Facebook Location Pages Versus Local Business Pages

Today I want to talk to you about the difference between Facebook location pages and Facebook local business pages.

We’re probably already familiar with Facebook local business pages. We can create a local business page and we can put an address on it, allow check-ins and everything else that Facebook business pages can do.

Facebook location pages are very similar, but they’re organized with a parent child relationship.

You can have individual local business pages for the different locations in your business. They’re all separate pages that you manage, either directly or through Facebook Business Manager.

Facebook location pages, on the other hand, are grouped together in a hierarchical fashion. They are individual location pages, all tied up to a common brand page.

An Example of Facebook Location Pages

Let’s take a look at Freddy’s Frozen Custard for example. You’ll notice there’s a main, overall page for Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers. This is the primary brand page.

But then they have all their locations as separate pages below. You’ll notice they all have the same name with the actual location on it. These are Facebook location pages and they work together with the brand page.

On the brand page, you’ll notice that there is no address. The brand page has likes, but there are no check-ins at the brand level. This primary page represents the brand of Freddy’s across all of Facebook.

The brand page also has a special locations tab. If you click on the locations tab, it will show the stores nearest to you. You can click on any location and jump to that individual Facebook location page. This is basically a store locator, built in to Facebook.

Each specific location page has a map, an address and they do indeed have check-ins.

Why Use Facebook Location Pages?

Why would you use a hierarchical brand and location pages versus just having individual local business pages? The biggest benefit is that Facebook says it helps customers find you business more easily.

Locations are tied geographically and interconnected to all other locations and the primary brand page. It makes each location easier to find … and Facebook’s trying to boost up places in a lot of its search results.

Location pages also allow both brand and localized content. With this parent child relationship, you could put content at the brand level, push it down in to all the locations and then the locations can add their own localized content.

You can also manage all your locations a little more easily than with individual local business pages.

All of your individual locations have their own check-ins, but the check-ins all get aggregated up at the parent level, which makes the parent brand look much more powerful.

The other advantage is you can actually create some Facebook ads that are tied around your location pages, either ads in a specific geographical region, specific location, or across the brand.

We’ve got a great session out at the Local Marketing Institute website specifically on Facebook location pages taught by Amy Hayward. It’s a 60 minute training video. Go check it out.

How to Setup Facebook Location Pages

1. In Facebook Business Manager, go to your Business Settings to All Tools and you click Business Locations.
2. If you don’t have business locations set up, it will take you to a setup page.
3. Choose your brand page by either migrating an existing page or setting up a new, main brand page.
4. In the next step, you add your locations. You can either enter them manually, upload a CSV file, or migrate some of your existing local business pages.

Managing Facebook Location Pages

Now you can manage your locations from one interface in Facebook Business Manager … it’s much more convenient than having individual business pages.

You can have tens or hundreds of location and can sort or filter them. You could edit them all at the same time or you could edit them individually, right from this interface.

You can also control the content of your location pages. You can always show brand content on the location pages, only show brand content on location pages that aren’t publishing their own posts, or never show brand content on individual locations.

I typically recommend, always show, and then the individual pages can add their own content as well.

So that’s how Facebook location pages differ from local business pages. If you have more than one location I highly recommend you consider using Facebook location pages instead of normal business pages.