Retailers with multiple locations have a decision to make when it comes to creating Facebook business pages: do you make one page that represents all locations or do you make individual pages for each store? I discussed in a recent blog post how to do both, as well as how to link the location pages to the banner page. In the post, I highlighted the more practical reasons you should consider setting up the locations pages. For example, setting up individual location pages might make sense if your products, services and messaging vary widely from store to store.

Those practical reasons are important but there is a less tangible reason to create local pages for each individual store location. Your customers are more likely to engage with a local page versus a banner page for the entire chain. According to an article on MediaPost, “local store pages generated 25 times more impressions than brand pages.” Citing research from MomentFeed, MediaPost highlighted findings of their analysis of impression data in early 2017 from approximately 50 national brand clients, including restaurant chains, retailers, and consumer services businesses.

It’s possible that customers are more likely to engage with their local store on Facebook due to its invaluable place the community, as I recently discussed in another blog post. Recreating that sense of community on a local Facebook page is as simple as the examples I provided in that blog post: posting about what you’re doing with local organizations, sharing information and posts from those local organizations to increase the reach of their messages, and posting about your employees and customers so your page fans see the faces of your store and not just the products.

Local Facebook pages have their value, but MediaPost also highlighted managing your local listings on Google and Yelp. As I mentioned in my blog post about Claiming Your Google Places Listing, Google will list your businesses but it’s a good idea to claim, verify and manage your own listing so you can interact with your customers on those platforms as well. Managing the correct contact information and ratings/reviews on these sites can be beneficial to attracting and maintaining customers. MediaPost shared MomentFeed’s research findings of the two sites, noting that 91% of mobile impressions came from Google and 9% came from Yelp. However, Yelp reviews converted to leads (clicks for directions or phone calls) at 19%, whereas Google converted at just 6%.

You might be wondering why that information matters. Well, MediaPost mentioned that “49% of in-store purchases are now influenced by digital interactions — over half of which take place on mobile.” So it’s very important to have a local online presence in today’s digital landscape.