Facebook Business Manager: what it is and how it works
A tool that is mysterious and impenetrable to most, Facebook Business Manager is a valuable resource for managing all communication activities on Meta’s platforms. But how does this tool work and why is it so important?
Facebook profile, business Page, Business Suite, advertising account, Ads Manager, and now Facebook’s Business Manager has been added to the mix as well. In short, it’s time to bring a little order to all this!
Let’s start with the simple things. The Facebook account is the personal profile, the person’s digital identity on the platform. It is the profile you log into with an email and password, with which you share posts and interact with content from friends and creators. Very importantly: the personal Facebook profile is the basis for everything else, for all of Facebook’s business extensions.
The Facebook Page, which can in fact be created and managed only starting from a personal profile, is a sort of virtual place representing a brand, a company, an association. It is the way the company relates to the public and to its community on the platform.
Up to here everything is fairly simple: the profile is the personal account, the Page is the business place. With the former, people communicate with one another; with the latter, it is a brand that takes the floor. Things get more complicated when the Facebook Business Manager comes into play, the place where all business resources tied to the Meta ecosystem, and not only those, are gathered.
But no need to worry, we’re here to bring order!
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The difference between a Facebook advertising account and the Business Manager
To understand what the Business Manager is, you can start by distinguishing it from Meta’s other business resources, in particular from the advertising account. In fact, in the common imagination, the advertising account and the BM are the same thing and are used to advertise on Facebook.
In reality, it is with the advertising account, which may also be called Ads Manager or ad management, that advertising campaigns are created. This is the place where ads are created, with the choice of budget, audience and creatives. From here too you can access advertising reports to monitor and optimize campaigns.
The Business Manager, on the other hand, can be defined as a container of resources. Inside it are placed all the resources belonging to a company: its business Page, its Instagram account linked to the Facebook Page, the advertising account itself used to do Facebook advertising, the tracking Pixel and much more.
In other words, everything a person and a company have on the platform can be gathered inside a handy container from which access and permissions can also be managed.
For example: has the company hired a new digital strategist for social media marketing? The BM administrator will add this person inside the Business Manager and grant them access to the Page and the advertising account so that they can go ahead and create campaigns. Once the collaboration ends, this person can be removed with a click, so as to avoid unpleasant complications and disputes.
Facebook Business Manager: how it works and why it is essential
The importance of the Business Manager is clear: it is a kind of business profile in which the company gathers and manages all of its resources linked to Meta. Instead of having various access points scattered across the platform and various connections, the BM provides a single, secure control panel from which to manage and oversee all activities.
The heart of the matter is precisely this: through the Business Manager the company owns all of these resources. What belongs to a BM cannot be claimed, and therefore cannot be used, by anyone else, unless the owners of the BM grant permission.
In addition, valuable resources for the company can be added inside the Business Manager, such as sales partners, apps and catalogs. Let’s give a few practical examples to better understand the situation. A company has an e-commerce store to sell its products online. To boost sales it decides to sponsor its products on Facebook. To do so, it can open a full catalog, a sort of shop section that is added to the BM, from which to create vertical and product-focused advertising campaigns. Another case is one in which a company entrusts the management of its resources to an advertising agency for online communication. In this case it will be enough to add the advertising agency as a partner to the individual resources, and a secure and fruitful collaboration can begin.
An indispensable tool for every advertising agency
It is clear how the Business Manager is a particularly useful tool for an online marketing and communication agency. Agencies manage a vast portfolio of clients, with their respective advertising accounts and social profiles. Having a single container in which to bring together all of these assets is particularly convenient, because it makes it possible to collaborate in a smart and dynamic way.
Not only that: the agency Business Manager is also what allows agencies to collaborate with one another in the best possible management of a shared client. It often happens, in fact, that a company relies on several professionals for its various activities: this is where, from the company’s BM, permissions and access to the agencies’ BMs are managed, so as to always keep everything under control and shared, for truly effective online business.
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