Will Your Business Benefit More from Building a ‘Website’ or setting up a ‘Facebook Page’?

Website OR Facebook Page for a Small Business?

We have had a lot of people ask us if we think that micro and small businesses should invest in a website or Facebook, so I thought I would put forward my opinions in this post.

A lot of the old-school guru’s will say that you need a flash website but some of the new-age marketers will say a business needs both! But that’s all well and good for a medium or large business that has a marketing budget and can afford the time and money to create and maintain both a website and a Facebook business Page. However, most owners of micro and small businesses don’t have the money to invest in both. So what should they do?

When you have limited funds and limited time, you really need to be focused with your marketing; you can’t afford a ‘scatter-gun’ approach. In this post I will put forward my observations and experience from years of wasting both time and money focusing on the wrong market… (Learn from my mistakes).

Firstly, you really need to know your ideal customer: not just any customer, but the one you would bend over backwards for, the one that will help your business succeed, not just provide you with a J.O.B. You need to know where on the internet your ideal customer hangs out and you need to make yourself known to your ideal customer, earn their respect and then they will buy your stuff: Engage, Interact and Follow-up.

Real Estate analogy: Location, Location, Location.
Say you were looking to setup a brand new bricks and mortar business in a local town and you had limited funds to invest, where would you gain the most benefit regarding exposure to customers.

You could choose a nice shop front in an alley in a quiet suburb, but you will have to spend a lot of money and effort in advertising to encourage your prospects to come to you. Remember, they don’t know you so why would they trust you enough to drive have way across town to buy your stuff? This is what it is like having a website for your business. Websites are perfect once you have the customer in the door, you can sell them stuff over and over again, but you have to spend a lot of those limited funds to try and catch your potential customer’s attention; primarily by getting on the top of the search engines.

OR

You could choose to set up a small stall in a very busy shopping Centre in the heart of town. Even though you have limited resources, you will have lots of potential customers walking past your stall and heaps of opportunities to show off your stuff. Now, you won’t sell to everyone, but if you provide a great experience for the potential customer, they WILL tell their friends, who WILL tell their friends. Does this sound familiar… yes, it’s Facebook. Setting up a Facebook Page is inexpensive, but is invaluable if, and only if, you provide a “great experience” for your potential customers (in Facebook these are called leads or ‘fans’).

Facebook provides a level playing field for all businesses no matter what size they are. On Facebook you CAN compete with any of the top 100 businesses in your niche and still succeed. It will all boil do to “respect” and “word-of-mouth“.

Engage, Interact and Follow-up

• To ENGAGE the attention of the 500+ million Facebook community you will need to be providing great content with a high preserved value: a reason for potential customers to ‘hang-around’ and see what you have to offer (in Facebook this is when they will “LIKE” your business page).
• It will be the way you INTERACT with your Facebook fans that will create your business’ “word-of-mouth” value. If you give them the right experience, your fans will like and trust you and tell their friends about you. (in Facebook this is when you ‘fans’ will share your comments to their friends, expanding your social networking reach).
• Once you have gained the trust and respect of your fans, it will be easy to ‘sell’, infact you won’t have to ‘sell’; they will be coming to you because they like and trust you.

Facebook First then Website for Small Business

Websites are a necessity for business and there are a number of important reasons why your business SHOULD have a website, but when starting out with limited funds, getting customers for your product should be more important that a flashy expensive website. So my suggestion is get your micro business on Facebook, Engage, Interact, Followup, then once you have a steady cashflow from existing clientele, you can afford to spend that $5,000 on a flash new website. But remember, just because you build it, doesn’t mean they will come. You will still need to spend time in the internet community ENGAGING, INTERACTING and FOLLOWING UP whether that be on Facebook or other social networking site. A truely successful online marketing program will incorporate a range of media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube, a Website and even offline media. The new marketing paradigm is a blend of media, but Facebook is a great place to start and it’s easy.

If you need assistance with your Facebook Business Page, give us a call and we can give you a customised Social Media Marketing Proposal.

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