I’m likely going to take a lot of heat for this article, but as an advertiser I really love Facebook Business Manager. This is an especially polarizing conversation given the issues over the past few days with Facebook pushing out beta features that would require page managers to use Facebook Business Manager.
Now, don’t get me wrong I do recognize Business Manager’s shortcomings when it comes to the community management side of things. There is also a learning curve that can be steep if you have to dive into it on your own. But my point of view stems from the advertisers perspective. So bear with me here…
If you are an advertiser on Facebook, Business Manager doesn’t suck – and here’s why.
Managing Multiple Ad Accounts With Facebook Business Manager
It is a best practice, that if you manage multiple clients or multiple brands, each brand should have their own advertising account. Before Business Manager, managing and switching through multiple accounts was clunky and difficult.
The ability to manage all of your advertising accounts in one place is invaluable and can save plenty of time. Creating, accessing, and sharing Facebook ad accounts has become a breeze.
Also, when you advertise for multiple businesses or if you have your current business segmented into multiple accounts, it’s very helpful to get an overview of all of your advertising accounts at one glance in the dashboard. One of your accounts’ performance drop dramatically yesterday? The Dashboard will show you.
Multiple Facebook Pixels
Ever since Facebook changed from the old pixels to the Facebook Pixel, some advertisers have struggled to make the transition. Cleaning up your old pixels can be a daunting task, but with Business Manager you get a clear overview of which accounts your pixels are tied to, and you can quickly disable them across multiple accounts – if you find this to be the case.
Because it is now easier to build a new ad account and get it up and running, this also means it is easier for you to create multiple Facebook pixels specifically allocated to your advertising account.
Product Catalogs & Dynamic Product Ads
If you’re an online retailer, dynamic product ads offer you a ridiculous amount of value and ease of setup for retargeting visitors to specific product pages. This feature is only available with Business Manager via the product catalog setup.
Import your existing product catalog into Business Manager, assign it to an ad account and a page, and you’ll be off and running to a retargeter’s dream.
Team Administration
For the one man (or woman) show, account administration is not necessarily a concern, but if you manage a team administering your account through Business Manager, it is far easier than the traditional method.
If you have a new employee who needs to be added across multiple pages and accounts you can do so very quickly by adding them to any relevant accounts they may be working on. Have you acquired a new client or created a new page and don’t want to have to go through the admin settings of each? Use the People and Assets tab in Business Manager to add them to only the assets they will be collaborating on and none of the rest.
Projects allow you to bundle pages, ad accounts, product catalogs and other Business Manager assets into one folder and then share them all – in one click – with an individual. This can be a huge time saver.
Areas of Improvement
From the advertisers perspective, there are a handful of things I would like to see Business Manager be able to do:
Customizable reporting on the Business Manager dashboard: It would be great to be able to adjust the default reporting on the dashboard to be unique to each ad account.
Easier access to other great tools within Facebook: I’ve touched on otherFree Facebook Resources and tools that Facebook offers, like the Facebook Grid Tool. It would be nice if those tools were easier to access through the Business Manager menu.
Notifications integrated into personal accounts: Often times I spend my days in Business Manager without ever touching my personal Facebook account. But, for the times when I am not logged into Business Manager, it would be nice to get my Business Manager notifications on my personal account.
As I said before, I know there are plenty of headaches that come on the community management side of the coin, but from an advertiser’s perspective Facebook Business Manager has made my life a lot easier and I’ve become more efficient.
Have you had a similar experience? What features would you like to see added to Business Manager to make your life easier?