Facebook launched Business Manager to help companies manage and organize their Facebook Pages and advertising accounts without being tied only to an individual personal account.
Facebook Business Manager is a free tool developed by Facebook to allow businesses and agencies to securely manage their company’s Pages, ad accounts, catalogs and pixels in one place, without sharing login information or being connected to their coworkers on Facebook.
In this guide, we will cover how to set up Facebook Business Manager and explore its many features and benefits for your company or agency.
Top 10 Facebook Business Manager Benefits
Facebook created Business Manager to help solve pain points for companies. It has numerous advantages over the previous system.
Here are the top 10 benefits for setting up your company’s Business Manager.
- Manage multiple Pages and ad accounts from one Business Manager.
- Securely share and control access to their ad accounts, Pages and other assets on Facebook.
- Easily add or remove employees and agencies to your account.
- Grant different permission levels based on business objectives.
- Access valuable pixel data
- Quickly build custom audiences for your advertising efforts.
- Access the Catalog and build product sets with ease.
- Business level reporting for multiple accounts.
- FB Support will refer to business manager when troubleshooting issues.
- Manage billing details and see spend thresholds.
AGENCY TIP: If Facebook is a major place for client advertising, be sure to thoroughly train your team and communicate with your client as to how you’ll be using the platform.
We’re going to walk you through how your company can take advantage of all these features by setting up your Business Manager account.
Facebook Business Manager – Part 1
The setup process is only a few steps, but you need to make sure you have the right person setting it up. Facebook recommends the primary admin be in charge of setting up the Business Manager.
For smaller companies, this may be the CEO, and for larger companies, this may be the CMO, Marketing Director or Social Media Manager. This person will be responsible for inviting users, granting them access to manage work Pages or accounts, and getting the billing information set up (if needed). It’s also recommended that you have more than one admin on an account in the case of a person leaving a company or unforeseen issues.
Step 1 – Getting Started
Facebook is great about moving you through the process, so carefully follow their instructions. Here is the information you need to get started. Navigate to the Business Manager home page and Create Your Account.
Step 2 – Info About Your Business
Add Your Business Details. If you are creating this for your own business, then select “Promote its own goods or services” at the bottom. When you have populated the information, click submit.
Once you click Submit, you will need to verify information via the email you input to receive full access to the account.
Step 3 – Connecting Pages and People
Congratulations! Now that you have your initial Facebook Business Manager set up, you should see be brought to a page that looks like this:
At this stage, you will need to add your Facebook Business page. This is required for most types of ads on Facebook. Remember, this is your Business page, not your personal page. Remember that you must have access to at least one business Page or you will have to create one.
The next step is to Add Ad Accounts.
The next step is to add the relevant People who will need access to your Business Manager. By default, it will assign the person to the role of Employee access. If you want to grant someone Admin access, you will need to manually flip that from off to on.
RO TIP: Only provide admin access to those users who really need it.
Here’s more detailed information on the roles.
Business Manager Setup – Roles
It’s now time to finish setting up your Business Manager and familiarizing yourself with the layout. Start by clicking on the Settings Tab in the upper left corner next to the Home Tab.
You should see your account navigation with People at the top. I’m going to walk you through each tab so you can know what to expect and where to find certain information.
This is where you can add people who will be working on your Pages and ad account.
AGENCY PRO TIP: Have a process in place with your agency team and the client as to how people are added or removed.
To add someone, click on Add New Person and you will see a pop-up that gives you the option to add someone as an Admin or Employee by entering their email address. Facebook recommends adding work email address. This is good advice, especially if you don’t know the person’s personal Facebook email.
Once you make your selection, you can choose which pages and accounts this person can access. Keep in mind to pick the proper role that will allow that person to do their job.
PRO TIP: When setting roles, be sure to pick a role that allows the job to get done, but is not more than what is needed. This helps protect the account from potential liability.
Pages
Facebook has made it easier for you to manage multiple Pages without having to switch between different profiles. The major benefit of adding Pages to your Business Manager is so you can have everything you work on in one place. Another advantage is seeing who has access and what permissions they have for the company’s Facebook Page(s).
Again, you can assign Pages to people by picking through a couple options that best fits that person’s job duties. Here is what each role can access on a Page. Remember, you can always change this later.
Ad Accounts
The process here is just like adding people. You will need to click on Add New Ad Account. From here, you are presented with three options:
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- Create a new account – do this if you have never set up an ad account before.
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- Claim an ad account – do this if you already have an existing ad account and you just want to pull it into this Business Manager. Keep in mind you can’t claim an ad account that’s owned by another Business Manager.
- Request access to existing ad account – this is mainly for agencies or businesses that need access to an existing ad account.
Another feature to the ad account is the ability to once again assign people with varying access levels. Here is what each role can access on a business ad account.
Product Catalogs
Another cool feature of Facebook Business Manager is uploading a product catalog. The catalog is essentially a product feed very similar to Google Merchant Center. Once you set it up, you can serve ads based off your website products to potential customers.
Here’s how Facebook defines a catalog:
“A catalog holds information about the items in your inventory. You can use the information in a catalog to promote your inventory and business across Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network and Messenger. There are different types of catalogs for different businesses, including e-commerce (businesses that sell products), travel (businesses that sell flights, destinations or hotels), real estate and auto.”
AGENCY PRO TIP: Combine your product catalog with your Facebook custom audiences to serve dynamic product ads to previous website visitors.
Pixels
The Facebook Pixel is a “piece of code for your website that lets you measure, optimize and build audiences for your ad campaigns.” This is a critical part of being able to run successful ad campaigns once you have Business Manager set up. It is easy to set up, and at Inflow we recommend using Google Tag Manager to install the pixel if you have already have a container set up on your site.
PRO TIP: Install the pixel on your website as soon as you can, even if you aren’t running ads yet. This will allow FB to collect valuable data on your website visitors, and give you a running head start when you do start advertising.
Final Thoughts
Business Manager solves a lot of companies’ concerns with user access and permissions by having everything in one central location for the company admin.
While Facebook has made parts of management a lot easier and streamlined, it does have a steep learning curve for a new user. However, the benefits far outweigh the difficulties. Namely, for companies that have lots of moving parts and just need one central place to manage their Facebook operations.
One of our great hopes for the platform moving forward is a central location for agencies to run multiple reports across several ad accounts at once.
Hello. We have been using business manager for the last few months, but still cannot figure out how to “like” other pages so they will appear in our news feed. Any tips?
Thanks!
Mary, awesome question! It does appear to be a little hard to find. You must go to a page when you’re logged in with your business manager account, then click the 3-dotted line on the top-right, next to “Share.” Select the option “Like As Your Page.”
If you are only managing one page, this should be it. If you’re managing multiple, you’ll be given a dropdown asking you which page you’d like to “like” this page from.
Hope this helps. Thanks & let us know if you have further questions!
Million Dollar Question?
So I set up an ad with someone and it has expired how do I remove payment details I’m only setup as an admin and an employee on my page.
I already made it inactive set it up for deletion but still cc is in the payment area won’t let me just delete.
I cannot share or like other businesses as my business page in business manager?
The shares revert to my personal page and in fact the share button isn’t working at all when I try and search for another business from business manager?
Any thoughts …. Thanks
How can I put my company logo onto the business manager home page? At the moment I just have the generic suitcase symbol. It worked for the first couple of pages I added, but not for the last few. Thanking you.
I am being forced to create a business manager account as soon as I enter my personal account information. I want a business manager account, I might have accidentally did this yesterday, but it kept saying to come back later something went wrong, so I thought nothing happened to create one.’
Now when I am asked to create a business manager account after trying to login to my personal account, there is no other options – it asks me to move the pages over I am an admin on along with my ads account, I press continue, then it says login with your personal email address, so I do and then it says “The ad accounts and pages using “my email address” to login will be linked to a business manager account. Please sign in using your personal account to continue. Don’t login using “my email address”.”
This is the exact same email I am entering on the first page to login as the last page. Can this be a glitch where I might have a business manager page and personal account merged together with one email? I have spent hours trying to figure this out and I NEED to fix this. I am an admin on many client pages, and my add account is running through my personal account. It is my genuine account and is not a fake one. I don’t understand what is going on and can’t find anything to help me. PLEASE HELP!!!
Hi, I need to add a third account to my business manager but when I try it doesnt let me, any ideas?
I have been using the same business manager for over a year and today all of the access has vanished – the account itself has vanished. Any idea why this would be beyond someone deleting it? An expired email perhaps?
Hi Paige,
We haven’t experienced this before but we did some digging.
Looks like you need to make sure you’re logged into facebook under your personal profile and then go to business.facebook.com and you should see an overview of all of the pages and accounts you have access to. (If you see a login or signup you aren’t logged into your account). If that doesn’t work you will probably have to contact facebook directly.
Hope that helps!
Thanks for sharing such a helpful content.
Hi I’m trying to set up a business manage account for my business page and I find it so frustrating My business page is Louis Carr Photography> I also have a personal page Louis Carr.
When I have the “add you business details” filled in I get The following
It looks like you’re trying to create a new business using shared login details (a gray account). To confirm your identity, you need to log in with the username and password you use for your personal Facebook account. Nothing from your personal account will be shared with the business
Can some body please help me with this?
Hi Louis,
Great question! When setting up a Business Manager account, the user needs to log in with their personal log in credentials so Facebook can validate the login as an actual user. The business email you put in can be used as the official contact information for Business Manager. You can also use your business email to manage the account. Your personal account is only connected for administrative purposes, and users will not see or have access to any of your personal account information via Business Manager.
Here’s some official language on it from Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/1710077379203657?helpref=faq_content
Hope this answers your question, Louis!
Hello there,
I am really wanting to create a Business Manager Account, however, I do not want to be personally tied to the account at all. Will the user name and password of the business manager account automatically be the same as my personal account? I am hoping the user name and password can be different from my personal account so I am not tied to it! Than you in advance!
Hi Michaela,
Thanks for the comment. Facebook does initially require a personal account to be utilized for identity verification purposes. “You must have a personal Facebook username and password to sign into Business Manager.”
You can keep your personal login separate, however, and send an invite to your business email. Facebook assures users that nothing you do in Facebook for Business will be shared to your personal Facebook. Within the Business Manager account, the email address that shows up can also be your business email.
There’s no doubt that the Facebook access ecosystem is a bit tricky to navigate. I hope this helps!
-Andrew
Hi Michaela,
We definitely understand your concern here! When setting up the Business Manager account for the first time, you need to use an existing personal account to log in so that FB can confirm your identity. Once you have this created, FB does highlight being able to “Keep your work and personal life separate“. You could also add your work email to Business Manager and access it from there. However, you will still need to verify your personal account and connect it to your work email when first logging in.
Hope this helps! Thanks for the comment!
Andrew
Hello.
I am searching for a way to deactivate my personal facebook account but still be able to manage my two business pages.
Can anyone help me with that?
If I create a Business Manager account and add the two pages, will I be able to deactivate my personal account?
Or if I create a new personal account then create a Business Manager account for managing others pages, then add the two pages, will I be able then to deactivate my first personal account?
Any help please? Thanks.
Hi Dalia,
Good question. At this point in time, Facebook requires a personal page to be connected to the Business Manager. This is to help ensure verified Facebook users are the only ones who can access Business Manager. This helps promote a healthy advertising ecosystem by reducing spam/bot behavior.
You could potentially create a new personal account and connect that to the business manager. Once that’s verified, you can add a new user to the account.
Thanks for checking out our article and for the comments!
Andrew
Hello! I have a business with an email address guestservies@… The employee managing that email for me is no longer with the company but we still use the email address to field guest service questions. I would like the new employee to sign in using the guestservices@… email address. How do I disconnect the personal Facebook account of my former employee from the guest services email address?
Hi there!
Thanks for checking out the blog post and for the question. If you have access to the guestservices login, then you should be able to login through that, navigate to Business Settings within Business Manager, and select People under Users. Find the login, and then you can update the email from there.
If you aren’t able to do that, you could try removing the email from business manager, and then add the new employee connect from there.
Hope this helps!