Age Old Debate: Website vs Social Media?
When talking about business and digital marketing, the most frequently asked questions are which one should be built first, website vs social media? Which one is more effective? Which one will generate more leads and revenue? Especially for small businesses that have to compete with large companies to target the same market.
In many cases, small businesses tend to lose out of marketing budgets when compared with large companies. To find the answers, let’s understand how both websites vs social media help your business grow. Once you understand it, you will know the right answer on website vs social media for your business.
Source: Unsplash
Website: How It Will Help Your Business
A crucial aspect to consider is that your website serves as the primary online gateway for your business. A website acts as the digital storefront of your business, playing a pivotal role in how your company is perceived and accessed online. So, what role does a website play in supporting your business?
It Helps You Build Credibility
In this day and age, gaining your customer trust is essential and a website could do it for your business. Having a professional and user-friendly website will give a great first impression for your audiences. Once your audiences explore your website, they begin to trust you.
According to wearesocial.com 51.3 to 60.7% of people aged 16-64 tend to research information about brands on search engines. Remember that your competitors have a website already. If you don’t have a website, your business will seem less credible compared to website vs social media to other businesses that offer similar products and services like yours.
Even though your target market can find your business online on social media, it doesn’t mean that they don’t check your website. So, these website vs social media are very important for your business but, you can choose one or all of it.
It Builds Your Online Presence and Authority
Having a website means using the opportunity to build an online presence and authority. An online authority will help people who are interested in what your business offers to find it easily. It also gives more chances for your business to get new potential customers.
Although Facebook and Instagram have introduced social shopping features, they lack the control and flexibility that is offered by eCommerce sites. Tools such as Shopify, WooCommerce (WordPress eCommerce solution), and Squarespace are packed with useful features that let you customize the shopping experience. They can be integrated with order fulfillment and stock management systems that make selling your products or services a breeze.
To build a strong online presence and authority, incorporate your website with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO allows you to track organic traffic by giving valuable content to your audience. Those valuable contents will build your credibility, too.
Track Customer Data and Quality Leads
Talking about website vs social media, it’s important to know that a website can give accurate data about your customers that is essential for your business growth. To grow a business, you need to know who your audiences truly are, their tendencies, and what they expect from your website vs social media on your business.
A website will track the number of visitors that visit your site, the time visitors spent on your site, the number of conversions on your site, and the bounce rate on your site.
By having this data, business owners will also know which marketing efforts are or are not effective and what to do next. Thus you can track more quality leads to your site.
Source: Pexels
Social Media: Get Closer With Your Audience
A big difference between websites vs social media is that a website provides complete information about your business and your values. Social media, on the other hand, helps you to spread those values and get closer with your audience.
Connect Directly with Your Audiences
According to wearsocial globally 44,5% people search for brand information on social media and spend approximately 2 hours and 25 minutes per day on their social media. There is a great chance to reach wider audiences. Due to the high chance, many people think that social media is more important than websites for their brand to get revenues.
Now let’s make it clearer. “Social” media is a media which helps us to socialize online. Even though social media has many features for business. But still, the main function of social media is to connect and interact online.
That’s why having social media accounts is important. Use this chance to connect with your audiences directly on a personal level. Unlike search engines, social media will provide what audiences are most interested in.
If your audiences are interested in products or services that are similar to what you offer, social media will display your brand in the audience’s social media feed. They also can find you through hashtags.
Build Brand Awareness Through Social Media
The other benefit of having a social media account is that it helps build brand awareness which is critical for the success of a business. The more you connect and interact with your audience, the more people will become aware of your brand.
Once they notice that your brand exists, it will trigger them to seek more information about your business by visiting your site. Once they know your values, they will start to trust you.
And Also, don’t forget to use hashtags if you want to post your content on social media, why? Because if you use your hashtags for your content, it can be expand your brand to all people who follow those hashtags you use.
Encourage Your Brand to Engage with Audience
The more you connect with your audiences, the more social media encourages your brand to get engaged with your audiences. Do this by sharing insights or things audiences can relate to, respond to DMs and comments on your post, and utilize story features to connect with target audiences everyday.
Also, social media accounts help spread your website’s content and values to your audiences in a shorter and different way. Through social media, it’s possible to feed your audiences and entice them to visit your website. Feeding your audiences on social media will make them stay loyal with your brand as you give them values.
Source: Unsplash
So, Which One is The Best for Your Business?
When comparing website vs social media, from the explanation above, we know that website and social media actually complement each other. Both of them are a perfect combination to reach your audiences, get more conversions and leads. The combination gives better results for website vs social media on your business.
Then which one should be built first? Actually, there is no standard rule about this matter. It’s flexible. However, building a website and then followed by social media accounts would be great. Why? Because, you can bring those two into the digital space. So, the old debate about who’s better website vs social media should be done.
A website can be likened to a vehicle and social media to its machine. Without machines, a vehicle can’t work. Without a vehicle, the machine is nothing. When the vehicle and the machine are put together, they can both function properly. So do both. Have a website and a social media account.
If Not Now, When?
The decision to invest in your website and connecting all your marketing strategy is all yours. You can either do it yourself using website builders or hire a professional web designer to build it for you.
When in doubt, do it. Contact us to get strategies and build strategy on website development or social media advertising. We, Pixie Digital Marketing Agency has 8+ Years of Experience in the field. We are sure we will be able to provide digitial marketing your business needs. Still not sure is digital marketing important? Check out our other articles to learn more. Stay tuned!