How many people think that having a website is one of the most important facets of online marketing? I am asking because I have spoken to business owners who think a facebook page is a website. https://idesignyours.com PS. If Mark Zuckerberg pulls the plug on FB for Metaverse- everyone on there is cooked! Maybe have to start all over building an audience.
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This question has been asked ever since FB first came on the scene and some gurus pretty soon claimed that this would make websites obsolete.
The reality: Far from it. Yes, a FB presence is required by now, simply because a business has to be present wherever potential customers are looking for it and that includes FB. What needs to be considered, however, is on FB you are "renting" your presence, your website is "owning" your presence. A key difference.
Now, that's just the basics. A successful online presence requires more in order of priority:
1 - a great reputation
2 - a website that converts, i.e. a funnel type brand site
3 - qualified traffic to that site and the FB biz page
4 - re-targeting those visitors, as 96% of site visitors never identify themselves or don't finish a transaction
5- a CRM or other system to capture visitor data, especially email addresses to build your own mailing list of customers to sell to again and again. Why? because selling to existing customers is far less expensive than acquiring new ones.
A lengthy answer, but hopefully of interest as there is no simple yes or no answer about websites.
Agree with all comments. If money is an obstacle, I suggest starting with a landing page.
a website is foundational - among other important things,, as Joe indicated. It's your own asset - you that you can sell with your business in the future if wanted- whereas, 3rd party branded assets are not guaranteed to always be around.
With your own website, you can build other OWNED assets:
* your own traffic (not sharing with other 3rd party company) for
* your own leads & email list you can message over & over
* your own pixel list - that you can remarket to over & over as they visit other websites
I seriously doubt if Zuckerberg will "pull the plug" on FB. There is too much invested in the FB platform. Meta will become the next marketing standard, which will require a new or different type of marketing technique which will, in turn, require many businesses to adapt to. That expense will be hard for many businesses to swallow. (Watch Nike, Under Armour and others to come).
That said, marketing on any social platform should be used to point back to a business' website, rather than have the business rely on an ever-changing, scroll-intensive platform such as Facebook.
Any business that uses FB as it's "website" should understand that the business does not control the algorithms, and therefore the exposure to new customers and new sales. (Except when they pay $$$)
Of course having a website is of the utmost importance. F-book should be just one way of getting people to visit your actual website and not a place where you would send people for more info.
In the words of Joe Pulizzi, "Don't build on rented land." Your website is one of the few owned digital properties that you control completely.
100% agree, you've got to own your virtual real estate because at any moment your pages on FB or anywhere else can go down, you can get booted, or even just screened and people won't see your posts. You're in control of what happens on your website and you cannot be censored. I'm not opposed to having these pages, but just not depending on them as your primary source. Kind of like my thoughts on Life Insurance - its great having some from your employer, but you've got to buy your own policy in case something goes awry with your employer.
And, with FB's reputation sinking deeper in the tank, one may want to think twice about association it's brand with FB. But, understand some kinds of businesses may be heavily reliant on this platform, e.g. Facebook's Marketplace.
Nearly 60% of consumers consider businesses without websites as not trustworthy…so it’s truly the foundation of all your marketing. As others have said, at least have a simple site or landing page for the online presence.
By all means utilize Facebook whiles it's around to bring traffic to your own asset - there are not many other platforms with such good targeting of audiences for ad traffic - but it certainly should not be the only core relied-upon branded asset you have - but secondary.