It used to be that Facebook accounts were for showcasing your latest vacation or for keeping up with your friends you haven’t seen in 20 years. But now there are legitimate business reasons to optimize your Facebook page.
If you have a business and aren’t a pro at using the social media platform for it, it’s time to get schooled on what Facebook Business Manager is and then decide whether you need to use it, even if you already use Facebook ads (no, they’re not the same thing).
Here we’ll tell you everything you need to know, so you can decide whether you need to use Facebook Business Manager or simply get by with Facebook Ads Manager.
Table of Contents
- What Is Facebook Business Manager?
- The Difference Between Facebook Ads and Facebook Business Manager
- How Facebook Business Manager Works
- How To Make Best Use of Your Facebook Business Manager Account
What Is Facebook Business Manager?
Image: Facebook Business Manager
According to Facebook, Business Manager “is a Facebook tool that helps organize and manage your business.”
Um, thanks, Facebook. That totally clears everything up.
Dig a bit deeper (without being signed into Facebook Business Manager) and you can learn a bit more about its purpose:
Business Manager allows you to manage multiple Facebook ad accounts and Facebook pages as well as who has access to working on them, all in one place, free of charge.
With Facebook Business Manager you can “create separate ad accounts for every client or business you serve, pay for ads with different payment methods, and organize by objective for reporting.”
That’s more like it!
So, Facebook Business Manager is useful if you need to:
- Manage more than one ad account for your clients or business. Facebook business manager centralizes your Facebook ad activities. You can also pay for ads with various payment methods and organize your ads by objective for reporting purposes.
- Access pages or ad accounts of clients so you can advertise on their behalf or analyze their pages.
- Access business insights, tracking, and reporting on your ad performance across the various ad accounts you are managing.
- Share your ad account(s), i.e., give permissions to team members, vendors, partners, or clients to work on any Facebook ad accounts or Facebook pages you manage. This includes assigning role-based access to any Facebook assets you manage as well as the ability to see what collaborators are doing on the accounts or pages you give them access to.
- Keep your Facebook business activities separate from your personal Facebook profile and its activities. This way, your co-workers and business partners won’t see the post of you on a floatie drinking a mai tai in the Caribbean when you’re supposed to be working from your home office.
If you’re using Facebook for business but have just one Facebook page to manage and promote, you may not need Facebook Business Manager. You can do everything you need to do through Facebook’s Ad Manager. Ditto if you aren’t managing the pages and ads of businesses that belong to others or if you are the only person who needs access to your Facebook page and ads.
Still interested to know more? Great. Let’s dig into the reasons Facebook Manager mightbe good for you.
But first, let’s get clear on the difference between Facebook ads (accessed via Ads Manager) and Facebook Business Manager. Because hey, if you can get away with using only Facebook ads, why complicate life?
The Difference Between Facebook Ads Manager and Facebook Business Manager
The difference between Facebook Ads Manager and Facebook Business Manager is simple but important:
Facebook Business Manager includes Facebook Ads Manager functionality, but it also features a whole lot more business- and account-management tools so that you can manage multiple accounts and people interacting with those accounts.
Facebook ads offers plenty of Facebook marketing power if you only have your own business account to manage and you’re the only one who manages it.
With Facebook ads (accessed in the Ads Manager section on Facebook), you can create and manage ads on your mobile phone or desktop computer. And we’re not talking ads just for Facebook. It’s also the hub for your Instagram ads, Messenger ads (yes, you can advertise on Messenger), and Facebook Audience Network (Facebook’s targeted ad network).
You can also:
- Manage timing of when and where your ads will run
- Track ad performance
- Define ad-campaign parameters, including objectives and audience
- Create and edit ad campaigns (plus learn how to do it through the Advertiser Help Center)
- Upload and review how your ads look on various devices
- Edit your ads
- Define the ad budget, target audience, and placement for each of your ads
- Start, stop, pause, duplicate, or relaunch your ads
- Get real-time ad reporting
If you want nothing more than to manage and create ad campaigns, you can do everything through Facebook Ads Manager.
How Facebook Business Manager Works
Image: Facebook Business Manager
Okay. So now you know that unlike Ads Manager, Business Manager is the hub for managing more elaborate Facebook business, including ads. But how?
If you click onto your Facebook homepage and look at the navigation options down the left-hand side of the page, you’ll see Facebook Ads, among other things. Click the drop-down arrow that says “See More” and one of the options is “Business Manager.” Click it and you’ll land on the Business Manager homepage. Just like that, you’re in a whole new Facebook management world (business.facebook.com), which includes access to:
- Ads Manager
- Audiences
- Ads Reporting
- Ad Account Settings
- Business Settings
- Events Manager
Now, let’s break ‘em down.
Ads Manager
Click into this section if you’d like to create a new ad account or add an existing one (like one you already created in Ads Manager). You’ll need to input the Ad Account ID associated with the Facebook page. It’s located next to the Facebook page name in Ads Manager.
You should only do this if you or your business will control campaigns and billing for this ad account…forever. Once it’s done, it’s done; you can’t remove it. If you’re managing someone else’s account(s) or work for a marketing agency, you should instead request access to your client’s ad account.
Adding an ad account moves it into Business Manager. Going forward, only your business will be able to assign permissions to this account.
Once you’ve added all the ad accounts you manage to this section, you can access them all in one spot. This is far easier to navigate if you need to bounce between various ad accounts!
This is also the place where you can assign access levels and roles to anyone who has permissions to manage the ad account assets. Think analyst, account advertiser, admin, and editor. This functionality is handy when you need help from specific contributors but don’t want or need them to have access to the whole Facebook ad kingdom. No need to give a number-crunching analyst the permissions to conduct marketing efforts or edit business assets.
Audiences
This is the section that allows you to target your audience. It helps you create a custom audience that is most likely to resonate with your brand or ads and also to measure your performance and ROI on your ad spend.
Ads Reporting
Want to track the performance of all your campaigns? You’ll see reach, impressions, frequency, and amount spent on each ad campaign here.
Ad Account Settings
Settings are just that: the basics about your ad account, like name, address, and tax ID number.
Business Settings
You’ll want to get to know this area well. Deep and rich and broken into subpages, it includes sections for all kinds of business functions, including:
Users: Come here to view and manage assigned assets and permissions of people working on your Facebook ads. You can add people, grant or remove employee access, and more.
Accounts: See and manage the access and permissions of people and partners each of your accounts, organized by business names. You’ll also find other social media, specifically WhatsApp and Instagram accounts, are included here.
Data Sources: There’s a lot you can use here!
- Go here to add new Catalogs of items (think product catalogs, home listings, flights, cars, and other e-commerce), manage existing catalogs, and access Facebook Pixels (a piece of code that goes on your website and tracks site engagement).
- See Offline Event Sets to upload, track, measure, and optimize ads related to any offline activities.
- Use the Custom Conversions area to measure and analyze specific customer actions and better target your ads to custom audiences. You can also customize data to share with partners.
- Access Event Source Groups to group a customized selection of online events sources, including Pixels, Apps, Offline Event Sets, and Pages, so you can get a bigger picture of any or all of the Facebook pages and Facebook assets you manage.
- Leverage the Shared Audiences section to track ad accounts you manage and share, or those that are shared with you.
- Utilize Business Creative Folders to store your media connected to your ad efforts organized.
Brand Safety: Access domains and block lists connected to your accounts.
Registrations: If you’re involved in news pages, you’ll want to go here to manage your registration and add optional details about your publication.
Integrations: You can manage compatible third-party integrations here.
Payment Methods: Here’s where you manage payment methods, such as credit cards, for your various ad accounts.
Security Center: Want to require admins or have everyone use two-factor authentication? You can do it here. Also, if Facebook requires you verify your business to use certain products, you can start the verification on this page.
Requests: If anyone is asking for access to your Facebook business pages, new ad accounts, or other items owned by your business, you’ll find their requests here. You can also send requests to a client’s pages from here and see requests sent by others who you’ve given access to account management.
Notifications: Pop in to manage your notifications settings.
Business Info: These are the basics: your business name, address, business email, phone number, etc.
Setup Guide: Dizzy with all the options? Head over to this section, which will hold your hand as you get started. It will lead you to request access to an existing ad account and create new ad accounts. It’ll also guide you to create a new page and claim or request access to a page. Finally, you can click “add admin” or “add employee” to do just that.
How To Make Best Use of Your Facebook Business Manager Account
Once you’ve got Facebook Business Manager sorted, you can focus on the fun part: creating fantastic ads and campaigns!
Thankfully, there are tools that help make that easy and organized too. Here are a few you should definitely know about:
Free Ad Design Templates
You already know a picture (or video) is worth a thousand words on Facebook, Instagram, and beyond. But did you know that you don’t have to be a design pro or hire a professional to create captivating ads? Leverage free online ad design templates that allow infinite ways to customize to fit your brand.
Free Vibrant Images
You don’t need a huge photo library for ad creation if you have stunning free photography at your fingertips. Whether you need colorful images to pair with product images or photos that convey a vibe, select captivating free images to create irresistible ads.
Free Video Editing Tools
Facebook and Instagram in-stream, feed, and stories videos are ridiculously eye-catching and engaging, especially when they’re well produced! Polish up on Facebook video ads, then edit your videos using nifty free video editing tools.
Decide What’s Best for You and Go for It
If you’ve read this far, you probably need Facebook Business Manager.
Now that you’re armed with knowledge on what it can do for you, how to use it, and how to create visually compelling ads, you can get started designing ads, setting a budget, and leveraging one of today’s most powerful online marketing platforms.
