Why Should I Have A Website When I Have Social Media?

Written by Mario Flawless

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Aug 11

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Website vs social media

As an entrepreneur just getting started with your online presence, you’re basically presented with 2 options. Which of the 2 options sounds more appealing to you?

Option 1: You can set up your business in someone else’s store, at no cost to you.
Option 2: You can own or lease space for your business designated only to you.

With Option 1, you have little to no control over what goes on in the store. Your ‘visitors’ will be shown ads for other products and services while shopping at your store. When you post an update, a special offer, or a testimonial, only 10% of the people that “LIKE” your store will see your post. Also, if that store makes any major changes, gets bought by another company, or even shuts down, you may no longer be able to keep your spot. You are at the mercy of the store owner. Option 1 is the social media platforms.

With Option 2, you are in complete control of your business. If someone scrolls past one your products in your store, guess what they see next? YOUR next product/service, not a funny picture of a cat. You have the ability to sell your product/service, provide your visitors with the information that they need to make a buying decision, and even capture their email and contact info so that you can communicate with your visitors whenever you have an important message to deliver. This option, of course, is having your own website. You’re not limited by any restrictions or guidelines that a social media platform has AND you can STILL set up your social media pages to increase your traffic. By doing so, if anything ever happens to one of the social media platforms you’re advertising on, you may still be affected, but the impact won’t be as heavy.

With that being said, allow me to ask you another question.

Are you able to entice your visitors enough to ____________ the first time around?

Fill in the blank with your goal, whether your goal is to turn that visitor into a YouTube subscriber, get them to click your Facebook “like” button, or to follow your business on Instagram. If you’re not able to convince your visitor to do your desired action, chances are, once they leave your social page, they’re gone for good. When you have a website, you have the ability to market to people that have already visited your website, long after they’ve left your website through a method called retargeting. Retargeting is one of the most powerful forms of advertising as you’re able to put your ads in front of visitors that have already been to your website. If they’ve landed on your website, they have shown some kind of interest in your product or service. Nobody just randomly lands on your website, they land on your website because they’ve searched for you or they’ve been given the link from you or someone directly. Perhaps they did get the link from your social media pages, however, if you have a retargeting strategy implemented with your website, you can continue to market to these visitors.

SEO onsite vs Social Media

Take a look when you google our company, Flawless Website Design. Click on the image to enlarge. When it comes to search engine optimization, your website dominates.

A. The first search result that you see is our website. It is broken down into the sections that we feel will get us the most business. You can quickly distinguish what our services are, find out who we are, view our portfolio, and reach out to us. We have the ability to throw in a few small sales pitches with each link that we represent.

B. Next on the search results is our LinkedIn business page, Facebook page, and then our Yelp listing. How much information do you see about our business amongst the social media section of the search results? All you see is that we have a great rating and that we offer website design, but that’s not quite all that we do here.

C. You see our Google My Business listing also. We feel that this is very powerful as well since it gives the visitor a brief ‘heads-up’ about the company by displaying the reviews prominently, a quick story, and any photos that have been uploaded to the listing. This does give the opportunity to display your phone number and address, but without clear direction on why they’d be calling you off the bat may be difficult to assess. They can’t book your services or buy your products from your Google listing, however, the main point of having the Google listing is to get people to see your reviews, call you, or visit your website.

Being on social media is important, but not nearly as impactful as having a conversion-focused website

We’re not telling you to NOT go out and start your Facebook page and YouTube channel. In fact, we encourage and recommend that you do so and the sooner the better. You can quickly build a buzz utilizing your social media channels, but at the end of the day, you want to be able to retarget your visitors in your marketing efforts, collect your visitor’s contact information, and make sales. Social media is flooded with constant distractions that can quickly pull your visitor away from your page, from family members and other pages competing for their attention to other companies spewing optimized ads in front of them. When you have a visitor on your website, they will be distraction-free and they should be able to quickly achieve the goals of your business.

Don't limit your marketing efforts

Your website can fully enhance your marketing efforts as well. Think about it like this, if you have a youtube channel and you’re trying to build your YouTube channel. Direct your Facebook traffic to your website where you can capture their email address. Then, whenever you release a new video, you’ll know that you can send them an email to notify them and even track if the email was read. Get a quote from us to see how much of an impact a website can do for your business.

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