Journey into the Wonders of Meta Business Manager ✨

Nowadays, managing your online presence efficiently and effectively is paramount. Navigating the intricacies of Facebook advertising, content management, and data analysis can be daunting for businesses. However, with the right tools, this journey becomes significantly more manageable. 

In this comprehensive guide, we'll explore the Meta business portfolio (formerly Meta Business Manager), a powerful platform designed to streamline your business's advertising needs. We'll delve into what it is, how to set it up, and how to harness its capabilities to supercharge your online presence.

If you still need to set up a new Meta Ad Account, we have a handy guide to help you. Now, let's embark on our journey to unravel the wonders of your Meta business portfolio. 

What is the Meta Business Manager?

The Meta Business Manager is an extensive platform designed to help businesses manage their online presence across Meta's family of apps and services. This tool allows you to manage multiple assets, such as ad accounts, Facebook Pages, Instagram accounts, and the Meta Pixel, all in one centralized location—your Meta business portfolio.

What is your Meta business portfolio?

Business portfolios offer enhanced control, collaboration, and organization of your Meta assets across its platforms for businesses, marketing professionals, and creators. 

Your Meta business portfolio works in a way that preserves the privacy of the people who manage the various aspects of the accounts. In other words, it also acts as a buffer should anything go wrong with the business assets—it means your personal Facebook profile won’t risk being disabled if your business ad account is restricted from advertising. 

It allows some professional distance between your personal and business accounts. Your business portfolio will also enable you to grant access to anyone who needs to work on your assets with varying permissions seamlessly via the Meta Business Manager or Meta Business Suite. 

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Does the Meta Business Manager or business portfolio cost money?

Nope. The good news is that your Meta Business Manager is free to use whether you have one business portfolio or many. There are no subscription fees or upfront costs for creating an account. It's a valuable tool that can help businesses of all sizes streamline their online advertising operations. Meta lets you create two business portfolios, but the number of portfolios you can be added to is unlimited.

Meta Business Suite vs. Business Manager vs. business portfolio

Meta offers two tools for businesses to manage their Meta business portfolios: Meta Business Suite and Meta Business Manager. They serve different purposes, and it’s easy to be confused, so understanding the distinction between these tools is crucial.

Meta Business Suite: This is primarily a place for managing and scheduling content for Facebook and Instagram. It is a tool focused on content creation, publishing, and community management—in other words, it’s the front-end and client-facing side of the business. The business portfolio is accessible from the Meta Business Suite according to the permissions set in the Meta Business Manager. The Business Suite is available on mobile and desktop.

Meta Business Manager: In contrast, Meta Business Manager is the parent platform that encompasses not only content management but also advertising, data analytics, asset organization, and team collaboration. It houses the business portfolio(s) and is where companies effectively manage their presence across Meta’s platforms. You can consider it your business's back end or management side on Meta. Meta Business Manager is only available on desktop.

Meta business portfolio: A collection of Meta assets belonging to your business, including your Facebook Pages, Instagram accounts, datasets, and other assets. Business portfolios help you manage these assets and the access granted to the people who work on them. 

Switch Business Suite back to Business Manager

Are you clicking the Business Manager link but seeing Meta Business Suite? Here’s how to switch from the Business Suite to the Business Manager:

Click on the help ‘❓’ icon at the bottom-left corner of your screen. A menu will appear where you must click ‘Go to Business Manager,’ redirecting you to the Meta Business Manager home page. 

Why set up a Meta Business Manager and business portfolio?

Firstly, you can’t run a business on Facebook without using Meta Business Manager. Without it, you can’t create a business portfolio, have an ad account, or create a catalog or a dataset. Having all your Meta assets in your business portfolio where you can manage them actively from one place is the best way forward. Here are a few more compelling reasons to set up your business portfolio:

• Separate business from personal: Your business portfolio houses all your business assets, creating some professional distance between work and your personal profile on Facebook. Furthermore, you protect your personal profile from being negatively impacted or restricted should a Page in your business portfolio violate any policies when advertising—a frequent occurrence if you’re in a regulated industry. You can also act as your Page without your activity showing on your personal feed unless you share it.
• Centralized control: You can create a business portfolio within the Meta Business Manager. It offers a centralized platform for managing your business's Meta assets, including Pages, Instagram accounts, inboxes, ad accounts, catalogs, and datasets (Meta Pixel).
• Easy content management: You can post content and manage comments in one place in the Meta Business Manager.
• Efficient collaboration: It simplifies team collaboration by allowing you to assign roles and permissions to team members, giving them just enough access to the assets they use to perform their jobs and offering you tighter control. 
• Run ads for your business: You can create and manage ad campaigns across the Meta ecosystem, including Facebook and Instagram, reaching a vast and diverse audience using Meta Ads Manager.
• Data insights: The Insights tab lets you view valuable analytics data showing the performance of your Meta activities across your business portfolio.
• Create and manage Shops: As long as you’re in a supporting country, you can set up Shops on Facebook and Instagram if you have a business portfolio.

Now that you know why you should set up your Meta business portfolio, let's explore how to do it.

How to create a business portfolio

Meta is busy rolling out enhancements to the Meta Business Manager home page, so you may see a different version of these screens. 

1. Go to business.facebook.com and click the down arrow under “Home” at the top left of the screen to open a submenu. Click “Create a business portfolio.”

2. Enter your business portfolio details, including the business name, your name, and your business email, in the popup that appears, and click "Create." 

3. Claim any existing assets like Facebook Pages or Instagram accounts in the next screen, or skip to continue—you can add or create these later.

4. Add people to your business portfolio by entering their email addresses and setting the level of control they have, employee or full access. You can assign roles and permissions according to what they need access to—but you can also skip it to set this up later. You can edit access permissions as and when you need to in the Meta Business Manager in the ‘People’ section. 

5. Confirm your business portfolio details and who has access to it, and click “Confirm” when you’re happy.

Notes: 

• If you want to request access to an existing Page, you’ll need to be an admin for at least 7 days before you can add the Page to the business portfolio as a safety precaution. 
• If that Page is connected to an Instagram business account, it will automatically add the Instagram account to the business portfolio.

Your Meta business portfolio is now set up and ready to use. You can add more assets and then assign people to them.

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Guide to adding your assets: Pages, ad accounts, and Pixel

Here we’ll go over how to add the different Meta assets you use to your Facebook Business Manager account so you have a centralized hub to access everything.

Add your Facebook Page to the Business Manager

Before you begin, check you have administrator access to the Facebook Page in question.

• Go to the Business Manager and click on “Business Settings” with the gear icon on the left-side menu.

• On the menu to the left, under “Accounts,” select “Pages.”

• Enter the name or URL of the relevant Facebook page to which you have admin rights and click “Add.”

• Follow the prompts to add a Page. 
• Once you add the Page, you can assign roles and permissions to team members who need access (if you’ve already added these team members under People).

Next, a popup will appear where you can select the user and set the permissions.

Once you’re happy with the permissions, click “Assign.” You should be all set now.

Add your Facebook ad account to the Business Manager

1. Navigate to Business Settings on the left-hand side panel of the Business Manager.
2. Click “Ad accounts” under the “Accounts” tab on the menu to the left.
3. Enter the relevant ad account ID or name and click “Add” to add the ad account.

Notes:

• You can only add a Facebook ad account that isn’t associated with another Facebook Business Manager. In that case, you’ll need to request access to that ad account.
• Every business entity can only have one ad account. 
• You can manage up to 25 ad accounts. Switching between brands is easy - they will appear as a list by ad account name.

Add your Instagram account to the Facebook Business Manager

Here are the steps to add an Instagram account to your Meta Business Manager.

1. Navigate to Business Settings on the left-hand side panel.
2. Click on “Instagram accounts” under the “Accounts” tab.
3. Next, click the “Add” button highlighted in the image below.

4. A popup will appear with more details. Click the blue ‘Connect Your Instagram Account’ button.

5. Then, you’ll be prompted to enter your Instagram business account login details.
6. Next, select the Pages and ad accounts you wish to add and click “Finish.”

7. Once you have added your Instagram account, you can assign roles to others and limit their access. Come back to “Business Settings” anytime to edit these.

You can add one Instagram business account to a Facebook Business Manager account. Also, if the Instagram business account is connected to a Facebook Page, you will have to transfer that Page too.

Connect your Meta Pixel to the Business Manager

Before you begin, you should create a Meta Pixel or Dataset. We’re not going to go into the ins and outs of what the Meta Pixel is or how it works in this article - you can find this in our comprehensive guide about the Meta Pixel.

You can add or create your Meta Pixel by going to “Datasets” under “Data Sources” in the menu on the left. 

You can enter the name, business, or Pixel ID of the one you’re trying to add in the field highlighted at the top and click “Add.” Then, once it’s added, you can grant access to people, assign partners, and add more assets in the highlighted section on the right.

Set user permissions in Business Manager

Defining user permissions has improved in Meta Business Manager. When assigning permissions to a new user, use the toggles to define what they can and can’t access. Doing it this way allows for more flexibility in permission choices according to each person’s responsibilities and needs.

To manage your team effectively within Meta Business Manager, you can assign different roles and permissions for each asset. 

Understand the Meta Business Manager interface

Navigating the Meta Business Manager interface is essential to make the most of the platform. Let's break down the key aspects:

Navigate the Business Manager dashboard

The dashboard is your home base in Meta Business Manager. It provides an overview of your business's activities and access to various features and tools. Furthermore, it’s the place where you should be able to do just about anything related to your Meta portfolio of assets.

1. In box 1, these three lines open up the full menu of tools you have access to within Meta Business Manager. 

2. Box 2 shows you the left-hand side menu with the different sections listed; ‘Ads Manager,’ ‘Audiences,’ ‘Ads reporting,’ ‘Ad account settings,’ and ‘Events Manager.’ We’ll come back to these a little later.
3. Box 3 at the bottom-left side of the screen contains the ❓ icon, which brings up the help menu, the ⚙️ icon, which takes you to ‘Business Settings,’ your Business Manager notifications 🔔, the search 🔎 button, and then the button to expand or collapse the menu.
4. In box 4, you’ll see a personalized overview of your business assets along with any notifications or alerts and new products or features.

Understand the different sections in Business Manager

If you look at the menu on the left-hand side, you’ll see these menu items.

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Ads Manager

Access and manage your ad account. If you click it, you’ll see the below screen if you’ve created a brand new ad account during this process. This is where you create all of your new Meta ads across all platforms, manage your ads from day to day, and find the insights data showing your performance across campaigns, ad sets, and ads. Read our essential guide for the Meta Ads Manager for all the details of this tool. 

Audiences

Below is what you’ll see when you click on ‘Audiences.’ Here you can create and manage the audiences you target in your ads. You can create ‘Custom,’ ‘Lookalike,’ and ‘Saved’ audiences. Custom audiences let Meta find users based on customer lists, website or app events, or engagement across Meta’s platforms. Then, Lookalike audiences let Meta’s algorithm find potential prospects by matching shared characteristics to your existing customers. Lastly, a saved audience is simply an audience that you’ve created and saved with the intention of using again. 

Ads reporting 

If you click on ‘Ads reporting,’ you’ll end up at the below screen where you can create and view your reports. Name your custom report at the top of the screen and select the breakdowns and metrics you want to include on the right-hand side of the screen. 

Ad account settings

You’ll see an overview of the different settings you can adjust here; ad account setup, Pages, payment settings, notification settings, and name templates. You’ll also see shortcuts to your account controls, user roles, Advantage+ shopping campaigns, and where you can set your ‘Default beneficiary and payer,’ which is crucial to running ads in the EU.

Events Manager

The website and app events that your Meta Pixel tracks are managed in this section. By configuring these events, you can track certain user behavior on your website or other landing pages. If you see this screen, click on ‘Connect Data’ to begin the setup process to connect your Meta Pixel or Dataset.

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Overview of tools and reports

Meta Business Manager offers a wide array of tools and reports to enhance your online presence. The tools are categorized by ‘Manage business,’ ‘Protect rights,’ ‘Advertise,’ ‘Analyse and report,’ ‘Engage posts,’ and ‘Sell products and services.’ These sections let you access all the areas where you have control over how your brand is set up on Meta.

Let’s zoom in on the options under ‘Analyse and report.’

As you can see, there are a number of different sections within the reporting section for you to analyze your account performance in different areas; ‘Ads reporting,’ ‘Audience Insights,’ ‘Creative reporting,’ ‘Experiments,’ ‘Insights,’ ‘Meta Brand Collabs Manager,’ and ‘Traffic analysis report.’ These reports are customizable, and you can create as many as you wish. 

Create your first campaign in Meta Business Manager

Meta makes it easy to get started with advertising with numerous ways to create your first campaign. Launching your first campaign in Meta Business Manager is an exciting step. Here's a super simplified overview:

Create a campaign from the ‘Accounts Overview’ tab

On the Accounts Overview page, find the green ‘+ Create’ button in order to bring up the campaign setup popup. If there are steps you still have to complete to get your account ready to advertise, you should do these first by clicking on the blue ‘Continue >’ button.

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Create a campaign from the ‘Campaigns’ tab

If you’re on the ‘Campaigns’ page, you can simply click on the green ‘+ Create’ button on the Campaigns tab to create your new campaign.

The next screen that appears asks you if you would like to use the recommended settings for your objective or manually set them. Make your selection and click ‘Continue.’

From here, you can follow this guide to launching your first campaign. Next, you will be prompted to set your objectives, define your audience, choose your creative, and launch!

Conclusion

By exploring the various capabilities of Meta Business Manager, you can better reach the potential of your online business and connect with your target audience more effectively than ever before. 

The key to success lies in understanding the interface, managing assets efficiently, and utilizing the available insights to optimize your campaigns for maximum impact. The more time you spend working with this tool, the better you’ll become at utilizing it fully. 

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