Business Manager is a free tool from Meta (formerly Facebook) that allows business owners and advertisers to manage their presence across Meta’s apps and services. With Business Manager, you can create ad accounts, Pages, and ad campaigns, as well as manage permissions and access for your team members. In short, it is the central hub used to manage your business’s activities across Meta’s platforms.
Overview of Business Manager
Business Manager provides a unified interface for businesses to manage their pages, ad accounts, and more across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Audience Network. Here are some of the key things you can do with Business Manager:
- Create and manage Facebook Pages and Instagram business profiles
- Create and manage ad accounts for Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Audience Network
- Analyze ad performance and optimize campaigns
- Create custom audiences for targeted ad campaigns
- Manage permissions and access for team members
- Integrate third-party applications and services
- Receive notifications and stay updated on key activities
In essence, Business Manager enables businesses to efficiently manage their presence and marketing activities across Meta’s platforms all in one place. Rather than having to access each platform separately, you can control everything from one central dashboard.
Key Benefits of Using Business Manager
There are several important benefits that Business Manager provides for businesses and advertisers:
Centralized Management
As mentioned, the key advantage of Business Manager is having a unified platform to manage all your pages, ad accounts, and team members. This makes it much easier to execute campaigns and analyze performance when everything is accessible in one place.
Cross-Platform Visibility
With Business Manager, you can get a high-level view of how your business is performing across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Audience Network. You can track metrics like reach, engagement, conversions, and ROI for all your activities in one dashboard.
Collaboration Tools
Business Manager enables collaboration by allowing you to add team members and control permissions. You can assign specific roles like admin, analyst, or advertiser to limit access. And you can give teammates access to specific ad accounts, Pages, or other assets as needed.
Improved Efficiency
By consolidating management under one roof, you and your team can work more efficiently. Features like shared budgets, saved audiences, and centralized billing save time and eliminate redundancies.
More Advanced Options
Business Manager unlocks more advanced options for customization and optimization. For example, you can create saved audiences to reuse across ad accounts. You also get access to beta features to help refine your marketing approach.
Key Features and Tools
Here is an overview of some of the core features and tools available within Business Manager:
Pages and Ad Accounts
- Create and manage Pages for Facebook and Instagram
- Set up ad accounts for different campaigns or objectives
- Control ad account settings like billing, budgeting, and permissions
Ads Manager
- Create and edit ads for different placements
- Manage and optimize active ad campaigns
- Access performance insights and reporting
Assets
- View Pages, ad accounts, pixels, and more in one place
- Share assets across accounts for unified strategy
Audiences
- Build saved audiences to reuse across campaigns
- Create lookalike audiences to reach new potential customers
- Manage customer lists and sync data for custom audiences
Permissions
- Add team members and control access to assets
- Assign roles like admin, analyst, advertiser, and specialist
- Limit teammates to specific ad accounts, Pages, or campaigns
Integrations
- Connect third-party apps and services
- Sync data with CRMs, email services, and more
- Automate workflows between platforms
Getting Started with Business Manager
If you want to start using Business Manager for your business, here is an overview of how to get set up:
- Sign Up – Go to business.facebook.com and sign up for a Business Manager account using your business email and information.
- Confirmation – Check your email to confirm and activate your new Business Manager account.
- Set Up Your Business – Follow the onboarding steps to connect your business Pages and ad accounts.
- Add Team Members – Invite other teammates and assign roles like Analyst, Advertiser, Admin, etc.
- Explore and Customize – Navigate Business Manager and begin customizing based on your objectives.
- Start Managing – Use the Pages, Ads, Assets, and Analytics tools to execute your marketing strategies.
Signing up is simple and Business Manager will guide you through the setup process. The key is inviting your team members so you can collaborate efficiently as you manage your Facebook, Instagram, and ad campaigns.
Tips for Using Business Manager
Here are some tips to help you get the most value out of using Business Manager:
- Take time to organize your assets – Group Pages and ad accounts in a logical structure based on your business.
- Be strategic with permissions – Audit what level of access each team member needs to be productive and secure.
- Share assets when appropriate – Reusing ad audiences, pixels, and creatives can improve performance.
- Use Advanced Targeting options – Leverage lookalike audiences and detailed targeting to reach more customers.
- Analyze data frequently – Check campaign insights often to identify optimization opportunities.
- Automate where possible – Use workflows and integrations to save time on redundant tasks.
- Stay up-to-date – Check Settings for new features that can improve your marketing approach.
Getting the most from Business Manager requires understanding your business structure and needs. Optimize permissions, automate workflows, and frequently analyze your data. Business Manager gives you the control to customize your setup based on what works best for your objectives.
Business Manager Use Cases
Business Manager is flexible enough to support a wide range of business types and use cases. Here are a few examples of how different businesses can use Business Manager:
Ecommerce Company
An ecommerce company can use Business Manager to:
- Manage product catalog Pages for Facebook Shop and Instagram shopping
- Create collections and item sets for dynamic ads
- Set up ads to target audiences who visited site or viewed products
- Analyze sales funnel and optimize based on conversions
Physical Retailer
A retailer with brick-and-mortar stores can leverage Business Manager to:
- Build Pages for individual store locations
- Drive local foot traffic with ads targeted by geography
- Create lookalike audiences modeled off loyalty program members
- Promote sales or events happening instore
Marketing Agency
A marketing agency or ad management team can use Business Manager for:
- Centralized management of client accounts and campaigns
- Custom team roles and permissions for each client account
- Monitoring campaign performance and optimizing based on results
- Automated reporting and analysis for clients
SaaS Company
A SaaS or software company can leverage Business Manager to:
- Advertise free trials or demo offerings
- Target lookalike audiences modeled off current customers
- Remarket to leads who visited pricing or features pages
- Analyze signups and retention to refine targeting
Business Manager is designed to be flexible for companies across industries and niches. The key is understanding your marketing objectives and configuring Business Manager settings accordingly.
Integrating with Third-Party Tools
One powerful feature of Business Manager is the ability to integrate with third-party applications and tools. This allows you to extend the capabilities by connecting other marketing, analytics, or automation platforms.
Here are some examples of tools that can integrate with Business Manager using Meta Business APIs:
| Tool Category | Example Integrations |
|---|---|
| CRM | Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho |
| Email Marketing | Mailchimp, Constant Contact, GetResponse |
| Analytics | Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Heap |
| Ad Management | MarinOne, Kenshoo, Nanigans |
| Automation | Zapier, Workato, Microsoft Power Automate |
These types of integrations allow for valuable workflows like:
- Syncing campaign data with your CRM records
- Triggering emails based on form submissions or openings
- Automating reporting for key business stakeholders
- Importing customer lists from third-party sources
- Passing leads to marketing automation tools after signup
Exploring integrations with other martech tools you use allows you to get even more value out of Business Manager and level up your capabilities.
Considerations and Challenges
While Business Manager is incredibly useful, there are some important factors to keep in mind:
Learning Curve
Business Manager is packed with a wide range of features. It can take time to fully understand how to use it effectively for your needs. Expect a learning curve as you get started.
Account Structure Planning
To use Business Manager most efficiently, you need to plan your account structure and permissions carefully based on your business. This takes time and effort upfront.
Monitoring Your Data
With so many tools for ads, Pages, and more in one place, it takes discipline to regularly analyze and optimize your Business Manager data.
Change Management
Adopting Business Manager may require changing processes, workflows, and team collaboration norms. This level of change management can be challenging.
Potential Complexity
The more assets and capabilities you leverage within Business Manager, the more complex managing it can become. Streamlining and simplifying is key.
While rewarding, mastering Business Manager requires an investment in setup, training, analysis, and optimization. Defining processes and structures upfront helps manage the complexity long-term.
Best Practices
Follow these best practices to get the most out of Business Manager:
- Document your account structure, roles, and permissions
- Audit assets and remove old/unused items regularly
- Analyze campaign data frequently to optimize
- Automate reporting for key stakeholders
- Take advantage of advanced features like lookalike audiences
- Sync useful 3rd party platforms using integrations
- Schedule regular training to improve team skills
- Stay updated on new features and capabilities
Getting the full value from Business Manager requires going beyond the basics. Map out your approach, leverage advanced tools, automate workflows, and invest in continuous training.
The Future of Business Manager
Business Manager is constantly evolving with new features and capabilities. Here are some developments we can expect:
- More advanced integrations and automation
- Expanded cross-channel and cross-platform options
- New tools for generating actionable insights
- Enhanced audience segmentation and analysis
- Improved collaboration and workflow features
- Integration of new technologies like AI and machine learning
Facebook is incentivized to continue improving Business Manager so it can consolidate more marketing activities across its apps and services. Marketers can look forward to more innovative ways to increase efficiency, insights, and impact.
Conclusion
Business Manager provides a powerful one-stop hub for companies to optimize their presence and marketing on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Audience Network. Key benefits include centralization, improved collaboration and efficiency, and advanced capabilities.
To maximize value, businesses should carefully structure their accounts, strategic with permissions, integrate useful data sources, analyze activity frequently, and automate workflows. While managing the platform well requires effort and learning, the payoff is well worth it.
As Business Manager continues to evolve with new features and expansions, marketers can look forward to more seamless and impactful ways to reach their audiences across Meta’s properties.
