Warning if your agency owns your ad account you don't own your audience..... Do you use an external agency to run your paid social on Facebook and Instagram whilst you focus on the organic content? Then if you do, ensure your agency is setup to work for you and don't fall into the pitfall of not owning your ad audiences.
Many of our users tell us "we have a paid agency so they run our ads on Facebook and Instagram". I say "great are they running these ads from your own Facebook ad account that you have full visibility of?" 9 out of 10 times I get a long pause followed by, "err no they are using their ad account and they just send us a report". In a world where the audience you are busy cultivating is crucial to the success of your business this answer always sends up red flags.
If your agency owns the Facebook Business manager and the ad account within it YOU do not own any of the audiences that are being created and used for your campaigns. If you were to part with your agency and they then refuse or are unable to assign you ownership to these assets you have in effect lost access to these audiences. So its best to start out or ensure your relationship with your paid agency is setup from the get go for success!
So what does a good agency to business setup look like? You create your own Ads manager account within your own Facebook Business manager account. You then, within the business settings of the Business manager, assign access to your agency as a Partner. You can assign partner status to your Facebook, Instagram pages. Pixel, ad account and product catalogues all from within your Facebook Business manager.
This means you retain FULL control of ALL your Facebook assets and if you were to part company with the agency, you simply remove/revoke their Partner status to your Facebook Business manager and assign the new agency to the assets.
Common scenarios I see and how you can still use Maybe* whilst you address them
Your agency creates an ad manager account for you in their business manager and has access to your Facebook and Instagram pages. Then the agency only reports to you campaign results. This equates to your business having no control of the ad account or Business Manager it is within. In this example you would have to invite one of the agency team into Maybe* to connect Facebook and your ads account. Luckily Maybe* has an unlimited seats policy so you can invite away! Note in this scenario you do not then have any control of the audiences as they reside within the agency account.
Your agency uses a shared Ad Manager account which they use to publish ads on your behalf and their other clients. Your agency then reports campaign results to you. In this situation Maybe* have built the keyword tool so when the Facebook ads manager is setup the agency could then name each Campaign with a keyword add that keyword to Maybe* and then only the campaigns with the keyword would pull through to Maybe*. This is in my opinion a bad setup by the agency but it exists often. You have no control of their Ads manager or Business manager. To connect to Maybe* in this example you would have to invite one of the agency team into Maybe* to do the Facebook connection in full and ensure they add the correct keyword that they use in their campaigns. Luckily Maybe* has an unlimited seats policy so you can invite away! Note you do not then have any control of the audiences as they reside within the agency account.
When connecting to Facebook/Instagram to Maybe* ensure the person doing this has full access and permissions (usually admin level) to the following assets
Your Facebook page
Your Instagram business page should be associated with this Facebook page
Your Facebook Business Manager
Your Facebook Ads Account
Once you are are connected Maybe* will create and update custom audiences for you to use with your paid social, allow you to view reports on your ads, ensure you see every comment made on your ads and allow you to reply and you can boost your existing organic posts directly from within Maybe*
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