Basics of the Business Manager Tool That Everyone Should Know

Introduction

Facebook started much simpler than it is today. Their range of tools and services was much smaller. As they grew – especially in terms of advertising capabilities – a new system of organization was needed for business assets and sharing access to those assets. That’s why they created the Business Manager tool.

Business Manager is an umbrella tool meant to provide top-down organization of various assets and settings. It’s free to use and fairly easy to set up. While logged into your Facebook account (which is your one personal profile login), go to www.business.facebook.com and then follow the instructions. After you create the Business Manager itself, you’ll then need to bring any important assets into the tool, most likely starting with your Facebook business Page.

Meant for Multiple Pages, Ad Accounts, & More (if needed)

Let’s say your business is a Flower shop. You might want to keep lines of business separate, such as flowers for weddings and flowers for funerals. You can have multiple Facebook Pages in your Business Manager, multiple ad accounts, and other assets as well. The main limit you might encounter is that a single Business Manager can only create a limited number of ad accounts. However, many more can be added with access given from other Business Managers. (For example, you can be assigned as a partner to work on ad accounts that were created in other Business Managers.)

Front end vs. Back end

As with almost everything related to Facebook, there’s a learning curve when working with Business Manager. First, it’s important to understand there is a front end and a back end. The front end is fairly simple in that it shows some basic data on the ad account(s) you’re working with and the Page(s) you manage. There’s also a place where alert notifications can appear. The back end, called “Business Settings” is where most of the action is for Business Manager. This is where you can organize the assets of the business and assign access to the people or “partners” you work with. (The word “partners” might mean marketing agencies who’s services are employed for Facebook marketing; however, it can be anyone who has their own Business Manager.)

Assigning Access

Granting sufficient levels of access through Business Manager can be tricky at times. If it’s not done correctly or completely, there will be limits to what can be accomplished. If there are people on your own staff who help you manage Facebook marketing, you can add them in the “People” area of Business Settings. Once that’s done, you can select the specific assets you want them to be able to work on. If you are assigning access to an agency, or someone else with a Business Manager, you would click “Assign Partner” in Business settings for the relevant asset. There are also times when assets need to be assigned to other assets. For example, the pixel is an asset that’s used for tracking website activity, such as conversion tracking. For it to work, though, the pixel needs to be assigned to the ad account that it will be used with. To do this, you would go to Business Settings, then Data Sources, then Pixels. Then, for the relevant pixel, you’d click “Add Assets” to add the ad account you want the pixel to be associated with.

Verifying the Business

It’s now a best practice to take the step of verifying your business in Business Manager. The purpose of this step, as defined by Facebook, is to “help increase transparency between businesses and people on Facebook.”

To verify your business, you might need to submit items such as: proof of your identity, legal details of your business, and proof of access to the business (such as receiving phone calls to the business phone number). You can start the verification process by going to the Security Center in the Business Settings panel of Business Manager.

Verifying the Domains

Another step you might take in Facebook Business Manager is to verify ownership of your website domain name. There are (at least) two benefits of doing this.

First, you can then have control over content (such as images) that is associated with your website links. For example, if you want to share a link to a page on your website. Facebook will pull selected text and images to represent a sample of that content in the post. If you want to have control for setting exactly what text and image will appear, you need to establish that you own the domain.

Second, if you want to use Facebook’s Aggregated Event Management capabilities to track conversions on your website, domain verification is a requirement.

Warning!

It’s best not to give anyone else full administrative access to your Business Manager. If you do, they will then have the ability to remove you and permanently cut off all of your access to it and all business assets under its umbrella!