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 and ad accounts they work on 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.

1. Get access to Pages and ad accounts without being friends with your coworkers on Facebook.
2. More securely share and control access to their ad accounts, Pages and other assets on Facebook.
3. No more shared logins and changing passwords.
4. Easily add employees and agencies to your account.
5. Easily remove employees and agencies to your account.
6. Grant different permission levels based on business objectives.
7. Manage multiple Pages and ad accounts from one Business Manager.
8. Stay organized by grouping your Pages and accounts into projects.
9. Create more collaboration opportunities within your team.
10. All accounts in one place for the best management.

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.

Step 2 – Info About Your Business

Answer these four questions to provide Facebook with some basic information about your Business Manager, but remember:

1. You will probably select Advertiser if you are not an App Developer. It is highly recommended that the company set up and own its own Business Manager rather than having an agency set it up for you. It’s better to grant an agency access than have them own it on your behalf.
2. Choose your industry category (as close as you can) from the drop down. This will have no bearing on your actual company Page.
3. Select how many people will be working in your Business Manager. This includes company employees and agencies.

Select how many Pages you want connected. These are Facebook Pages that your business will manage and/or run ads on.

Step 3 – Business Name and Page

Enter your business name. Please note this is how it will appear in Business Manager, so make sure it’s accurate if you plan on working with agencies or a social media contractor. It will make everyone’s life easier when trying to work on your account.

AGENCY PRO TIP: Set up a screen share to make sure you’re on the same Page as the client on how the business is named.

Select the primary Page you want to connect to this Business Manager. According to Facebook, “This is the Facebook Page that best represents the business you work for and isn’t a personal or client Page.” If you are the admin of multiple business Pages, select the primary one right now and add the others later (see below).

Remember that you must have access to at least one business Page or you will have to create one.

 

Step 4 – Your Business Manager Profile

The last step is to enter your personal information exactly how you want it to appear in the Business Manager. In case you were wondering, other users will not have access to your personal Facebook profile. Something else to note, your activity will not show in the manager.

Now that you have your initial Facebook Business Manager set up, you should see a homepage with your company’s branding. Here’s what Inflow’s homepage looks like (yours will look similar, but with your own branding).

 

This section provides quick access to your company’s business Page(s) and ad account(s). If you plan on running ads, you will soon see an overview dashboard of your account’s spend and impressions. If you have multiple ad accounts, you can also filter down to see selected accounts without going to Ads Manager.

 

Business Manager Setup – Part 2

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.

AGENCY 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:

1. Create a new account – do this if you have never set up an ad account before.
2. 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.
3. 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 product catalog:

“A product catalog, sometimes called a product feed, is a list of products you would like to advertise on Facebook. Each product in the list has specific attributes which can be used to generate an ad – a product ID, name, description, landing page URL, image URL, availability, and so on.

Many retailers and eCommerce businesses already use product feeds to keep their inventory up to date on their website or to advertise on shopping websites across the web. We support many existing product catalog formats, and in many cases you will be able to export your feeds from other services and upload them directly to Facebook.”

AGENCY PRO TIP: Combine your product catalog with your Facebook custom audiences to serve dynamic product ads to previous website visitors.

 

Payment Methods

This is where you can enter in your billing information for your business and then link it to an ad account. If your ad account is already set up, then you will need to add your payment information to that specific ad account by selecting View Payment Methods under that account.

 

Agencies

If you are working with an agency, as an admin, you can give them access to Pages, ad accounts, apps or product catalogs.

For example, you can give an agency access to a Page, which will add the Page to the agency’s Business Manager. The admin for the agency’s Business Manager can then assign people at the agency to work on the Page.

The best thing about Facebook’s platforms is the Power Editor. It makes ad setup and management a breeze. For many, the best part is just having all of the ad accounts in one place and being able to easily switch between them. (Note: you are able to use Power Editor without Business Manager.)

 

 

In all honesty, Facebook Business manager still has a lot of growing up to do to make up for the general clumsiness. Power Editor is one the major redeeming factors of the platform.

Shared Logins

Facebook has switched gray accounts (shared login accounts) to a “read-only” status, forcing companies and agencies to use their personal logins to access accounts and Pages. Ultimately, this move is to make sure they can confirm identities.

You can still use an account that is solely dedicated to work. Meaning, there is no reason to use your regular/personal Facebook account. This is also the way for those special unicorns with no Facebook account to still work on Business Manager. Yes, there are plenty of people out there with no Facebook accounts.

Simply register a new account using your work email address.

PRO TIP: Don’t add friends if you create a new account using a work email. Facebook may prompt you to do this from time to time, but just stay focused on the task at hand.

Requests

You can manage all of your requests by checking here. You’ll receive a notification that you can choose to accept or decline if another Business Manager wants access to any of your Pages, ad accounts or other assets.

Info

You can see all your business information in this section. This is also where you would go if you want to change your Business Manager name or update your primary Page.

Lastly, this is where you can delete your Business Manager. Just remember, you will lose all your historical data, so make sure you download everything before you delete it.

 

As a matter of fact, it’s never a bad idea to download data once a month or at least once a quarter.

 

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, it’s a great tool.

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.