Facebook Ads can be a powerful tool for reaching your target audience and achieving your marketing goals. But before you dive into crafting catchy ad copy and selecting captivating visuals, there’s a crucial first step: structuring your Facebook Ads account for success.
This write-up will guide you through the essential elements of a well-organized Facebook account structure in the Meta ecosystem:
Facebook Profile: While not directly involved in ad creation, your personal Facebook profile is a prerequisite for creating a Facebook Page and accessing other advertising assets including the Business Manager.
Facebook Page: This is the public face of your brand on Facebook. It’s where you’ll build your audience, share content, and run Advertising campaigns whether through the Ad Centre, by boosting individual posts, or in Ads Manager.
Instagram Account: If you plan to advertise on Instagram, you’ll need to connect your Instagram account to your Facebook page. It is possible to advertise on Instagram only without necessarily having a Facebook page but to run ads using Ads Manager, you will need one. This allows you to leverage Meta’s audience, creative formats, and powerful targeting options which is available in Ads Manager.
Ads Manager: This is the central hub where you create, manage, and track your Facebook Ads campaigns. It is the primary tool for advertising on Meta with advanced Tracking, Optimization, and Measurement features. It has all of the advertising capabilities on the Meta platform and it is the recommended tool for advertising for businesses that plan to invest huge amounts in Meta ads or those that intend to run long-term, always on ads.
Business Manager: This acts as a command center, allowing you to manage multiple ad accounts, Pages, Data Sources(Pixels), and people with different access levels. With the business manager, you can manage multiple ad accounts for different businesses, grant varying levels of access to your advertising assets to the people within the business manager. It is beneficial for agencies that work with different businesses. They can manage each business’ ad account separately and assign individuals to specific ad accounts depending on their role.
Here’s how these elements fit together in a hierarchical structure:
1. Business Manager: At the top of the pyramid sits Business Manager. This grants control over your ad accounts, Pages, and Instagram accounts, and lets you assign roles and permissions to team members.
2. Ad Accounts: Your ad accounts are within a connected Business Manager. Each ad account houses your advertising budget and is used to run specific campaigns.
a. Campaigns: Campaigns are the building blocks of your advertising strategy. They group ad sets that share a common objective, like driving website traffic or generating leads.
b. Ad Sets: Here’s where you define your target audience, placements (where your ads will appear), budget, and bidding strategy. You can create multiple ad sets within a campaign to target different audiences or test variations.
c. Ads: Finally, we reach the individual ads themselves. These are the visual and text elements that users will see on Facebook or Instagram.
3. Pages: the Facebook Page is your business identity on the Meta platform. It is like the foundation of your advertising assets. Without a Facebook page, you won’t be able to create or run ads in Ads Manager.
Why Structure Matters?
A well-organized account structure offers several advantages:
Clarity and Organization: It keeps your campaigns from becoming cluttered and allows for easier management and analysis.
Targeted Audience Reach: By creating specific ad sets for different audiences, you can tailor messaging and creatives for maximum impact.
Budget Optimization: You can allocate budgets efficiently and track performance at each level of the hierarchy.
Team Collaboration: Business Manager facilitates streamlined collaboration by assigning roles and permissions to team members.
The importance of having a properly structured Business Manager account cannot be overemphasized especially for agencies working with multiple businesses. It makes it easier to assign asset to relevant team member based on their role, so you don’t give admin access to an ad account when you can give the advertiser access to junior marketing specialist handling ads for a client. Another key benefit of a proper account structure is that if one ad account or page is restricted by Meta for potential policy violation, it is easier to separate the affected ad accounts or page assets and create a new ad account within business manager while working with Meta Support to resolve the issue. If you don’t already have a business manager account set up for your business I would highly recommend you create one and connected all existing advertising assets to the business manager account.
