The greatest thing about using Facebook advertising is the ability to reach so many people. The most infuriating thing about using Facebook advertising is the one million options you have to reach so many people. Among those options is whether or not to use a personal ads manager account or a business manager account. It’s confusing, I know, but you’ll know exactly what you need in a second.
Do you need a Facebook Business Manager Account? You do not need a Facebook Business Manager account if you are not managing multiple Facebook accounts or if you are only managing one Facebook page. Facebook Business Manager accounts make it easy to manage multiple accounts at one time.
While most people would do just fine with sticking with their personal ad manager account, there are many instances where a Facebook Business Manager account would be extremely useful. Let’s dive in a little bit deeper to the pro’s and con’s of using a Facebook Business Manager account.
The top reasons to use a Facebook Business Manager account:
A Facebook Business Manager account is a great benefit to businesses who require it. Our business couldn’t survive without it. I mean, just look at that beefy menu. It wasn’t always a neatly laid out mega menu like you see below. In the old days the Business Manager and Power Editor (now retired) were in rough condition.
But, not every business case demands a Business Manager account. See if your business has any of the following needs:
- You need to manage multiple pages with multiple tools all in one place.
- You require custom audiences from email lists.
- You have multiple businesses and are the admin for most/all of them.
- You manage your clients Facebook pages and need separation.
- You want to separate your personal page from your business pages.
- You can control usage rights to specific pages if you have a team working with you.
- You need to manage multiple ad accounts and keep them separate.
- Keep multiple accounts secure.
- You don’t need to friend anyone before adding them as administrators to pages.
One feature is that is particularly helpful is the ability to assign different roles to different admins for advertising. For example, I can assign them as an account analyst, an account advertiser, or an account admin.
- Account Analyst: The account analyst can only view the ads. This role can be helpful if your client has another partner who needs to see the ad creatives to compliment your service, or a creative team member who needs to view content, or you have someone in your organization who needs to see analytic data to match their data.
- Account Advertiser: The account advertiser can manage ads and edit them. They can’t do everything in the business manger, but their permission to make ad changes is fairly stout.
- Account Admin: The account admin can do everything in the campaigns. They can adjust budget, ad copy, audiences, create new ads, and more. Be careful who you assign this role too. We’ve seen this get out of hand quickly.
More than ad roles, you can also assign people general page roles like page admin, editor, contributor, and moderator. These roles are great when you need assistance on a Facebook page and the general day to day engagement activity. Facebook Business Manager makes page role management a breeze. If we have a client with many hands in the pot, we typically encourage them to sign up for a Business Manager account. They usually thank us for it after.
The top reasons not to have a Facebook Business Manager account:
Business Manager accounts are amazing for people who manage multiple pages and ad accounts. But for those of you who don’t, it might not make a lot of sense. And for those of you who aren’t running any Facebook ads and only manage one business page, it’s probably not worth it at all.
So why might Facebook Business Manager not be right for you?
- It’s not easy to learn and use. Facebook has made some great strides in the user interface flow, but overall it’s still a fairly clunky experience. There are so many features and options to learn—and many are redundant.
- The setup can be painful if you have multiple accounts and companies.
- You can’t remove ad accounts once you ad them. What? Yep, that’s right. When someone requests access to your ad account, think twice, and then a third time.
- Team confusion is a big problem. The time it takes you to learn FBM will be the same time it takes your employees or clients.
- Bugs arise and you will experience them. Some of them will make you feel like you’ve done something wrong. Sometimes that is the case, but other times it’s Business Manager testing your resolve.
- Real-time only. There aren’t many features that allow you to schedule actions in the future. It’s a shame being as many third-party plugins allow for this. Maybe they are playing nice in the sandbox and keeping their integrated partners happy.
Will I miss out on any features if I don’t use Business Manager?
If you are solo business, probably not. In fact, it’ll probably be a bigger hassle than a help. A standard business account will allow you place all the ads you need, analyze all reports, and manage your page directly from your page.
But, there are a few big caveats. Let’s discuss those quickly.
- A Business Manager is required if you will or have to use custom email audiences in your advertising targeting. This is a big one to be honest. If you are advertising and building an email audience, your advertising spend will greatly improve by using custom audiences from your email list. If you haven’t used this feature yet, do it immediately. Imagine uploading your email audience to Facebook and then advertising to them or creating a lookalike audience that have all the same qualities? That’s targeted advertising at its finest.
- If your ad budget is substantial, things will happen and/or go wrong. With a Facebook Business Manager account, your customer service from Facebook will be improve. If it were me and substantial money was rolling through Facebook, I’d use a Business Manager account.
- If you run a solo business but have multiple pages with multiple admins, a Business Manager is a great idea. It’s a real pain to manage admin permissions on multiple pages when you aren’t sure who has access to which pages.
- If you need more than one pixel in your advertising, then you’ll need a Facebook Business Manager account. If you don’t know what a pixel is, don’t worry about this point.
How do I setup a Facebook Business Manager account?
Setting up a Business Manger account is really a breeze if only have one or two businesses. For people who talk about it being really hard, it’s usually for companies who have dozens of Facebook pages to integrate into Facebook Manager. You’d be surprised by how many businesses and small advertising firms are still managing accounts from personal pages.
Use the following points to sign up for a Business Manager account:
- Hop over to: https://business.facebook.com/ and click login. You should see a page that looks like this.
- You’ll then be prompted to sign into your existing Facebook page or create a new one.
- Lastly, you’ll see all the accounts linked to that email (business and personal).
There are many great resources online that can help you setup your Facebook page once you are at this step. One great resource is from AdEspresso on Facebook Business Manager Mastery. They put out really useful content. Another great video is from Myles Murray and he discusses how to setup Business Manager for clients. The process here is slightly different which makes this a great read.
Related Questions
Does Facebook Business Manager cost money? The Facebook Business Manager is 100% free. The only thing that costs money inside of the Business Manager is the cost to run ads.
How many ad accounts can I have in Facebook Business Manager? You can have up to 25 accounts per Business Manager account. Facebook only allows one Business Manager account.
How many campaigns can I have Business Manager? You can have 5000 campaigns and 5000 ad sets.
