When promoting your business, you have a few options: Facebook, a website, or both. Most companies these days use Facebook to promote their products and services. In fact, according to Ad Week, there are over 40 million small businesses on Facebook. With the introduction of the “Meta Businesses Suite, ” it looks like Facebook means business when it comes to, well, business.
There are, however, some significant advantages to having a website for your business. This blog post will discuss the differences between using Facebook and having a website for your business.
Facebook For Business
Facebook is an excellent social media platform for promoting your business. It has billions of users and is a potent tool for marketing. However, there are some significant downsides to using Facebook as your only method of promotion.
Data
First of all, Facebook owns all the data on their platform which you agree to in their terms of service. If Facebook changes their algorithms or policies, your business could be significantly affected. For example, your reach will suffer if Facebook chooses to show less content from companies in the newsfeed.
You may be thinking, “I don’t care about data”, but you should, because if Facebook goes down, and it has many times in the past, your business has no visibility. Secondly, if anything happens and your content gets wiped, there’s no backup, unlike with a website.
Content
You can’t add certain types of content to Facebook; this includes high-quality landing pages, blogs and payment methods for products. If you want to add this type of content, you must have a website.
Facebook has increasingly been working to keep people on its platform for longer. If you have seen a funny video and tried to share it with someone who is not on Facebook, you know the struggle. You are relying on all of your potential customers being on Facebook. When the reality of the situation is that only around 50% of your prospects are using it.
Finally, if you only use Facebook to promote your business, you miss out on a huge opportunity. Let’s explore the advantages of having a website compared with just Facebook promotion.
Websites For Business
One of the most significant advantages of having a website is owning your data. Your website will still be there if Facebook decides to make changes. You can have backups of your website in case anything terrible happens, which you can reload, and your website is back up and running.
Customisation
Another significant advantage is that you can add any content to your website. One of the best ways to find new customers is to create detailed, high-quality landing pages based on search words related to your business. Facebook doesn’t allow you to do this. With a website, you can create as many pages as you like.
You can also create articles and blogs like this one around key services or products you offer. Spoiler alert, we build websites.
Credibility
Did you know that over 81% of people do research before actually buying online? 60% of people will go to a retailer’s website to look at the products and check the warranty and postage costs.
With services, having a website adds credibility, improving your online presence and making your business look successful, experienced, and willing to invest in itself.
If you don’t have a website, you are missing out on all these potential customers that don’t even think about going to Facebook to look.
3rd Party Tools
With a website, you can plug in all sorts of excellent 3rd party tools to aid your business. For example, with a Google My Business page, your website, images, and contact details will show up in Google Maps.
You can install analytics software to see how visitors are reaching your site. Analytics data can help you alter your marketing practices to serve customers better. Relying on one company like Facebook doesn’t give you this option because they keep all the traffic and analytics for themselves.
Remarketing
A website can hold lots of data for you or can link with software such as Mail Chimp for emails. Facebook doesn’t allow you to store people’s email addresses for remarketing. Using Facebook, you have to update your address book in your email address for each customer.
Using a website, you can pull past customer data from the site and email all of them for marketing purposes.
Advertising
With a website, you can take advantage of other forms of advertising such as Google, Microsoft, Linkedin or Twitter. If your business is stuck on Facebook, you can only use Facebook ads, which are effective. Still, as we have mentioned, you only show ads to Facebook users.
Conclusion: So, which should you choose? BOTH!
Of course, using both Facebook and your website to promote your business is ideal. This way, you can grow your followers on Facebook and get traffic from your website. They feed each other.
Why not invest in a website and see what happens to your leads or sales. Choose a Digital Marketing expert like OakWood Digital to help you along the way. With a website and marketing strategy in place, you can take your business from a word-of-mouth Facebook page to a local business leader!
Get in touch with us today to see how we can help you get started with a company website to increase your online presence. We offer web design in Gloucestershire, the Forest of Dean, Ross On Wye and the surrounding area.
We look forward to hearing from you soon!