Facebook Business Manager: detailed user guide

Do you manage your Facebook pages and advertising accounts via your personal Facebook account? While this is perfectly possible and feasible if you run your small business alone, it's not the same if you work in a team. Sharing connections opens the door to security and confidentiality issues, and manually adding and assigning roles to teammates on a Facebook page can be tedious.

Intro

It's vital for businesses and agencies to use Facebook Business Manager so that they can securely manage their Facebook Pages and advertising accounts in one place.

This article is a comprehensive guide that will explain how to create and manage your Facebook Business Manager account, and detail all the benefits you can gain from using this powerful tool.

What is Facebook Business Manager?

As the name suggests, Facebook Business Manager is a tool that allows you to manage multiple Facebook pages, business assets and advertising accounts, as well as Instagram accounts and product catalogs, all in one place. It also gives you the option to grant full or limited access to members of your work team, depending on their role. This means you can seamlessly delegate and share tasks between multiple employees, securely.

For agencies, this means that you will be able to add and link several Facebook customer pages to your Facebook Business Manager account without associating your personal Facebook accounts or those of your employees as administrators. For companies, this means that they can allow some of their employees to manage their Facebook page without them having ownership of that page or its assets.

6 benefits that Facebook Business Manager will bring you‍

Let's now highlight the main advantages of this tool, by demonstrating what it will allow you to do in the daily management of your Facebook business pages and accounts:

1- Separate your personal profile from your business page:

 This means you no longer have to worry about privacy issues or accidentally posting a post meant for your personal Facebook profile on your Facebook page. You can safely post content.

2- Efficiently manage multiple Facebook ad accounts and pages in one place:

 This means you have a central place to track your ads and post performance, making it easy to organize and streamline your marketing efforts.

3- Share access to your professional Facebook pages securely with several people:

 You can grant access to agencies, partners, or vendors without giving them ownership of your business assets. 

4- Control the access of each employee according to his role:

This allows for a simplified and secure delegation and supervision process.

5- Easily deny access to your Facebook Ads account to people who no longer work for you:

Again, since personal profiles aren't linked to your or your clients' Facebook Pages, it's easy to maintain an up-to-date list of the people you collaborate with through Business Manager.

6- Create different custom audiences for different ad campaigns:

This is especially useful for agencies that need to run ads for multiple clients, as well as businesses that target different types of audiences.

How to get started with Facebook Business Manager

Now let's get to the most important part: how to use Facebook Business Manager.

1. Set up your Business Manager account

To create and configure your Business Manager account, go to the Facebook Business Manager page and click on "Create an account".

Then fill out the form with basic information such as your company name, name, and work email address. Then click “Next”.

After that, you'll need to enter more specific information about your business, such as its physical address, phone number, and website. Once complete, click “Submit”.

At this point, you should receive a confirmation email. Click "Confirm Now", and voilà, you now have a Facebook Business Manager account.

2. Link your Facebook pages

The next step is to link your Facebook Business Manager account with all the Facebook and Instagram pages you manage. On your dashboard, you have the choice between “Add a page” or “Create a page”.

To link an existing page, click "Add Page" and enter the page name or URL. If you're the Page admin, Facebook will automatically approve the link request.

For agencies that do not own their clients' business assets, linking a Page requires submitting an Access Request to the client. In company settings, find “Pages” in the “Accounts” section, then click “Add”. Then select "Request access to a page" and choose the page you want to access.

Once you've linked the pages you want to manage, you can keep track of all your posts and their respective stats and performance in one place. These performance metrics include things like reach, clicks, and different types of actions.

3. Link your ad account

To serve ads using Facebook Business Manager, you must also link the ad account you manage. As with what we saw for Facebook Pages, you can automatically link an advertising account that you own and are the administrator of. Click "Add ad account" to link your existing ad account, then enter your account ID. If you don't have one yet, you also have the option of creating a Facebook advertising account, or even adding a new account.

For agencies requesting access to a Facebook Ads account, it works exactly the same as with a Facebook Page. In the “Ad Accounts” section, click on “Add” and “Request access to an advertising account”. Enter the ad account ID of the client you need to access, and you're done.

4. Add a user to your Business Manager account

For businesses and agencies alike, one of the most crucial steps is learning how to add people to your Business Manager account. In your company settings, in the "Contacts" section, click on the "Add" button.

Next, enter the email addresses of the people you want to share access with. You will also have the option to assign them a professional role, whether you want to give them administrator access or limit them in certain tasks or give them "employee" access.

When you give someone "employee" access, you can choose which accounts and tools that person will have access to. So it's perfect for agencies that need to delegate accounts, tasks, and projects to different members of their team. In this way, they can manage their customer accounts optimally without jeopardizing the security of the account concerned.

If you're working with a vendor or agency, you'll need to add them as a "Partner." In your business settings, go to "Partners" and add a partner you want to share your business assets with.

This will give them access to the assets in the account, even if you still own them. Thus, they can change settings, add/remove people, add/remove accounts, decide who has access to what, and at what level, etc. 

Get the most out of Facebook Business Manager

Once you've set up your account, you can use Facebook Business Manager to track all of your Facebook Pages and Ads or, in the case of agencies, your client Pages and Ads. Apart from these basic tasks, here's how to get the most out of Facebook Business Manager:

1. Strengthen your account security

Facebook Business Manager allows you to add an extra layer of protection for your business assets, which by the way is one of the main advantages of this tool. You have the option to configure a two-factor authentication process for your account in your company settings, inside the "Security Center" section.

2. Configure Facebook pixels

To effectively collect information that will feed into your Facebook marketing strategy and allow you to create tailored advertising campaigns, be sure to set up Facebook pixels immediately. In your business settings, go to "Data Sources" and search for "Pixels". 

All you need to do is name your Pixel, but you can also add your website URL for easy setup options. At this stage, you will also need to enter your Business Manager ID. Then select "Set up Pixel now" and follow the installation instructions which you can find in an article in our blog dedicated to this subject.

3. Configure store locations using Business Manager

If your business has multiple physical locations, the “location/locations” configuration will allow customers to find the most relevant store pages through search engines. To do this, click on the “Business Manager” button at the top of the page and select “Store Locations” in the “Assets/Actifs” section. The “Assets” section will also give you the option to add catalogs, audiences, and branded media if you need to add them later.

Click "Add Stores", then select "Add Manually" to fill in the necessary details about your store. Facebook also recommends using a spreadsheet if you need to add more than 10 stores.

Conclusion

If you're looking for better ways to manage your Facebook assets, Business Manager is a must-have solution to consider, as this tool lets you manage and delegate access to your Facebook pages, ad accounts, business resources, and more. valuable assets in one place.

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