With the rise of social media channels like Facebook, the paradigm of online marketing has changed significantly. With huge amounts of people utilising the now profitable Facebook platform, more and more businesses are taking advantage of social media business pages and relying less on dedicated websites.
Nowadays it’s entirely plausible that a small business won’t have a website, but will operate solely from a Facebook page. Dismissing the need for a website may seem like a progressive, cost saving measure, but you may actually be missing out on business you would have otherwise generated.
Let’s take a look at some reasons why your business still needs a website.
Brand identity and authority
While Facebook business pages will appear in Google results, the search engine clearly favours dedicated and unique domains when ranking search results. This is because your domain will be individualised and carry its own authority and not rely on Facebook’s.
The problem with relying on Facebook’s popularity is that there are thousands of similar businesses using the Facebook business page and its functions. In order to differentiate your business through branding you really need a website in order to establish your brand independently of other ones.
Untapped market
Failing to maintain a business websites leaves a huge hole where you’re losing potential leads. There are plenty of people who don’t use social media or barley engage with it that would otherwise be unlikely to hear of your business.
Digital marketing strategies like SEO and PPC promote your business’s website directly through search engines. SEO is particularly useful because it helps your website get to the first page of Google results, suggesting that your business is highly authoritative in the market.
Without a website you lose access to unique marketing strategies that allow you to be highly targeted with your messaging.
Facilitate sales
The most obvious benefits for many businesses that sell itemised products it the fact that a website allows you to create a dedicated sales portal. This gives audiences a means to purchase your products online and have them shipped to them.
Apart from creating a new revenue stream, an online sales portal allows you to track buying behaviour much more closely with the help of analytics. This information has limitless uses for a business and can inform future marketing as well as how much stock should be kept in storage to meet seasonal demands.
So, do you need a website?
Absolutely. While a business is able to thrive without a website, it really has nothing to lose by establishing a dedicated web presence.