Step-by-step guide explains what is Facebook Business Manager and how to use it, simplest way to set it up, and what to avoid.
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Facebook Business Manager is a useful tool that allows you to manage your Facebook pages more effectively and better. However, it does not necessarily impress with its ease of use.
What is Facebook Business Manager?
Facebook Business Manager is a free tool that Facebook provides to businesses and advertisers. The tool can manage pages and ad accounts and assign different access permissions to different people. With Business Manager, you have an accurate overview of who has access to your pages and accounts. You can remove or change individual permissions at any time.
The Business Manager is also very handy if you want to separate your private and professional activities. You don’t have to be friends with the people you grant access to pages and accounts to. Now that we’ve outlined what is Business Manager in Facebook, let’s get to the way you set it up.
Setting up Facebook Business Manager
To register for Business Manager, you must have a personal Facebook account. You can’t just have a business account. Each Business Manager is always associated with at least one personal account.
Step by step to set up:
- Click this link: business.facebook.com to create your Business Manager account.
- Then, click on “Create account”.
- Enter your company’s name, name, and work email address and you’re signed in.
To manage your business settings, you now need to select your primary Facebook page. If you already have a page, you can simply take that existing page into Business Manager.
WARNING: Once you’ve taken this step, you can’t manage the page from the Facebook app on your smartphone (and can’t go live with it). You will then need the app Facebook Page Manager. Otherwise, everything will go as usual.
What can you do with Business Manager?
To address all the elements in the Business Manager here would be beyond the scope of this article. But I want to show youthe most important things about managing your pages, accounts and people.
Once you’ve signed in to the Business Manager account, you’ll get to the dashboard.
You can see your pages and ad accounts on which you have access here. When you log in for the first time, you don’t have any pages or ad accounts yet.
Click on the “Burger” icon (3 horizontal strokes) next to “Business Manager” at the top left. Now the full range of Functions and Tools of Business Manager opens.
Here you can look at e.g. your Facebook pixels(under: Pixel) of the individual pages. You can see how many visitors Facebook measures or access the code of the pixel itself to install it on your website.
You can access The Ads Managerand PowerEditorfrom here. These help you manage your campaigns and ads.
A “secret tip” are the so-called Facebook Audience Insights under target group statistics.This lets you find out what your audience looks like in Facebook.
On the far right under Settings, you can then make settingsfor the respective ad account, such as the role specification of people, notifications about the account, etc.
Under Billing and Payment Methods,you can specify, as the name suggests, how to pay for the advertising expenses for that account.
To manage your Business Manager, add new pages, new ad accounts,or specific permissions, click Company Settings.
How to add pages
As already written above, you don’t have any pages and ad accounts on your Business Manager dashboard at the beginning.
Even if you (or your personal profile) already have a few pages, you must first add them to The Business Manager to manage them from there. Go to the “Pages” tab on the left. Then click on the “Add new page” menu on the right. Here are three options:
- Click “Claim Page” if the page you want to add is yours— that is, you are the owner.
- Click “Request access to a page” if you want to add a page from a partneror customerto run ads there. This must, of course, be in tune with the person who owns the site, and you must notify him when you have requested access. The person must then confirm access through your Business Manager account.
- Click create a new page if you want to create a completely new page.This is of course automatically linked to your Business Manager account.
You must specify the name or URL of the Facebook page for both the “Claim Page” and “Request access to a page” item. Then click on the respective button. If you own the page, it’s now added to the Business Manager account and you don’t need to take any further steps. If you have requested access, then let the respective admin of the page know that they should share the page with you. If the permission is successful, the page will appear in your Business Manager account.
How to add advertising accounts
Adding an ad account works similarly. Go to the “Advertising Accounts” tab on the left. Then click the “Add new ad accounts” button on the right.
Again, you have three options:
- Click Claim Advertising Account if you or your company controls campaigns and billingfor that ad account. Once you claim the ad account, it will be moved to Business Manager.
- Click “Request access to the ad account” if you need to use the ad accountto advertise onanother company’s behalf, for example. The ad account continues to belong to the owner. Similar to the “Request Access for Pages”, you must contact the owner of the ad account. This person must then go to the “Ad Accounts” tab in their Business Manager and click Assign Partners. Then he/she enters the ID of your ad account and assigns you a role for access.
- Click “Create a new ad account” if you want to create a new ad accountfor your account. Here, too, it is the same as the pages.
How to add people to your ad account
Would you like a specific person to also work with the ad accounts and pages in your Business Manager? It’s very simple. Go left to the “Persons” tab.
Then click on “Add new people” on the right. Add people to your Business Manager based on their email addresses. You can also add multiple people at the same time. To do this, use commas to separate the e-mail addresses.
On the right, you should be well-considered in what you do. You shouldn’t add anyone to your Business Manager lightly as an admin. Because this person will also have access to all your company settings in Facebook and can also add or remove more people. In most cases, it is completely sufficient if you add a person as a manager employee. This role can be used to manage all advertising accounts and pages.
Although business manager isn’t as easy to use at first glance, I definitely recommend managing pages and ad accounts only with Business Manager. It is simply better to be able to manage all items in one central location. You can also use it to give specialists or agencies access to your account.