How to Share Access to Your Marketing Accounts

Step By Step Instructions

In this article, we will review how to share access to the following accounts. Click on each to be taken to its section in the article.

Promoting your business isn’t what it used to be. Today, you need a great website, a search engine strategy, a well-tended social media presence, and maybe even a video channel!

It’s no wonder so many are seeking help from digital marketing agencies.

With that outside help comes the need to safely grant access to a whole slew of different accounts. Your marketing partner may need access to accounts you didn’t even realize were yours, or they may need to set some of these accounts up for you.

Here’s a brief rundown of some of the most important accounts you’ll need to have – and why – along with instructions on the right way to share access to them.

Google Business Profile account

How To Share Access to Your Google Business Profile Account

Google Business Profile, previously called Google My Business, lets you promote your Google Business Profile – and your website on Google Search and Google Maps. To use it properly, you’ll need to make sure your Google Business Profile is set up and updated with correct information. Then, you’ll have a suite of free Google Business Profile tools at your disposal. These tools let you do things like post photos and offers or interact with customers by responding to reviews. Active engagement with your Google Business Profile can help boost your business and drive web traffic and customers your way.

If you’re working with a marketing agency, they can handle everything from setting up your Google Business Profile to running promotions and monitoring the way your business appears online. They may upload photos that showcase your business, check and respond to reviews and generally make sure you’re putting your best foot forward on the web.

Many agencies take it a step further, using the Google Business Profile Insights tool to analyze how people are getting to your listing. They can then utilize this info to implement new SEO strategies and tweak existing settings so more of the right people will be able to find you easily. Insights also helps agencies get a feel for your online image among users and fix problems if they should arise. They can also use Google Business Profile Insights to optimize a Google Ads paid search strategy.

To give an agency the necessary access to your Google Business Profile account, you’ll need to grant them a Manager user role or have them give themselves that access when they set up your account.

Here’s how to do that:

How To Add A User To Your Google Business Profile

  1. On your computer, sign in to your account.
    • If you have multiple locations, open the location you’d like to manage.
  2. In the menu on the left, click Users.
  3. At the top right, click Invite new users.
  4. Enter the name or email address of the user you’d like to add.
    Note: To add an agency to your location, you need to add the agency’s location group ID here. (You might need to reach out to the agency and ask for this ID.)
  5. To select the user’s role, click Choose a role > Owner, Manager, or Site manager.
  6. Click Invite. Invitees will have the option to accept the invitation and immediately become users.

This page displays all active users and people who are invited to become users. To cancel pending invitations, click X in the row with the invitation you want to remove.

When an invitation is accepted, the owners of the profile are notified through email. All users in the account can find the names and email addresses of the owners and managers of the profile.

Tip: If you want to transfer ownership of your profile to someone else, you can learn how to transfer ownership of a profile.

Know that you can always change who has access to your account and change the level of access each user has as your circumstances change.

Google Analytics account

How To Share Access To Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a powerful and free tool from Google that tracks and reports traffic to websites. Google Analytics can show you things like how many people are visiting your website, how they’re getting to it (from search engines, ads, other websites, etc.), what they’re looking at once they’re there and more. It also provides detailed demographic info about visitors and insights into mobile traffic, too.

In order to properly manage your marketing strategy using Google Analytics data and tools, your agency will need to have a high level of access to your account. Recommended best practice is to grant both Manage Users and Edit permissions so the agency can see all the metrics and provide access to employees who need to do work for you.  You can also just grant Edit permissions if you’re worried about giving away too much access.

How To Add A User to Your Google Analytics Account

You can add as many users as you need. To add a new user to an account or property:

  1. Sign in to Google Analytics.
  2. Click Admin, and navigate to the desired account or property.
  3. In the Account or Property column (depending upon where you want to add users), click User Management.
  4. In the Account permissions list, click +, then click Add users.
  5. Enter the email address for the user’s Google Account.
  6. Select Notify new users by email to send a message to the user.
  7. Select the permissions you want. Learn more about permissions.
  8. Click Add.

How To Edit A User’s Permission In Your Google Analytics Account

You can edit the permissions for any user at any level in an Analytics account. For example, if you have given a user Read permission for only a single property, you can subsequently also give the user Edit permission for only that property. Or you can give that user Edit permission at the account level, and thereby also give Edit permission for every property in that account.

You can give a user more permissions as you move down the account hierarchy, but you cannot give a user fewer permissions than you assigned at higher levels. For example, if you assign a user Edit permissions at the account level, then that user also has Edit permissions at the property level (and you cannot revoke those permissions at the property level). Conversely, you can assign a user Edit permissions at the property level, but assign no permissions at either the account level. Learn more about permissions.

To modify permissions for an existing user:

  1. Sign in to Google Analytics..
  2. Click Admin, and navigate to the desired account or property.
  3. In the Account or Property column (depending upon where you want to modify permissions), click User Management.
  4. Use the search box at the top of the list to find the user you want. Enter a full or partial address( e.g., janedoe@gmail.com or janedoe).
  5. Click the user name, then add or remove permissions.
  6. Click Save.

How To Remove Users From Your Google Analytics Account

To delete a user:

  1. Sign in to Google Analytics..
  2. Click Admin, and navigate to the desired account.
  3. In the Account or Property column, click User Management.
  4. Use the search box at the top of the list to find the user you want. Enter a full or partial address( e.g., janedoe@gmail.com or janedoe).
  5. Select the check box for each user you want to delete, then click REMOVE.

You can always change permissions for users at any time and delete users when they no longer need access to your analytics.

Google Search Console account

How To Share Access To Your Google Search Console Account

Google Search Console allows you to monitor, troubleshoot and optimize your website’s appearance in Google Search results. It’s a set of tools and reporting mechanisms that Google provides for free, and it shows things like how well Google can find and crawl your site, how often your site appears in search, whether users click through to it and which other sites link to your website.

It also alerts you to – and helps you fix – technical problems with your website like indexing issues, server errors, load problems, spam/malware and mobile usability that may affect your ranking. Basically, it’s a handy way to make sure your site is working right and getting seen by the people who need to see it.

Your digital marketing agency will need access to your Google Search Console to utilize these powerful web tools and make sure your website is working as hard for you as it should.

How To Add A Delegated Owner In Google Search Console

Here’s how you can share Delegated Owner Permissions access to Google Search Console:

What Is A Delegated Owner?

delegated owner is granted owner status by a verified owner without going through the verification flow.

To add another user as an owner, or upgrade someone’s status from user to owner

Note that you must be a verified owner to add a new owner.

  1. Open the Users and Permissions page for your property.
  2. Click Add user.
  3. Specify the user information.

To remove ownership from a delegated owner

  1. Open the Users and Permissions page for your property.
  2. Next to the owner that you want to remove, open the more menu
  3. Select Manage property owners
  4. Next to the user name on the table, click Unverify.

To downgrade a delegated owner to a user

  1. Remove ownership from the delegated owner (described above).
  2. Add a user with the desired permission (full or restricted).

Note that as a Verified Owner of your site, you can change the permissions given to anyone at any time.

Facebook Business account

How To Add Someone To Your Facebook Business Page

Facebook is one of the most important ways businesses reach new customers and interact with existing ones, so having a well-managed Facebook Business page is a must. You probably already know a lot about how businesses use Facebook, so let’s get down to how your partnership with an agency should work.

In order for your marketing agency to handle your Facebook presence and posts, you’ll need to grant them Editor permissions for your Page. As Editor, the agency can create and manage page posts, boost posts and create ads for you, view page insights about audience reach and more.

Having Editor access lets the agency post useful content to your page, including things like blog posts, infographics and videos that tie back to your website, plus relevant news items that keep your page active and fresh. It also lets them create Facebook ads and promotions, set up events and even host Facebook Live sessions for your business.

Here’s how you can share Editor permissions with your digital marketing agency partner on Facebook:

How Do You Manage Roles For Your Facebook Page?

You’ll need to be an admin to manage roles for your Page. Learn how to see what your role is.

There’s no limit to the number of people who can have a role on a Page. Learn more about what each Page role can do.

Give Someone a Role

If you’re an admin:

  1. From your News Feed, click Pages in the left menu.
  2. Go to your Page and click Page Settings in the bottom left.
  3. Click Page Roles in the left column.
  4. Type a name or email in the box and select the person from the list that appears.
  5. Click Editor to select a role from the dropdown menu.
  6. Click Add and enter your password to confirm.

Keep in mind that if you’re not friends with the person you’re adding, they’ll have to accept your invite before they can start helping you manage your Page.

As with the Google accounts access permissions, Facebook user roles can always be changed or withdrawn by the Page Admin as needed.

YouTube account

How To Share Access To Your YouTube Channel

Videos can be a great way to drive traffic to your website, help people find your services and establish you as a knowledgeable player in your field. Having a YouTube Channel will let you post videos with wide reach,  to highlight your business and answer questions your current and potential customers may have. YouTube is, of course, the largest video sharing site on the web.

Whether you’re creating your own video content or getting help from a marketing agency in producing it, you want to put it on YouTube to expand its potential reach and help it rank in search. This, in turn, can help drive traffic to your website, which helps with both lead generation and your website’s own search ranking.

If you’re working with an agency, they’ll need to have access to your YouTube Brand Account and any YouTube channels associated with it – they can help you set these up if you don’t already have them. Having this access lets them do things like create a brand identity for your channel, upload and organize your videos, and add links to your website and social media pages. They can also use their technical know-how to make your channel and videos easier to find, and use YouTube Analytics to figure out how to grow your subscribers and increase video views based on data.

Here’s how to grant YouTube channel permissions to an agency for marketing purposes:

How To Add Or Remove Access To Your YouTube Channel

To add access:

  1. Go to studio.youtube.com.
  2. On the left-hand side, click Settings.
  3. Click Permissions.
  4. Click Invite and enter the email address of the person you’d like to invite.
  5. Click Access and select the role you’d like to assign to this person:
    • Manager: Can add or remove others and edit channel details. And upload, edit, publish, and delete videos. Can’t delete the channel.
    • Editor: Can upload and edit videos, and delete draft videos. Can’t add or remove others, delete published videos or the channel, or enter into contracts.
    • Editor (Limited): Can upload and edit videos, and delete draft videos. Can’t add or remove others, delete videos or the channel, enter into contracts or see revenue information.
    • Viewer: Can view (but not edit) channel details.
    • Viewer (Limited): Can view (but not edit) channel details except revenue information.
  6. Click Save.

To remove or change access:

  1. Go to studio.youtube.com.
  2. On the left-hand side, click Settings.
  3. Click Permissions.
  4. Go to the person you’d like to remove and click the drop-down menu.
  5. Select a new role or click Remove access.

As with all Google accounts, these permissions are fully reversible if your needs should change.

Still Need Help? Ask A Professional

If you have any difficulty sharing access to your accounts on any of these platforms, your marketing agency should be able to walk you through the steps and help you troubleshoot. They can also explain the different levels of access and how they’ll use them to perform work for you. Talk about any security concerns you may have before granting access – most agencies will be glad to help answer any questions you may have.

Marc Apple

Marc Apple

Digital Strategist

I like inbound marketing strategy, creative design, website development, analytics, and organic and paid search. That's what I write about.