Website vs. Social Media
“Run a few social media campaigns alongside your website, but never give up the latter.”
Being proponents of inbound marketing (i.e., the art & science of attracting targeted traffic & warm leads to a website, primarily via organic means), we’re naturally partial to, well, websites. But our position is warranted when factoring in the cost of doing business with long-term rewards (including the often-overlooked equity built over time in the form of digital real estate value). Let us explain.
Undeniable Facts
A few elements remain true when comparing website versus social media marketing models. They are:
With websites, the publisher owns the figurative platform (i.e., the website itself); all intellectual property is theirs, and full control over the content is administered accordingly.
Social media/networking profile traffic, while typically higher in numbers in the short-term, is usually disjointed (and not industry-specific and/or making up an ideal potential customer base).
Visitors are less distracted when on an independent website simply because there is a lower number of (if not zero) ads and a complete lack of competing profiles, not to mention disruptive content (also by other profiles/websites, whether personal or business-related).
With websites, since visitors are likely to have found them by conducting relevant searches online, they’re considerably more open to buying upon arrival. By contrast, social media traffic is usually community-driven in that the user is simply piggybacking off of a relative popularity train… with no real interest in the products and/or services ultimately promoted by the publisher.
Misconceptions aside, websites are arguably easier to manage and more predictable in their structure (almost by nature, technology aside), even as the platform powering them evolves with time.
Full branding control is handed off through websites; social media, on the other hand, has very limited brand awareness/identity potential.
Your intellectual property (i.e., Web content) builds equity as you continue to develop quality, original articles, podcasts, videos, etc. This, in turn, increases the value of the domain name(s) hosting the content… allowing you to sell either or in the future. You can’t sell a social media platform.
Traffic and the Bottom Line
As mentioned, traffic (in general and in the short term) is higher among social media influencers and companies/organizations promoting their products within major social networks. The quality of that traffic, however, offers relatively low levels of profitability in comparison with traffic directed toward and/or generated by a professionally developed/presented website. So much so that the difference in virtually every niche & industry is, for lack of a better word, staggering.
To reference a specific example, video-sharing platforms will often require hundreds (if not thousands) more views to convert the same amount of income through a website hosting similar video content. In contrast, there exist several individuals/brands with multiple millions of followers to their social media accounts, but experience difficulty in converting (sometimes a single customer); of course, it should be noted that, in this case, their goods (if any) are likely to be less than desirable (no pun intended)… otherwise, their conversion rates would naturally be higher.
But where all else is equal, once again, especially in its presentation, the market will decide whether to go with website purchases over those guided/driven by social media.
Are Websites Still Viable?
Websites take planning — plenty of planning. And there is a technical implementation curve, even for seasoned webmasters & digital marketing agencies, particularly in times when a new editor, website builder, CMS, DXP, or programming language is necessary. But for the most part, it’s not difficult for any company or person to establish a site (with its associated domain name and hosting plan or VPS), whether it be brochureware, a blog, an online store/shop, a gated membership initiative, or something more complex.
Eventually, we believe that websites may be essential for any business or non-profit… because the cost of maintaining a strong social media presence, with its increased censorship (and other restrictions) and transference of intellectual property, may be too high to sustain. Run a few social media campaigns alongside your website, but never give up the latter.