Welcome to Business Manager
Business Manager is Facebook’s management platform for all of the business tools including ads manager – the self serve platform where we build out Facebook ads. Business Manager was built for agencies managing large volumes of accounts and adverts, needing to make edits, updates and reports quickly, it was originally called Power Editor and was only available to large agencies.
Due to security concerns from events like the Cambridge Athletica scandal and increased pressure from governments around the world to tighten up data privacy – Facebook has made Business Manager it’s default and mandatory for businesses to access certain features of the advertising platform.
BUT – Business Manager is notoriously confusing to use …why? Because it was never built to be intuitive like other functions in Facebook. Boosting a Facebook post was designed to allow all users easy access to the boosted type of ad but Business Manager was designed for agencies and because of that it lacks a lot of simple, straight forward instructions and the sheer volume of features makes it feel overwhelming.
But fear not by the end of this module you will see – it’s actually a pretty awesome platform and it will be your best friend in advertising
Think of Business Manager like a Real Estate Agent
One of the easiest ways to get your head around Business Manager is to think of it like a Real Estate Agent managing different properties.
Within the Real Estate Agents business they will have multiple Landlords, tenants, employees of the Real Estate Agent who have different keys to access different homes and properties depending on which area of the business they work in and then you have the owner of the Real Estate Business. Business manager is the system they use to make sure everyone has the right keys for different properties and that the properties are being looked after well.
The Landlord – owns the property. They might live in the property or rent out a building to many people but they own the land and have the biggest right to the property. In Business Manager this would be called Owner or Ownership. You can own Pages, Ad Accounts and Business Managers
The Real Estate Business – manages who gets access to what, works for the Landlord and allocates access to certain properties of the tenants. In this example the platform Business Manager would be the Real Estate Business
The Real Estate Agents – the team working in the Real Estate office have different roles and get access to the properties depending on their job role and seniority. In Business Manager they would be called Users or People
The Properties – the homes, houses and apartments people can rent that make up the Landlords property portfolio. In Business Manager our properties are Facebook Pages, Ad Accounts, Pixels and Product Catalogues.
Tenants need keys to get into their homes and the people working in the real estate need access to the properties too – in Business Manager we call this adding access.
Overview of Business Manager
Access Business Manager at business.facebook.com
You can have multiple Business Manager Accounts for different businesses or access multiple Business manager accounts
People within Business Manager can have 2 roles – Admin or Employee Access. Admins can access all functions within Business Manager and Employees can only work on the Properties they are give access ( keys ) to.
Business Settings
Take some time to go through the different menus and options within Business Manager, exploring and using the platform is the best way to get comfortable with it
Business Manager has setting you can use to run the Business Manager or has Global tools you can use to manage your accounts
The Global Menu
The Global Menu has all of the settings and tools available to use across all of your accounts, The Business Settings menu shows the settings that effect the operation of the Business Manager
Business Manager has more tools and features than Ads Manager including the ability to create and share custom audiences, creative hub and account quality
Line of Business and Attribution Reporting
A Line of Business tells Facebook to link up different properties and create a report based on all of the information shared between them
Once the line of Business is set up, click refresh and then in the top right corner select open in Attribution
Attribution reporting will take 2 – 24 hours to set up fully and will track only once fully set up
The Hierarchy and Set up of Business Manager
As Business Manager has different levels of access setting up the right structure for your business or your clients is important for their brand safety and for allowing you the right access to their accounts.
As Business Manager is not always straight forward to use – clients and Business often have their accounts structure set up wrong or in a way that leave them vulnerable. For example if an employee set ups the business manager and is technically the “Landlord” they could run away with the businesses page and ad account when they leave the company as they essentially have the deeds to the land or can claim ownership.
In order to make sure the business manager is set up in a safe and sustainable way. Here are some suggested structures for your Business or to advise your clients
Single Business/ Brand
The Owner/ LandLord creates and owns the Business Manager and has “ownership” of all the company pages
The People – the marketing team are added in as admins or employees to work on the pages or ad accounts
All pages, ad accounts and pixels are created from within the main company Business page and access can be given to agencies via the Partners feature
The Social Media Agency
The Owner/ LandLord creates and owns the Business Manager and has “ownership” of all the primary company page
The Account Managers are allocated access to the page and ad accounts they manage
The Business Manager requests access to the clients pages and advert accounts
Franchise Businesses
The Owner/ LandLord creates and owns the Business Manager and creates and owns all company pages
The Marketing can give access to the franchisees to their own page – but the page remains the property of the Business Manager
The Business Manager does not need to contain the franchisee advert accounts as well – just the advert account that will be used by the main office
How to work on Clients Business Managers
When working with a client on their accounts you can gain access via Business Manager in 2 ways depending on what they need assistance with.
- You request access to their pages and advert accounts and work on their social media campaigns by adding them to the properties you manage within your Business Manager – this is a good approach when the client just needs basic advert campaigns or content posted
- You can be added into their Business Manager either as a Partner or directly as an Admin or Employee of the Business Manager. Being added as an Admin is a good option if you need to create assets like Pixels or Product catalogues for them. Business Manager can share the assets with a Partner but not let them create them so you actually need to be an admin of the Business Manager to set up certain things like apps, pixels and product catalogues