LinkedIn Business Manager - Agency Client Access Guide
LinkedIn Business Manager is a free container that holds a company's LinkedIn Pages, ad accounts and the people who work on them, and lets one organisation share those assets with another. For an agency, it is the right way to get client access: the client shares assets with your Business Manager, not with individual staff profiles. Page admin roles can be granted directly on the Page, or delegated through Business Manager once the client shares the Page with you. Ad account roles are a third, separate system.
That last sentence is the part that costs agencies an afternoon, so it is worth being precise about why. LinkedIn is one platform among many in a typical stack, and if you are building an access process from scratch it is worth reading it alongside our full client access guide covering thirteen platforms, which follows the same both-directions structure for Google Ads, Meta, TikTok and the rest.
LinkedIn is three permission systems, not one
Almost every access problem on LinkedIn comes from treating these as a single thing. They are separate, they live in different screens, and holding one does not imply the others.
| System | Where it lives | What it controls |
|---|---|---|
| Page admin roles | The Page, under Settings, then Manage admins | Organic posting, events, jobs, Page analytics |
| Paid media admin roles | Granted on the Page, but only take effect in Campaign Manager | Building Sponsored Content, downloading Lead Gen Form leads, Landing Pages |
| Ad account roles | Campaign Manager, under account settings | Campaigns, ads, billing, user management |
Business Manager sits above all three as a container. It does not replace them. It gives you one place to see who has what, add someone to many assets at once, remove them in a single action, and share Matched Audiences across accounts.
A person can hold one Page admin role and more than one paid media admin role at the same time. That is by design, and it is why "they're already an admin" is never a complete answer.
How to add an admin to a LinkedIn Page
This is the client's job, and only a super admin can do it. The super admin role is assigned automatically to whoever created the Page, which in older companies is often someone who left three years ago.
What the client clicks:
- Open the Page in super admin view.
- Go to Settings, then Manage admins. On some layouts the entry point sits under Admin tools in the top right instead. LinkedIn moves this; if the labels do not match, look for the admin management screen rather than hunting for an exact word.
- Choose the Page admins tab or the Paid media admins tab, depending on what you are granting.
- Click Add admin, search for the person by name, pick the role, and save.
- The person will normally see a notification that the role was granted. Do not rely on an email arriving. Verify the role shows on the Page.
There is a hard prerequisite on step 4 that catches people constantly: you can only add someone who is a 1st, 2nd or 3rd-degree connection AND who already follows the Page. If your account manager does not appear in the search box, nothing is broken. Send a connection request, follow the Page from that account, and try again. LinkedIn also blocks the add if either side has blocked the other or the account has been flagged.
The Business Manager partner route below sidesteps the connection requirement entirely, because it works off Business Manager IDs rather than personal networks.
If you would rather ask than be added, the request runs the other way. Open the Page, click More, and choose Request admin access. LinkedIn asks you to tick a box confirming you are authorised. Before this works you need the organisation listed as a current position on your profile, a verified work email, and you need to be following the Page. A super admin then approves it from the pending requests area of Manage admins.
For agencies this is usually the wrong tool. It attaches your client's employer to your personal profile. Use it only when you genuinely cannot reach a super admin.
Getting the ad account: the Business Manager route
Ad account access can be granted person by person in Campaign Manager, but for an agency the container route is better. It survives staff turnover and gives you one lever to pull at the end.
What the agency does first: create your own Business Manager if you do not have one, from LinkedIn's Business Manager creation page. Name it something a client will recognise in an invitation, because that name is what appears when you ask them for access. Assign at least two admins, so you are never locked out by one person being on holiday. Business Manager keeps your personal profile separate; you sign in with your own account, but it only surfaces the work assets you have access to.
Then, the partnership. A Business Manager admin adds the other party's Business Manager ID from the Partners screen. Each then appears in the other's Business Manager. Nothing is shared automatically. Sharing is a second, deliberate step. If you have set up Meta partner access before, the shape will be familiar: the equivalent container-to-container flow is covered in our guide to Meta Business Manager agency access, and the mental model transfers cleanly.
What the client clicks to share a Page: sign in to Business Manager, click Partners in the left menu, click your agency's name, click Share Pages, tick the Pages, click Assign roles, toggle on the Page roles your agency is allowed to assign, and click Share. Note what that last part actually does: the client is not naming your staff. They are deciding which roles you may hand out to your own people.
Organic Page roles are hierarchical: a partner given Content admin can also assign Curator and Analyst, while a partner given Analyst can only assign Analyst. Since decreasing a shared role needs a support ticket, share the lowest role that covers the work. Paid media roles behave differently. They are individual, and each one has to be toggled on separately.
One more limit that only bites later: a partner cannot reshare a Page or an ad account with a third company. If you subcontract media buying, your subcontractor needs their own partnership with the client, not a pass-through from yours.
To request an ad account into your Business Manager, go to Ad accounts, open the Add accounts dropdown and choose the request option. LinkedIn walks you through downloading a request template, filling it in and uploading it. Account managers on the client's ad account receive an email asking them to approve. If the requesting Business Manager admin is already an account manager on that ad account, it is approved automatically.
Ask this before you start: is the ad account already inside a Business Manager? Once it is, user access has to be managed through Business Manager rather than Campaign Manager. If you do not check, you will spend half an hour talking a client through a Campaign Manager screen that will not do anything.
Which role to ask for
The maximum is the wrong default. On LinkedIn it is also the least reversible, for reasons in the next section. Ask for the role that matches the work.
| Asset | Ask for | Do not ask for | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| LinkedIn Page | Content admin, plus Sponsored Content poster if you run ads. Analyst is enough when the engagement is reporting only | Super admin | The Page must always keep at least one super admin, and it should be the client's |
| Ad account | Campaign manager for hands-on staff; Account manager if you need to manage users | Billing admin | Billing admin is the person who gets billed |
| Business Manager (your own) | Contractor for freelancers, Employee for staff, Admin for two senior people | Admin for everyone | Admin can add and remove people, accounts, Pages and partners |
Sponsored Content poster is the one everybody forgets. It is a paid media admin role granted on the Page, and without it ads will not build even with complete ad account access. Lead Gen Forms manager is its quiet sibling: without it, downloading leads from Lead Gen Forms fails on your side and nobody notices for a fortnight. If your ads will not build, check the Page roles before you touch the ad account.
Two smaller notes. Curator, the role that covers the My Company tab and analytics export, is only available on Pages with company type "public" and more than eleven employees, and not on Showcase Pages. And paid media admin roles can be granted without an associated Campaign Manager ad account, so the client can set them up before the ads work starts.
Because the role you pick here is hard to walk back, the decision belongs in a written kickoff step rather than in a Slack message on day one. Agencies that run this as a repeatable checklist, whether in a document or in client onboarding software, tend to over-grant far less than agencies improvising per client.
What goes wrong, and the offboarding trap
You cannot unshare a Page or an ad account yourself. LinkedIn's own documentation is explicit: to stop sharing an ad account, to stop sharing a Page, or to decrease a role you have already shared, you must contact LinkedIn support. There is no button.
Read that again with a lost client in mind. The role you assign at share time is effectively permanent for the length of the relationship. If you over-granted at onboarding because it was quicker, you will be raising a support ticket to walk it back, with your Business Manager ID, the partner's Business Manager ID and the ad account ID in hand. If the ad account's billing admin sits inside the other party's Business Manager, you have to reassign billing first.
Removing the partner entirely has the same shape. You can only remove a partner directly once nothing at all is shared between you; otherwise, that is another support ticket. And when sharing does stop, everyone from the partner's Business Manager loses the ad account, along with any Matched Audiences shared to it.
Three practical consequences:
- Share the minimum role at onboarding. You are not being cautious, you are avoiding a support queue.
- Put "raise a LinkedIn support ticket" in your offboarding checklist as a dated task, not a last-day action.
- A restricted personal LinkedIn profile can put a client's ad account on hold. It is worth keeping your team's profiles in good standing for reasons beyond networking.
Frequently asked questions
Is LinkedIn Business Manager free?
Yes. It is a free tool. You still pay for ads in the usual way.
Do I need Business Manager to run a client's LinkedIn ads?
No. You can be added directly in Campaign Manager. But direct adds depend on personal connections and are managed one asset at a time, and they scatter access across staff profiles. Business Manager is worth it once you pass roughly two or three clients.
Why won't my LinkedIn ads build even though I have ad account access?
Almost always a missing paid media admin role on the Page, specifically Sponsored Content poster. Page access and ad account access are separate systems. You can prompt the client from inside Campaign Manager: from the ads list inside your ad set, click the question icon next to the Create new ad(s) button, then request access. The request goes to the Page's super admins and Sponsored Content poster admins.
Can the client see my personal LinkedIn activity through Business Manager?
No. Your personal profile stays separate. Business Manager only surfaces the work assets you have access to.
How do I remove an ex-employee from every client at once?
If access ran through your Business Manager, remove the person once and it applies across the assets they were assigned. If you granted access with individual invitations per client, it is a manual sweep, and you will miss some.
Can a Page have more than one super admin?
Yes, and it must have at least one at all times. LinkedIn also recommends at least two admins on a Business Manager so there is always an active one.
Access is only the first hour of onboarding. The rest is keeping each client's conversations, leads and reporting separate for the next two years. Inflowave is an agency CRM built for that: one inbox across Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, SMS, email and voice, an isolated workspace per client, role-based permissions so a contractor sees one account and not twelve, pipelines and white-label dashboards. Plans start at $27 a month, with the agency plan at $149 a month.
