Yes — but you don't need to set it up yourself, and if you don't have one, that's normal, not a blocker.
It's Meta's admin layer for running ads professionally: it separates your personal Facebook profile from your business's ad account, ad payment method, Pages, and Instagram account, and it's what lets an agency manage your campaigns without needing your personal login.
Meta now presents this through Meta Business Suite and Business Settings, so you may see it called a "business portfolio" or "Business Suite" rather than Business Manager. The idea is the same: one place, owned by your business, that holds your advertising assets and controls who can access them.
Meta Ads require a verified Business Manager with a connected ad account and Facebook Page. That's the setup we work with for every client.
We ask to be added as a partner on your existing Business Manager — you keep full ownership and can revoke access anytime. Nothing about your account changes hands.
As part of the free audit we also check how it's set up: whether the Page and Instagram account are properly connected, whether the ad account has a clean history, and whether old staff or past agencies still have access they no longer need.
We set it up as part of onboarding. It takes minutes, requires your business Facebook Page (or we help create one), and from that point on, campaign management, budgets, and reporting all run through it — visible to you at all times. We walk you through it step by step; it usually takes less than 30 minutes.
Ad accounts created without a proper Business Manager setup are more prone to disapprovals and account flags, especially for regulated-adjacent industries like healthcare and real estate. Getting this right at the start avoids campaign delays later.
There's also an ownership reason. When ads are run from someone's personal account, or from an account a previous agency created and controls, the business can lose access to its own ad history, audiences and Page if that person or agency leaves. A Business Manager owned by you keeps all of that with the business.
Yes, and you should be able to. Because we're added as a partner rather than owning the account, you can remove our access from your Business Settings at any time, and your Page, Instagram account, ad account, ad history and audiences all stay with you. That's also why we recommend checking access regularly: anyone who no longer works with you — a former employee, a freelancer, a past agency — should be removed. It's a quick task that protects the account you've built.
The Business Manager should be owned by the business owner or a senior person who isn't going anywhere, with at least one other trusted admin as a backup. Staff and agencies get only the access they need. If the only admin leaves and their profile is the sole way in, recovering the account can take a long time.
A clean Business Manager isn't just about running ads. It's also how lead form entries and click-to-WhatsApp enquiries are connected to the rest of your system. Once it's set up, n8n can pick up each new lead, reply on WhatsApp in under two minutes, and log it in Perfex CRM with its source tagged — so you can see which ads produce leads that actually book. That's the difference between Meta Ads that feed a system and ads that only feed a dashboard.
Meta Ads need a short learning phase — usually 3–5 days — to optimise delivery. Most clients see their first qualified leads within 7–14 days of going live, and we optimise campaigns weekly from there. You can see campaigns, budgets and results in your own account at any time.
Don't have a Business Manager account yet, or not sure if yours is set up correctly? We check this as part of the free AI audit before any ad spend starts.
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