On Monday, October 4, 2021, a number of social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp were hit by an outage that lasted almost seven hours. Though this is not the first and surely not the last outage, many people were stressed, worried, and wondering when would the networks get back to normal. Most of them were small business owners because they grow their brand exclusively on social media. This was a good reminder for them to avoid relying on mass platforms and to grow their brands in other ways.
Marketing strategy is not the same as social media strategy
Most small business owners promote their business on Instagram (more than on Facebook). In other words, all products, services, knowledge, skills, everything that makes the company stand out from others, the owner places on one platform that is out of his/her control.
If the owner starts walking this path, the first thing to notice is that the algorithm changes very often. The social media users, including the business owners, of course, cannot control these changes and yet they have to accept them and adapt. On the other hand, social media offer many benefits, such as communication with customers, the possibility to check the idea fast, getting feedbacks, growing brand, and brand awareness. But, what will happen if social media disappear?
The question is not about a few hours outage, it is more about losing profiles with a few hundred thousand followers due to the fact their account was not protected enough.
For all these reasons, it is not smart to use social media as the only strategy. They should be one of the communication channels with customers, but there are many others where you can get new customers, become recognizable, and build a strong and consistent brand.
Invest time, money, and ideas into the website
Now that we understood the cons of using only one communication channel (social media) it is time to offer a solution for much safer running the business and building one of the 5 key elements for building a brand identity. Of course, it’s about building a website, that should represent one of the platforms you’re fully in charge of.
Why a website is the best investment? There are numerous reasons you should invest your time, money, and ideas, above all, in building a website. Though you hired an agency or an individual to work on developing your site, the time invested in building a website represents investing in the future of your company and your brand, not just the time you spent on creating a brief, etc. If you’ve been wondering about the cost of website development, you can find the answer on our blog page.
These are the most important reasons to have a website.
- Website is a great place to present and position yourself within your niche – be one of the first to build a modern and functional site. Your customers will be grateful if they get a user-friendly and easy-to-navigate site. If you provide certain services, your blog page could be a fabulous source of info for your colleagues. SEO is of key importance so you should take care of site optimization.
- Your customers expect you should have a website – most customers search on mobile devices. Their searches usually start on Google, so it is crucial to position well and create a responsive version of your site.
- You are the exclusive owner of your website and its content – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn are important digital channels but don’t be misled, you are not the real owners of your profiles on those networks; because you cannot control any of these networks. So, invest your time, creativity, and money in the only platform on the internet you’re fully in charge of – your personal website.
Life (customers and clients) exists outside social media as well
Is it possible to sell outside social media? Especially Instagram? It is hard to believe, as you’ve been probably told Instagram is the fastest and easiest way to sell (partially this is true), but not the only one. Yes, it is possible to sell products and services on other channels too. One of many communication channels is email marketing for example.
Previously we have mentioned website as a basis, now we’re adding email marketing and completing our story with social media communication; probably only now you can understand why we insisted on a multi-approach.
Why is email marketing so valuable? If you connect email marketing with the website and its content, it can produce great sales. For this reason, website content should be useful to its readers (for instance, if your niche is selling consulting services). Or if you have a webshop, it should be done well with filters and categories.
If you add special promotions to all the mentioned above, where customers get discount codes in newsletters, email marketing gets a brand new purpose, and a small business owner can understand its purpose and effectiveness.
Titan Design creates marketing strategies tailored according to your needs and requirements
We sincerely hope we managed to convince you it is important to invest in other communication channels with potential customers. We also hope you can understand the role the website could have for your business, as the only base you can completely rely on. In case you need any additional advice, contact us, and we’ll do our best to shape the best combination of communication channels for your target audience.
