Risk losing customers if you don’t have a website
We very recently witnessed the Facebook explosion against Australian media outlets with their spectacular pulling down of media and news pages. While the Australian Government continues to sort out it's relationship issues with the Z-Man, I will talk you through why it's important to not rely on Social Media to increase your customer community.
While I do believe it's absolutely necessary to include social media as part of your business growth plans, I fundamentally believe it's more important to have a smart website that captures your clients' information and stores it in a way that allows you to communicate with them in several different ways. The crucial difference between having a Facebook store and an online presence is quite simple: You don't own the data on your social media pages! That's right folks, if your page gets run over by a bus tomorrow, you can't save its data, it's gone forever unless you find some way of backing up your page every day. If your clients subscribe to your website, however, you own the data, simple as that. Websites come with basic backups; if you lose a site it's most likely that you'll be able to retrieve your data from your hosting provider's server. You can install your own data backups on your website and you can protect it from malicious activity. You can't secure your social pages past the likes of Two Factor Authentication.
A good website will not only protect your business from Cyber criminals with a robust Privacy Policy and Website Terms but it will also act as your communication hub, linking all of your email and social media marketing activity together and keep your client data in one place. Let's take a look at how this can potentially work for you:
You have an event planning business and you've just launched your website using website building platform 'Squarespace'. You have a "Subscribe Now" button that takes visitor information and stores it in a mailing list using a clever marketing system called 'Active Campaign'. With this information you can:
Email your subscribers automatically with news and offers
Send a welcome campaign with details of your social pages or groups, store, and ebook
Segment your subscribers based on various types of information you can collect about them, for targeted marketing
Let them know when you've added new items to your blog or store, or importantly, changes to business hours or operations and so on; and, of course
Take payments for goods or services
A good website allows you to not only communicate with your customers by email but you can connect your Social Pages as well. So, whenever an offer goes out by email, it can automatically appear on your social pages. You can even use rockstar apps such as Zapier to automate how your data is used between systems, trigger marketing processes, and connect your CRM to your marketing lists.
With your Facebook store, you're limited to only communicating via your Facebook and Insta pages. Erm... Yup, that's about it. Your options are very limited in comparison.
Most business owners (especially small business owners) steer away from websites because of the belief that they will have to fork out thousands of dollars for a website that works. Not true. Sort of. Let me explain. Website builders such as Squarespace cost as little as $25 per month for a business site. WordPress is free and has thousands of free website templates for you to customise to your brand specifications, but if you'd like to use a block building template such as Divi by Elegant Themes you can pay a subscription price for a very flexible, user friendly theme that will build you a unique site that stands out.
Yes, some marketers will demand big dollars to build a site for you, depending on the functionality and number of pages. However, you're essentially paying a team of professionals to build you a beautiful site, equipped with SEO and analysis tools and this will generally end up costing you thousands. It can be worth it but if you're a small business it doesn't have to be so costly. If you're looking for a simple site to give you that communication hub and an online presence, you could do it yourself for no more than the cost of purchasing a domain name (approximately $20 a year) and a website hosting plan (the price varies depending on the size of your site but can start from as little as $10 per month).
If you're wanting to grow your business in 2021 there's really only two areas of your business that you should be spending your money on and they are your people and your marketing; the two most important assets in any successful business. Don't be afraid to take the next step and build a website that will work smarter for you. Your return on investment will surprise you.
This article was written by Shelley Breen. Shelley is passionate about and has been supporting Entrepreneurs and Small Business owners since 2007. She has a strong background in marketing, compliance and operations management. Shelley lives on the Central Coast of NSW with her husband, two sons, and recalcitrant dog ‘Baxter’.
