The Facebook business page is a must, not just a need anymore! Currently, over 200 million businesses use Facebook to market their business. But what about new features like Facebook location pages? Is your business page optimised for multi-location stores?
In the post-covid-era of near-shoring, the local search becomes an important source for engaging with potential customers. The local searches are mostly done over mobile devices and include the location of the person requesting the search and at the time of the search.
For most, the local search means Google, but statistics show that over 65 percent of Facebook’s weekly users visit the Pages of local businesses and organizations near them.
Additionally, the Meta group ranks as the most used social networking platform, it includes Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger.
All those figures show that an online presence on Facebook is a must, for enterprises to unlock a wide range of opportunities to engage with customers located nearby.
Importance of having the main page on Facebook?
According to Facebook, the business Page is a free way for businesses, brands, celebrities, causes, and organizations to reach their audience. Search engines, like Google, Bing, and Yandex, may index your Page, making it easier for people nearby to find you.
Making it easy to manage your business page on Facebook, is in Meta's DNA, and tools such as Meta Business Suite and Creator Studio are there to help you on desktop and mobile devices.
The main business pages show information about your business, such as your address, phone number, hours, categories, unique username, and more. You can use Posts as the fastest way to share information on your page.
Another widely used feature is messaging which lets you communicate with people on Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger.
Facebook Insights is a great feature that helps you understand actions people take on your Page, such as how often they like, comment on, or share posts.
From a digital marketing perspective, the reach of 2.9 billion monthly active users on Facebook is an endless source of potential customers. Facebook allows you to target specific groups of people based on demographics, interests, and behaviors while engaging with your audience and encouraging them to interact with your brand.
There is a number of facts that marketers like Facebook.
The most used fact is spreading unique information for a brand. But, does each store or branch, owned by a specific brand, sell the same products or provide the same services?
Let's think of a market chain, like Migros. One store is having a campaign for specific Bio Olive Oil, while another store does not. The confusion may rise if such posts or campaigns are posted on your Facebook main page, right?
The need for the location pages on Facebook for each storefront separately.
If we go back to basics, setting up a separate location page on Facebook for each storefront or physical location is generally a good idea.
Each location may have its own unique information, such as a different phone number or address, products or services, and may serve a different customer base.
From a reach perspective of Facebook, you can provide more specific and accurate information to customers who are searching for your business in an area where you have a local store.
Additionally, the local page helps search engines, like Google, Bing, and Yext, to show information to people that are usually around your specific location( on mobile devices) and searching for your products and services. If your local page is not created or well-updated then your business may be excluded from the search that is done by people just walking around your store.
Technically, local pages are connected as child pages to your main Facebook pages which allows you to target your marketing efforts to specific locations and track the performance of each location separately. This provides your local pages with more followers and overall followers on your main page.
If we go back to our example, separating your targeting strategy, over the local store pages, allows MMM Migros in Ankara, to have promotions, posts, or campaigns on specific products like Bio Olive Oil with specific pricing, while M Migros in Istanbul may have a promotion on fresh fruit with particular pricing for a specific date.
This approach for Facebook's use by brands, will attract customers organically and impact massively on followers of specific pages. Resulting in free marketing resources and the impact of specific success on digital marketing strategy.
How Konoom helps enterprises to manage multi-locations?
Konoom is a cloud-based software platform that helps businesses manage and optimize their online presence across multiple local search and directory websites. Konoom has partnered with the most recognizable companies including Google, Facebook, Bing, and Yandex, to provide the most advanced and effective tools for online presence.
Konoom tools are designed to help businesses improve their visibility and reach in local search results, as well as manage and respond to customer reviews and ratings for multiple locations.
Using only the Konoom platform, enterprises can manage multi-location business information, campaigns, posts, and insights on a single overview.
Another great feature is sub-user and group management.
While managing the main Facebook page can be done from HQ, by the digital marketing managers, each separate local storefront can be dedicated to a store manager. The store managers may have the freedom to share posts and connect with a customer in a single or a predefined group of multi-locations.
The Konoom tools help also to solve the digital marketers' unique problem of managing multiple locations over a single platform, across a wide range of online directories, like Google, Facebook, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, and many more.
Prepared by Konoom Marketing Team on Friday, 16th of Dec, 2022