and ad accounts you have access to.
You need a Facebook profile to create a Business Manager account. You use your Facebook username and password to sign in to Business Manager. It’s a more secure way to log in than with just an email address and password.
Note: You can only create two Business Manager accounts. If you need more, please work with someone else in your organisation to create additional Business Manager accounts.
Before you begin
Make sure that you have a personal Facebook account to confirm your identity.
Create a Facebook Business Manager
To create a Facebook Business Manager:
- Go to business.facebook.com/overview.
- Click Create account.
- Enter a name for your business, your name and work email address and click Next.
- Enter your business details and click Submit.
Navigate to Account Overview in Ads Manager
Navigate to Account Overview in Ads Manager to see how all of your campaigns are performing.
Before you begin
- You must have an active Ads Manager account.
- You should have an active or recently completed campaign.
Navigate to Account Overview in Ads Manager
- Open Ads Manager.
- Select the Account Overview tab in the main table.
- Scroll to all available performance charts at the overview level.
Setting up payment methods
Payment methods are required to create ads on Facebook. Follow these steps for assigning payment methods when you first set up your Business Manager.
- Add the payment methods you want to use in Business settings – Payments – Add payment method.
- If you are eligible for a line of credit, check whether your credit line is available in Business Manager. You can do this by contacting your Facebook sales rep or by visiting facebook.com/business/resources and selecting the “Billing and payments” topic.
- Define permission levels in the “Finance roles” section. Choose “Finance editor” for those who will need to access credit lines or invoice details, and choose “Finance analyst” for those who will only need to view the information.
- Go to Business Manager – People and select the person who needs the role.
- Select the edit icon next to the person’s name. In the dialogue box under “Finance role”, make the appropriate selection.
- Update email addresses that need to receive invoices in Payments – Account credit – Invoice emails.
- View Unpaid delivery (balance) of credit line and general health in Settings – Payments.
- Share your credit line with other Business Managers that need to access it, such as agencies.
After you have completed the initial setup for payment methods, you can create ad accounts and assign payment methods and lines of credit to them as needed, on a day-to-day basis.
For more information, visit the step-by-step guides about connecting payment methods and assigning and sharing credit lines to your ad accounts.
Add your Instagram account to the Facebook Business Manager
If you have an Instagram Business Manager account, you can simply add it to your Facebook Business Manager. This allows you to conveniently manage your marketing activities on both platforms from a single dashboard.
However, you can add a particular Instagram business account only to one Facebook Business Manager account. Also, if the Instagram business account is connected to a Facebook page, you will have to transfer that as well.
How to add an Instagram account to Facebook Business Manager?
If you are the administrator of a Facebook Business Manager account, follow the below listed step-by-step procedure to add an Instagram account to your Facebook Business Manager.
- Navigate to Business Settings on the left-hand side panel.
- Click on “Instagram accounts” under the “Accounts” tab.
- Next, click the “Add” button.
- Then, insert your Instagram business account login details.
- Lastly, select the pages and ad accounts that you wish to add and click “Next”.
Once you have added your Instagram business account, you can assign roles to others and limit their access. You can also add other assets from your Instagram business account.
Connect your Facebook Pixel to the Business Manager
The Facebook Pixel is a snippet of code that can track user behavior on a website, which can help increase conversions. Visitor interactions with your website can be tracked by the Pixel and registered as “events”, which are classified into standard and custom events.
Standard events refer to predefined actions businesses commonly track, such as “Add to Cart”, “Add to Wishlist”, etc. For everything else, you can choose to set up custom events. After all, businesses need to track user interaction and align their marketing strategy accordingly.
Facebook makes this convenient through Facebook Pixel and takes it even one step further, allowing businesses to install Pixels across multiple domains through the Facebook Business Manager. While the Facebook Ads Manager allows advertisers to create only one Pixel per ad account, the Business Manager allows the creation of up to 100 Facebook Pixels.
To create a Facebook Pixel in your Business Manager, you need to have administrative rights. If you fulfill that condition, you can start following the below-mentioned step-by-step procedure to create a Pixel in the Facebook Business Manager.
How to create a Facebook Pixel in the Facebook Business Manager?
- Navigate to the Business Manager and click Business Settings on the left-side menu.
- Open the “Data Sources” tab and click on “Pixels”.
- Click the “+ Add” button and name your Pixel.
- You can also enter your website URL.
- Click “Continue”.
- Finally, you can install the Pixel on your website and start tracking events.
Apple’s iOS 14 advertising changes affect Facebook advertising
Ad reporting and performance are affected due to this update but Facebook’s solutions to help address Apple’s iOS 14 changes have started taking effect in their Business tools.
Apple’s changes will negatively affect any business optimising ad delivery using website or app events, including through the Facebook pixel or SDK. You may also see the impact of Apple’s changes in your ad measurement.
To help you respond to these changes, Facebook has created a Resource Centre with tasks customised for your business.
As these changes may have a significant impact on your business but Facebook remain committed to providing you with additional resources and solutions as they become available.
PS: The Resource Centre is only available on desktop devices.
Conclusion
If you’re an advertiser on Facebook who shares access to multiple Pages and ad accounts with other people, we recommend that you transition to Business Manager.
- Business Manager is a more secure way to manage your Pages and ad accounts.
- You can see who’s working on what and what they have access to view and work on.
- You can also keep your business separate from your personal Facebook profile.
The Facebook Business Manager is a complete solution for businesses and agencies to manage their Facebook and Instagram assets, without losing control over them.
Also, it lets you get more out of your campaigns through advanced capabilities such as creating and setting up Facebook Pixels, various audiences, product catalogs, and more.
You can even use the Attribution tool to measure ad performance across the Facebook platform and make data-driven business decisions.
All of this leaves you with no reason to overlook this powerful Facebook ad management tool that can transform your business.