Why social media marketing isn’t enough to promote your business online

Social media channels are a great way to reach out to potential new customers. They can be an easy and low-cost way to start promoting your business online. 

 

However, to produce real, measurable results, they need to be part of a larger online marketing strategy that includes a professionally designed website. 

 

Here are three reasons why: 

You can customise your profile and create your own posts, but social media platforms belong to someone else. You have little control of the overall appearance of your company’s social media presence. 

 

The platform owners can make changes at any time, which could affect your business performance. If you rely on them for all your online marketing, you are taking some risks. 

 

When social media first began, you could reach a large audience with free posts. Now businesses must normally pay to reach their followers as well as new audiences. 

 

The popularity of different platforms can come and go. If you have invested a lot of effort into growing your presence on specific platforms it can be a serious loss to your business when they become less popular. The alternative could be to have a presence on every major platform, but this is very time-consuming to maintain. 

 

Your carefully crafted posts will soon be pushed down the page, leaving potential customers with the job of searching for relevant information. With so much competition for a share of our digital attention, this can mean you are missing out on opportunities 

 

With your own website, you have total control; if social media is like an hotel, your website is your permanent home. 

 

You will own your content and you can decide how to engage with your audience. 

 

You might choose to provide different landing pages for specific products or customer types. You can build navigation menus tailored to meet your customers’ needs, making it fast and simple for them to find what they’re looking for. 

 

A high-quality website also boosts your reputation as a credible company because it’s clear that you take your online presence seriously. 

All of your online work should have a goal; the main one will be to convert people who are interested in your products or services into paying customers. 

 

Social media can generate leads and help you to identify people who are interested in what you do. The next step will be to bring them to your website where you have control over the journey they take. 

 

Your website is at the heart of your online strategy. Bringing your social media contacts to your website is like inviting them into your home. This is where they really understand what you’re all about. 

 

Once on your website you will be able to use analytics to understand what they do next. This will help you to enhance user experiences and speed up the time it takes for people to make a decision to buy, enquire, call or subscribe. 

 

To make the whole process work seamlessly, share your keyword-rich website content and blogs on your social media channels. This will help your business to be discovered online and will establish your authority and an expert in your field. 

 

By regularly creating content for your website that is optimised for search engines, you’ll make your business easily accessible for just about anyone online, including people using social media. When your target audience searches for products and services like yours, your business website has a much better chance of appearing in search results. 

While you can extend your reach through social media, it’s becoming harder all the time to attract attention. 

 

That means that the time and effort you need to invest in social media channels might deliver disappointing results. 

 

You probably know that, depending on the platforms you use, you will need to publish posts every day, if not several times each day. Your posts will also have a short lifespan (probably only minutes or hours) even if it’s widely shared. 

 

Because social media, marketing is becoming more competitive, many networks are now offering paid options. Organic reach will eventually come to a standstill and, when that happens, you will need to invest in paid advertising to boost your posts. 

 

The return on investment for social media advertising can often be low, so it is important to use it as part of a multi-channel online marketing strategy. 

 

In contrast, while your own website will need to be kept up to date to perform well, you can focus more of your effort on this single channel, which will be far less time-consuming than multiple social media platforms. More importantly, you will have an easily measurable return on your investment. 

So, by using social media alongside a professional website, SEO, blogging, email, and any other marketing tools that you have chosen for your business, you will improve your chances of succeeding online. 

 

With so many ways to communicate with your potential customers, why restrict yourself to just one type of conversation? 

 

Discover more about the potential of a professionally built website for your business. Talk to your local it’seeze consultant today.