[Beginner’s Guide] Facebook Business Manager Setup

More customers than ever are finding businesses and products on Facebook and Instagram among other social media platforms. With so many prospective customers online, you are likely considering social media advertising. Set yourself up for success from the start with a Facebook Business Manager Account.

What is Facebook Business Manager and why do you need it?

Facebook Business Manager is a way for you to organize and manage your business on both Facebook and Instagram. By setting up a business account, you can coordinate your marketing efforts across your Facebook and Instagram pages, keep the right permissions in place for employees, and collaborate with advertising partners or marketing agencies.

If your business has a marketing team, multiple Facebook and Instagram accounts, or if you collaborate with other vendors to run pages or ads on social media, Facebook Business Manager will bring all of your social media marketing and assets for advertising into one convenient hub. You can add roles for collaborators, segment audiences for ads, and get in-depth reporting on all of your advertising in the Business Manager dashboard.

If you’ve never had this type of account before, you may not know how to set one up. To make it easier, we’ve put together a step-by-step guide to help you. Here are some of the first steps you’ll need to take to get your business pages up and running with Facebook and Instagram!

Setting Up Your Facebook Business Manager Account

1. Start Your New Account

You will need a Facebook personal profile in order to create your business account. It is required when setting up your account, and it will become your login to access your Business Manager.

TIP: Decide who is the most appropriate individual within your company to set up this account. It is ideal if it is the owner, so that if employees ever leave you aren’t stuck trying to transfer ownership of the account.

If you have a personal Facebook profile ready to use, go to Facebook Business Manager and click Create Account. Then, enter a name for your business, your name, and your work email address. Click Next.

Next, enter your business details and then click Submit. You’ll need to confirm the business email address that you entered to continue. Once you click Done, you’ll be taken straight to the Business Manager Home.

2. Add Facebook Pages and Instagram Accounts

Before you begin:

• To add a page to Business Manager, you must be an admin on the page for more than 7 days. If you are not an admin, you’ll need to request access to the page.

To start, navigate to the Accounts section, and click Pages. Then click the blue Add button. In the dropdown menu, choose the kind of page that you want to add: one that you own, a page that is someone else’s, or create a new page entirely.

If you are adding a page you own/are an admin on:

Click Add Page and then type in the name of your page. Click Add Page again, and then approve the request. Now, you’ll be able to manage the page right from the Business Manager!

If you are creating a new page:

There is more information that you’ll need to provide, but creating a new page is just as easy as setting up an existing one! Just follow the prompts to enter your new page information.

To add Instagram pages:

Navigate to the Accounts > Instagram Accounts section. Click the blue Add button. Be sure you are logged in to the Instagram account (you can do this in another browser window) and then click the blue Connect Your Instagram Account button.

3. Create an Ad Account

An ad account is the financial settings required to run Facebook and Instagram paid ads. In this account you’ll control the credit card on file, as well as setting maximum spending limits to control your ad budget.

Navigate to Accounts > Ad Accounts. Click the blue Add button, and select Create a New Account. Name your new account something appropriate, select your currency and time zone, and click Next. Follow the prompts to complete your new account.

You’ll also need to add your credit card information to this account. Navigate to Accounts > Ad Accounts and select the new ad account you just created. At the top right of your screen you’ll see a dropdown menu next to a button that says Open in Ads Manager. Drop down the menu and select View Payment Methods.

Enter your credit card information here, as well as your account spending limit if you so choose. You will also be able to choose spending maximums on the ads themselves, so this is simply an extra precaution to ensure your ads don’t overstretch your overall budget.

Please note: your personal Facebook profile comes with its own ad account automatically. You do NOT want to use this account for your business. It is best practice to create an ad account that is strictly for your business use, thus taking the step above to create a new ad account.

4. Add People and Assign Roles

In order to keep access permissions clean and easy to manage, add people such as staff and collaborators to your Business Manager.

Navigate to the People section of your Business Manager. Click the blue Add button, and enter the email address associated with the person you’d like to add. For their permission level, always choose Employee.

Please note: the email address you enter must be tied to the individual’s Facebook account. The recipient will receive an invitation and once they accept, you can assign them to various assets and select their permission level.

Once your invitations have been accepted, these individuals will appear under your People section. To assign them to your assets such as pages, ad accounts, and Ads Manager, simply click on the person’s name, then click the Add Assets button. Choose the assets you’d like to assign to them and the level of permissions you want them to have.

5. How Facebook Charges for Advertising

Facebook has a unique structure of billing that many first-time advertisers aren’t used to. They want to build a level of trust to ensure they will be paid for the advertising you’ve ordered.

Facebook starts you off with a small billing limit, usually $25.00. This isn’t to say you can’t spend more on your campaign, but your credit card will be billed once your spending reaches $25.00, and will continue to do so until Facebook decides you are worth risking a higher threshold.

Your next threshold may be $30, then $50, then $100. As advertisers, neither you nor I have the ability to change this; it is simply how they operate their billing. So your first few months of spending will create a higher number of transactions on your credit card. Over time, as you keep advertising, Facebook will increase your thresholds and you’ll be billed less often for higher amounts.

You’re always in control of how much you spend on Facebook ads. When you create a new ad, you’ll set a budget that is based on either a timeframe (eg. $50 for 10 days) or if you have an ongoing ad, you can set a daily budget (eg. $5 per day).

The price you pay for an ad is based on an auction system in which multiple ads compete for a position on a social media-goer’s screen based on bid and performance. The bid is the amount of money that you’re willing to spend on your ad to achieve your desired outcome, while the performance is the measure of your ad’s quality and effectiveness when it is placed in front of viewers.

When your ad runs, you’ll only be charged for the number of clicks, or the number of impressions (times that your ad was seen by viewers) that your ad receives.

6. Setting an Account Spending Limit

While this isn’t a required step since you can control spending for your ads when you set your budget, you can give yourself some extra peace-of-mind by setting an account spending limit that will limit the amount of spend across the entire account.

Go to your Payment Settings in your ad manager home. In the Set Your Account Spending Limit section, click Set Account Spending Limit. Next, enter the limit that you want to enforce across your entire account, and then click Set Limit.

Unlike the budgets that you set for your ads, your Account Spending Limit is not reset automatically at the end of the month, or at the end of an ad run. If you want to keep advertising after you’ve reached the account limit that you’ve set, you’ll need to update your limit or reset the amount spent toward it to $0.

7. Where to Find Receipts

To locate your billing receipts, click on the dotted button at the top of your Business Settings menu. Your shortcuts can be found here, and you’ll want to click on Billing.

From this page, you can choose the date range you require your receipts for, and download each one in PDF format. You can also choose to download everything at once by clicking the Download All Invoices button.

If you want to simply view online, by clicking on the Transaction ID you’ll be able to see more specific information such as how much you paid, when you were charged, the reason you were billed, and the ads that you spent money on. From here, you can view the results of your ad (such as the impressions or clicks your ad received) by clicking on the Ad Set Name.

8. Assign Access to an Agency

If you’re working with an outside agency or marketing partner, it’s best practice to add them as a Partner to your Business Manager, rather than risking security by giving them your passwords. This way, you retain ownership and control of all of your assets, and if your relationship with your agency goes sour, all you have to do is remove them as a Partner and they lose access to everything in one click.

Add an agency partner:

Navigate to the Partners section, and click the blue Add button. Select “Give a partner access to your assets” and then enter their Business ID. (Hint! Request this ID first – it’s the only way to add them in.)

Click Next, then select all of the assets you want them to have access to and their levels of permission.

Your agency will accept the invitation on their own Business Manager, and you’ll be set up for smooth collaboration from then on.

If you ever need to remove a Partner, simply navigate back to this section, select the Partner you want to remove, and click the Remove button at the top right of the screen.

This is just the beginning…

There is so much more to dive into when it comes to Facebook Business Manager and Facebook/Instagram Ads, but getting your account set up the right way is a great start.

If you’d like us to help you with this process, or if you’d like to learn more about Facebook/Instagram advertising, we’d be delighted to chat. Give us a shout or reach out to us on Facebook!