• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, June 16, 2017

From Facebook to Yelp, it’s still common for national retailers to support a single brand page. By doing so, however, they’re missing a huge opportunity to engage customers at the local level.

On Facebook, for instance, local store pages generated 25 times more impressions than brand pages, according to research from MomentFeed.

The marketing firm based its findings on analysis of impression data gathered in early 2017 from around 50 national brand clients.

The goal was to examine the engagement of consumers with brands across mobile devices and digital networks -- and across multiple sectors including restaurant chains, retailers, and consumer services businesses.

During its research period, the firm also found that 91% of mobile impressions came from Google and 9% from Yelp -- yet Yelp views converted to leads (clicks for direction or calls) at 19%, compared to Google visitors, which converted at just 6%.

Also of note, brands should be careful not to give shoppers the wrong address of a local retail store. Indeed, 67% of consumers say their trust in a brand plummets after being given an inaccurate store location, according to MomentFeed.

Facebook knows just how important it is to connect consumers’ mobile and in-store experiences. Some 49% of in-store purchases are now influenced by digital interactions -- over half of which take place on mobile.

To support this shift, the social giant rolled out new capabilities for marketers to drive foot traffic to stores last summer. Late last year, Facebook reported more than 1 million store visits per day in 100,000 locations and a growing number of retailers using its Offline Conversions API to verify people seeing their ads are making in-store purchases.