It is common to start introducing a business in the Internet through social networks such as Instagram or Facebook. And it makes a lot of sense. First of all, it’s free. Secondly, it is very easy to open an account. If you are already familiar with the platform you can start right away without a long and overwhelming learning curve. Thirdly, you have access to thousands of “potential customer” profiles immediately by interacting with them and proposing your products or services directly to them. Fourthly, you can run advertising campaigns easily and instantly.
Yes, at a quick glance, everything looks like an advantage. The problem with social networks is that the account you have worked on day and night, to which you have dedicated precious time and from which you have received benefits is NOT YOURS. One day you may wake up in the morning eager to start your work day and find that Instagram has blocked your account. As a result, you cannot access it anymore. Immediately, you start looking for how to unblock your Instagram account and this can take days or be definitive. In the meantime your business is paralyzed, you have no access to your customers, or to their messages. Why? because in the end, your contacts were not yours but from Instagram or Facebook, or the platform you were using.
What is the alternative to this situation? You must have your own professional website. A priori it seems more complicated but there are many advantages.
- Your business looks more legitimate and professional. The customer can better understand who you are. You can dedicate one whole page to explain in detail your origins and purposes. In addition, you will comply with the privacy policy rules giving more security to that person who is looking for a legitimate business for their activities.
- You have control over the data and contacts you have obtained through your website. In social networks if they close your account unexpectedly you lose your contacts and conversations, with your own website this will not happen. Your contacts are yours and not the platforms.
- Possibility of shutdown in social networks. Some time ago Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp disappeared for several hours generating a lot of uncertainty for those who depended on them.
- You don’t have to follow the constantly updated rules of the social platforms. Maybe out of ignorance, you commit some irregularity that goes against Instagram’s rules and they close your account. With your website, this will not happen.
- Your website is your property, you have total freedom for design and content. You can share user reviews, videos, images, products, and anything else. You can customize your information and your way of gaining leads as much as you want.
- More channels to generate leads. Customers can come directly from search engines or organic traffic, advertising campaigns, social networks, and email marketing campaigns, to name a few.
- You can sell your products online and connect them to some social networks. “The global e-commerce growth rate by 2023 is forecast at 8.9%, bringing global e-commerce sales to $5.9 trillion. Even if you don’t have a traditional e-commerce business, having an online store can help attract new customers and continue to sell even when your physical store is closed.
- Make it easy for users to navigate to key information about your business. On a social media platform information about your business can be more hidden and make it difficult for the customer to make the entire customer journey to the end.
- It is the center of your digital marketing strategies to capture more leads. From your website, you can do email marketing campaigns, implement a CRM, contact customers, install a chat, track analytics data, and use it as the landing page of an advertising campaign. It is an important channel to connect, interact and get to know your customers, and thus amplify your ROI.
- Improve your customer service. An effective website will contain a lot of important information for customers. They don’t need to call about location, hours of operation, and other simple questions. Also, customers don´t need to contact you over simple questions, they can find that info on the website. You and your team can focus on other vital processes that increase the company’s productivity. In other words, you also save time.
- Having a website is easier and cheaper than you think, plus in the long run, it brings you more benefits. There are platforms like WordPress.org that allow you to create a website full of growth possibilities with few economic resources.
- Your website can be a requirement to apply for grants and jobs or to access the PRO part of a social network. Depending on your profile, if you have a business, are an entrepreneur, a freelance professional looking for a job, an artist, or a singer, you may be required to have a website to do some procedures.
Finally, back to the initial question: social networks or a professional website? Well, it is not necessary to choose between one or the other because the ideal is to take advantage of both. Your professional website will have all your data, services, products, contacts, chats, forms, etc. Use your social networks to implement a part of your digital marketing strategy to attract customers, who you can refer later to your website and from there to continue the process of the sale (if necessary), post-sales, and loyalty. This way you use the best of both sides without running the risk of losing all your efforts. If one day you encounter the dreaded message “your account has been disabled” you already have your plan B designed and calmly can look for a way to unblock your account or even open a new one. Meanwhile, your business remains open for everyone, for 7/24.
