Why was it created in the first place?
One of the reasons it came about is that when Facebook was built there was no long term thought into how businesses might use the platform, so everything was done through personal profiles.
You had your Facebook business page (with people as admins) but no way to create a business ad account. These were all personal and attached to a personal profile.
This caused many problems:
When an employee had been running ads for your business in their personal account and then left the company, they ran away with your ad history, company credit card and pixel etc
When you add staff to your page, they are not added to the ad account. Most people didn’t realise this so you had multiple employees using lots of ad accounts (their own personal accounts) for your business making it difficult to find campaigns
Disgruntled employees - if you had to fire an employee and they were an admin of your business page, they could kick every other admin off and shut down, or even worse, badmouth your company on your own business page.
And quite a few other issues I don’t have the time or the will to get into….
The Benefits of Business Manager
Business Manager was created to:
Formalise a business structure where all the things that are associated with a business are collected together in one place.
Allow businesses to create Business Advertising Accounts (multiple if necessary).
Appoint Admins to the overall business - these people have full control over all people and assets and can add and remove people. So even if they are removed as admins from the page by a disgruntled employee, they still have overall control of business assets and can reappoint themselves and remove the bad egg.
Make it quick and easy to add & remove employees and contractors as admins to your pages and ad accounts.
Do you need to use a Business Manager?
Quite likely. If you’re a sole operator with no employees and you don’t advertise, you may get away without setting one up. But over time, Business Manager has become a requirement for lots of features (such as Facebook shops) so it’s likely you’ll need one.
You should have one if:
You have employees / contractors who need access to pages and ad accounts.
You work with agencies who need access
You advertise to drive traffic and sales on your website
You have a Facebook or Instagram shop
You want to use your database to create audiences
Might sell your business one day
So most of us will need one. Next step, do you already have one……?