What is Facebook Business Manager?
As Facebook itself explains, “Facebook Business Manager acts as a one-stop shop for managing business tools, business assets, and employee access to these assets.”
It’s a place to manage all your Facebook marketing and advertising activities. You can control multiple users’ access to additional resources such as your Instagram account and product listings. Here are some of its key functions:
- It keeps your business activities separate from your profile, so you don’t have to worry about posting in the wrong place (or getting distracted by cat videos while you’re trying to work).
- Facebook is a central place to track ads, with detailed reports showing how your ads are performing.
- It allows you to grant access to your pages and ads to vendors, partners, and agencies without handing over ownership of assets.
- Coworkers won’t see your personal Facebook information—your name, work email, and Pages and ad accounts.
How to set up Facebook Business Manager
Step 1. Create a Facebook Business Manager account
The first step to setting up a Business Manager is to create an account. You must use a personal Facebook profile to confirm your identity, but as mentioned above, your coworkers and partners cannot access personal information in that account.
- Go to business.Facebook.com and click the big blue Create Account button in the top right.
- Enter your business name, your name, and the business email address you want to use to manage your Facebook Business Manager account and click Next.
- Enter your business details: address, phone number, and website. You should also specify whether you will be using this Business Manager account to promote your own business or provide services to other businesses (such as agencies). When you’re done, click Submit.
- Check your email for a message with the subject “Confirm your business email”. Click Confirm Now in the message.
Step 2. Add your Facebook business page(s)
At this point, you have two different choices. You can add an existing Facebook business page or create a new one. If you manage Facebook pages for clients or other businesses, you can also request access to someone else’s page.
That last distinction is important. Although Business Manager can be used to manage clients’ Facebook Pages and ad accounts, it is important to use the Request Access option instead of the Add Page option. If you add your client’s Pages and ad accounts to your business manager, they’ll have limited access to their business assets. This is a sure way to create tension in your business relationship.
For this post, we’ll assume you’re managing your properties, not acting as an agency, so we won’t be involved in the request access process. But this difference should be kept in mind.
We have a guide showing you how to set up a Facebook Business Page, so we’ll assume you already have one to add to Business Manager. If you haven’t created your Page yet, go to that post and come back here to add your Page to Facebook Business Manager when you’re done.
To add your Facebook Page to Facebook Business Manager:
- In the Business Manager dashboard, click Add Page. Then, in the pop-up box, click Add Page.
- Start typing your Facebook Business Page name in the text box. Your business page name should be autocompleted below so you can click on it. Then click Add Page. If the page you’re trying to add has administrator access, your request will be automatically approved.
- If you have more than one Facebook page related to your business, follow the same steps to add the remaining pages.
Step 3. Add your Facebook ad account(s)
Once you’ve added your ad account to Facebook Business Manager, it can’t be removed, so it’s only important to add the accounts you own. To access the client account, click Request Access instead.
If you’re already using Facebook Ads, you can link your existing ad account as follows:
In the Business Manager dashboard, click Add Ad Account, then Add Ad Account again, and then enter the Ad Account ID, which you can find in Ads Manager.
If you don’t already have a Facebook Ads account, here’s how to set one up.
- From the Business Manager dashboard, click Add an ad account, then Create an account.
- Enter your account details, then click Next.
- Indicate that you are using an ad account for your own business and click Create.
Every business can create an ad account from scratch. Once you’re actively spending money on your first ad account, you can add more based on your ad spend. No option to claim more ad accounts.
