Monday Morning Marketing Moment #3

Welcome to our “Monday Morning Marketing Moment”. This is the third in a series of short blog posts that center around digital marketing.

Today we will be talking about Facebook Business Pages, or, more specifically, why they can’t take the place of a website.

I have seen this time and time again – businesses using Facebook as their main online marketing tool.

Is Facebook important as part of a company’s overall marketing strategy? You betcha! Should it take the place of a website? Not a chance!

And here’s why.

1. Facebook owns Facebook

Facebook, as I mentioned, should definitely be in included in your arsenal of digital marketing tools. Posting on a regular basis, interacting with your followers and responding to comments are all very important.

But, at the end of the day, you have absolutely no say over what Facebook does with all this content. In fact, Facebook has the right to use your content in any it sees fit. Facebook, in effect, owns any content you post on Facebook.

Now, this, in itself, isn’t really a concern as far as marketing goes. It does, however, lead us to our next point.

2. Organic reach is down

As business owners, organic reach (that is, the amount of people our content gets shown to for free) is very important. Facebook, however, is making it increasing hard for business owners to reach their followers.

For example, let’s say you have 500 people that “like” your business page. When you publish a post, one would think that all 500 people would see the post. Wrong. Facebook (via their algorithm) picks and chooses the people who will see your post. It might show it to 100 people, or it might show it to 10.

And you, as a business, have no control over this.

3. Facebook will always look like Facebook

Facebook allows us to customize our cover photo and profile picture. It also allows us to customize our Calls To Action (to a point) and a few other things. But no matter how you dress it up, Facebook will always look like Facebook.

Your website, on the other hand, can really show off the personality of your company, and, of course, offer much more functionality than a Facebook page can.

4. People expect you to have a website

Let’s forget for a moment about the limits of Facebook. If you have a business, people expect you to have a website. Having a Facebook page is fine. In fact, it is quite important. But potential clients will still want to check out your website before doing business with you.

Having a Facebook page, but not a website, can lead people to question the credibility of your business. While Facebook is a great avenue for posting updates, it cannot compete with a website that describes your business and gives people a more in-depth view of the products or services that you offer.

5. Getting lost in the crowd

Facebook is a busy place. With almost 5,000,0000,000 pieces of content shared daily on Facebook, there is a lot of competition. And let’s not forget that there are over 16,000,000 local business pages on Facebook.

With all that happening, it can be hard to stand out, or even be seen. On the other hand, when someone lands on your website, you have their (somewhat) undivided, attention. You can lead them through your sales funnel, implement specific calls to action, and, more importantly, you are adding credibility to your business.

Wrapping Up

Don’t get me wrong. If you own a business, you absolutely should have a Facebook presence.

The point of this article is not to discourage you from using Facebook as a marketing tool. Just don’t confuse Facebook with a well designed website.

[clickToTweet tweet=”Use your Facebook page to create drive traffic to your website.” quote=”Use your Facebook page to create interest in your products and services, and to keep your business in front of your customers. Just be sure you are using it to drive traffic to your website.” theme=”style6″]

What do you think about this? Let me know in the comments.