Do I Still Need Facebook Business Manager? ... Yes!
You might well be asking – why do I need to bother with Facebook Business Manager when Facebook newsfeed is all but dead?
Good question! But you still need Facebook Business Manager. Here’s why:
- If you're running ads on Instagram, you need it
- You can't set up custom audiences without it
- Or lookalike audiences...
- You can't set up your Facebook pixel without it
It’s simultaneously the most essential tool in your toolbox, but also the most complicated to set up – especially if you’ve had someone else claim your Page.
What To Do If Someone Else Has Claimed Your Facebook Page
If you’re setting up Facebook Business Manager for the first time, you need to visit https://business.facebook.com and start here.
If you follow the steps to set up Business Manager and you get an error message saying your Page is already claimed, you need to take a deep breath and follow the instructions on how to claim ownership of your Facebook Page below:
Facebook has an unduly legal and cumbersome process that you must follow if you want to take ownership of your Page after it has been claimed by someone else.
- It’s not enough to simply do 1 and 2 – with the statement on headed paper and signed by your boss!
- Facebook will insist that you get your lawyer to sign the statement about how important this Page is to you.
According to them, the reason the Notary notarisation is required is so they can legally transfer the ownership from the Business Manager owner and ensure that they are returning the asset back to the right people and avoid fraud. If Facebook took this amount of care in other parts of its business to avoid fraud, that would be a good thing. But for now, small business owner, you’ve got to stump up to visit your local legal person, and get the notarisation that is required. 🤑
Agency Responsibility
If your digital agency has claimed your Facebook Page on your behalf, they should know better! I’ve seen far too many cases now of business owners being left without access to Facebook Business Manager because someone in an agency has claimed their Page and has since left. I’m sorry for you, but if this is the case – you’re ****ed.
If your agency has claimed your Page, I think it’s only fair that they incur the costs and time to sort it out.
Act now and tell them you want your Page ownership back. They can still continue managing your content and ads, but they can do so as an agency or employee/admin of the business, not as owner.
I think the reason this happens so frequently is because, a lot of the time, in the larger agencies, the responsibility for setting up new accounts or posting on Facebook Pages falls on junior team member’s shoulders. They are eager to please, and want to get the job done, so they ignore the implications of claiming Page ownership. All is fine while they are posting, but all hell breaks out when they move on to a new job, and leave this mess behind in their wake.
If there’s one thing you do today, check that you have your Facebook Business Manager set up correctly. I was acting on behalf of a client recently whose digital agency (ICANN) has gone out of business. There is literally no one there to help as the agency is gone. Without Brightspark who is so familiar with the process of reclaiming Facebook Pages, the client would be literally in a mess.
How To Tell If You're Set Up Right
It can be a tedious pain in the ass at the outset – yes! But it’s essential best practice if we are going to manage your assets right.
If Facebook Business Manager is set up correctly on your account, when you log into Facebook and click on the top right arrow down, you should see something like this:
Correctly set up Pages will appear listed under Business Manager.
If they appear under Pages only, then they are not set up correctly. 
This means that, while you can set up ads, you will be severely limited in your targeting and management options. And you won’t be able to run ads on Instagram, which is where it’s at right now in summer 2019.
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