In today’s tech-oriented society, a strong digital presence is required for any business to thrive in the competitive digital market. Without it, your business can get hardly noticed, much less known that your business actually exists.
A business should be where the customers are — because if not, there’s no sense of building it in the first place. Having an online platform today is a requirement for any type of business to transpire be it through social platforms or a business website. Online platforms are simply virtual locations that people can visit which serve them their purpose —such as for socializing, shopping, learning, and more.
As a small business owner, you need to know where you should be spending your marketing budget. As to which platform your business should give more focus on, it depends on which platform gets your business going. In this sense, it is, therefore, important that we understand the end goal for which these platforms are created and what they can do to promote and run your brand.
Website and Facebook Page as Business Platforms
So where exactly can we find the audiences that we need? Social media usage is one of the most popular activities online. According to Statista, over 3.6 billion people were using social media worldwide in 2020, with a projected possibility of increasing to almost 4.41 billion in 2025.
Social media is the ultimate marketing tool. As we already know, Facebook is the leading social platform today, reaching 60.6 percent of internet users. This social media giant brought in $17.44 billion in ad revenue in the first quarter of 2020 with 80 million small businesses around the world that are using Facebook Pages. With social media, it’s easy to reach your target audience without much effort. It allows businesses to interact with their customers daily. There are built-in tools available to help in marketing and businesses can brand themselves on these platforms.
But is this really the best option for you? With this much revenue and engagement through Facebook Marketing, why should your business need to have a website?
Why should a business have a website in the social media age?
Facebook Marketing has overwhelming benefits to businesses as far as marketing is concerned. And let’s face it— when people use to search for what they need to find be it people, an organization, or a business, they either search directly on Facebook to find their pages or go to search engines like Google to find the most relevant website search for their inquiry.
Having an online presence is more than just about online marketing. Having an online presence in this era of globalization means having a place on the internet that anyone can reach. A social media profile such as a Facebook Page is merely just a tool. To simply put it, your social media platform is the mouth of your brand while your website is the powerhouse. Having a Facebook Page, on the other hand, is like renting out space on Facebook’s platform.
If you want something owned on the Internet, a website is definitely the best investment that your business can have alongside running your Business Page on Facebook. Your website is the main hub of your business in the online scene that holds your online assets in one place.
Social media pages are good for engagements due to the amount and ease of sharing and interaction. Websites, however, are not one to undermine. When it comes to search engine results, a website will always have the upper hand over Facebook Pages. When users key in their keywords in Google, a list of websites containing the answer to the search are mostly displayed on SERPs, providing only those that are ranked using Google’s algorithm for containing the most relevant content for their searches.
Reasons Your Business Needs a Website
While a Facebook Page can give your business the attention it needs in the market given that your social media marketing tactics work, having a website on top of your digital marketing efforts for your business gives your business more flexibility and a secured platform for your business.
Here are good reasons why you need a website for your business:
1. Get informed about the market through Analytics.
Running Google Analytics for your website can tell you a lot of things about the current market. It can tell you about your customers, the pages they visit, how long they spend online, where your audience is located and so much more.
2. You can lose control of Facebook but you have full control over your website.
Since practically having a Facebook Page is like leasing space for your business in the platform, you have no choice but to follow any guidelines that Facebook set for its users. So when Facebook limits the ads that advertisers can post, marketing can’t do anything but comply. When you have a website, you have full control over your ads, content and however, you want to use your platform to market your business.
3. Rank efficiently in SERPs
When people search on search engines like Facebook, it is not the Facebook pages that are shown in the first pages of SERPs especially when you type in some generic keywords on the search bar. It is the websites that are ranked highly by Google. When search engines like Google rank websites, it is important to have a good working website that contains relevant and good content. This is the main goal of your SEO.
Having a good working website requires impressive web development efforts. If you know some basic coding, you can even make your website using a website maker like WordPress where you can even turn your website into an eCommerce site. If you aren’t knowledgeable enough to make your site, hiring a good digital marketing team to work on your website is the best course to take.
4. You need a destination that your google ads can redirect your audience on.
Pay per click ads, are cost-effective ads that you can have as one of your digital marketing strategies since you only pay for the ad cost when the ad is clicked. You can link Google Ads to a Facebook page, but it comes with disadvantages:
- Lower ad quality scores for Facebook landing pages can increase your cost per click
- Google often limits how many ads top-level domains like Facebook will show on search results.
- Facebook trademark violations are possible.
- Those who click your ads need to be logged in to Facebook to see your ads.
- You can’t track your investment because you can’t run your Google Ads conversion tracking on our FB page.
5. Your website can add more credibility to your business.
A good website adds perceived value or credibility to products and services. If your audience is able to go to a website, they can find what they’re looking for, learn about the company, and see what they are all about which can be easier to build trust with. Shoppers do online research before making a purchase. If your website has all the important details and content they need to know such as the product details, warranty, pricing, availability, and shipping information, your customer will be able to trust your business enough to avail of what you’re offering.
Business owners today are eager to find the right balance between using their Facebook page as their main platform where they drive customers in and in bringing the consumers to their official website. A website, however, has a permanence that social media cannot measure up.
While both channels are different especially on how they can be used as a platform for your business online, they are, however, great marketing platforms that engage audiences with answers and solutions and they can work together as an online marketing tool to help increase your customer reach.
