If you are already on Facebook you are probably familiar with how to post, message and run a page but there are a few other essential business tools that you may not be using yet. Paid Facebook advertising can be a terrific way to reach more potential customers, increase engagement and generate leads and sales. If you plan on using paid Facebook advertising, you should familiarise your self with both Business Manager and Ad Manager. These two tools are essential for managing and implementing ads on Facebook.
What is Business Manager and why should you use it?
Business Manager is a tool that allows you to manage all your Facebook ‘assets’ in one place, i.e., your pages, ad accounts, pixels and apps. If you have multiple staff members or a marketing team this also allows you to assign and manage permissions. Each staff member you assign to your business manager will use their own log in. You can easily assign and manage which ‘assets’ (e.g. your ‘Page’, your ‘Ad Manager’ etc) they have access to and assign them ‘roles’. A role is the level of access they have to a certain asset and this can range from ‘view only’ to ‘Admin’ level permissions. Business Manager also allows you to give any advertising agency you partner with access to your Facebook assets. By adding an agency as a ‘Partner’ to your Business Manager, you can assign them assets and roles the same way you would with a staff member, allowing you to maintain full control of your account.
What is Ad Manager?
Ad Manager is where you manage your paid Facebook advertising, including your boosted posts. You can create ads and Campaigns here as well as view audience insights and reports. Even if you pay an agency to manage your advertising for you, you can still check in here using the reporting tools. From your Account Overview or Campaigns tab you can see customisable reports that will tell you how well your current advertising is performing based on your campaign objectives. The ‘Account Overview’ tab here is the simplest to use. Click between the four tabs along the top to see data against that metric for your chosen period. If you are not sure what a metric means you can hover your mouse over the small ‘i’ icon next to each one to see an explanation. You can also use the drop-down menu to change any of these to different metrics.
In the top right-hand corner of your screen you will also have a date range selection menu (see image below). You can adjust this to see how your advertising has performed at any given time.
