Can a Facebook page replace a website?

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Why A Facebook Page Doesn't Replace a Website

Setting up a Facebook page is a great way to have some kind of Internet presence for free. You can also use social media to actively engage followers; so social media should not be ignored.

But, it’s a common misconception that a Facebook page is enough of a web presence. The truth is that you can’t get by with just a Facebook page. Having a company website is still a vital and integral part of your overall marketing plan – here’s why.

1. Limitations: Facebook sets all kinds of limits when it comes to business pages. You can’t set up PDF documents, your videos have to be of a certain length, and you have to abide by the company’s restrictions when it comes to things like contests. Plus, Facebook sometimes shuts down pages for no really good reason, and it takes a few days to convince the company that your page is harmless.

2. Notoriously changing: Facebook changes all the time. The way that your page looks today might not be the way that it looks tomorrow.

3. Ownership: who owns your Facebook page? Not you! Facebook has full and direct ownership over your page and everything that you put on it. If Facebook goes bust tomorrow, your page is gone. If Facebook decides to remove something from your page, your page is gone. See the problem here?

4. Content marketing: setting up a blog can attract new visitors to your website. You can’t set up a blog on Facebook. If you’re not into the idea of blogging, there’s a whole additional side to content marketing: eBooks, downloadable documents, press releases, etc. It’s really tough to run an entire content marketing campaign from Facebook – in fact, it’s impossible.

5. Newsflash: Facebook is really not that popular with certain demographics. If you want to catch young adults or teens, Facebook isn’t the way to do it, and even if Twitter is the way to do it, you still need to have that website!

6. SEO: sure, you can optimize a Facebook business page to some extent, but Google simply doesn’t put as much weight on Facebook business pages as it does on websites. It’s also really hard to find a company’s Facebook page using keywords. If you don’t have SEO, you’re really missing a huge opportunity to effectively market your business online.

The Top Argument

The one thing that I hear the most is, “yeah, but we get most of our traffic through Facebook, so we don’t need a website.” Well, you might get some of your traffic through Facebook, but you can’t tell who is visiting your site using Facebook “impressions.” Try setting up a website with proper SEO and use a solid content marketing plan to market your business. Then, use something like Google Analytics to really see what your traffic looks like.

How do you know that you are getting most of your business through Facebook? You don’t…and even if you get some business through Facebook, wouldn’t it be nice to get additional business by setting up a website in addition to that Facebook page, so you can capture those people that don’t have Facebook?

In the end, itdoesn’t pay to simply have a Facebook page and call it a day. You do need a website. Sure, websites can cost a lot when you add in the price of a designer and a marketing team, but it’s worth that price.

When it comes to business, Facebook can be exceptionally effective in several ways. Outside of offering insightful statistics, solid ROI on digital ads, a direct connection to customers, and a user base in the billions, it also has one particularly alluring feature: it’s free to set up.

Unfortunately, many businesses also confuse that effectiveness (cost or otherwise) with a reason to skip out on having an actual website. But let’s make one thing perfectly clear: A Facebook page is NOT an alternative to a website.

While useful, in the grand scheme of your marketing efforts, there is a hefty list of reasons why a Facebook page falls short of replacing an actual website.

It’s harder for search—and alienates non-users

To put it simply, Facebook does little to nothing when it comes to search – SEO or otherwise. Although your business’s Facebook page may appear in a search engine’s results, chances are slim to none that it will be the first on the list, let alone near the top.

And even if someone does find you in the search results, if they don’t have a Facebook account they will only have access to limited information on your page without signing up. This will leave those potential customers discouraged or turned off entirely.

Unfortunately, Facebook’s internal search feature is not optimized for much of anything, let alone your business. Even if you have a particularly unique name, Facebook uses its own algorithm for search that may not give you the priority you hope for—and there’s nothing you can do to change that.

It doesn’t look legit

Here’s a circular statement that speaks volumes: If anyone can make a Facebook page, anyone can make a Facebook page—even those who don’t have legitimate businesses. Although just about anyone can also make a website, not only is the bar higher, the cost greater, and the steps more complex, creating a website takes a significant level of consideration to be effective for the end user.

Taking the time, resources, and effort to put together an attractive, easy-to-use site with helpful information will tell visitors that they should take you as seriously as you take yourself and the experience you aim to give them.

It has significant design limitations

If you’ve seen one Facebook business page, you’ve seen them all. Why? Because there’s only one template!

Not only are you unable to stand out in terms of design, but you have to follow the same clunky field and navigation formats as everyone else. Sure, you can populate your page with all the team member bios, product information, and FAQs visitors would normally find on a website, but who really wants to spend time clicking around an uninteresting page looking for basic information that should be front and center?

It’s a place for conversation

Social media channels are a place to be social, so your Facebook wall is basically a forum for your business and your customers, fans, and prospects—and your detractors.

While your true intentions might be to provide top notch customer service to everyone, even those who are dissatisfied, there’s no accounting for how it looks when someone airs their grievances publicly—let alone any failed attempts to mitigate or handle them appropriately.

Even though there’s certainly something to be said about accepting and leveraging feedback to improve your products, services, and overall transparency, having negative comments, experiences, or reactions at the forefront of your business’s image or page isn’t likely to leave many with good impressions.

It’s already in decline

Despite some of the impressive numbers it’s posted in years past in regard to user engagement, ad impressions, and overall reach over the course of its lifetime, Facebook is already on the decline in nearly every category.

Since 2017, users of all demographics have been abandoning the platform at a significant rate—around 8% from 2017 to 2018 alone—for a variety of reasons, two of which are highly important to business owners: distrust and disinterest.

Due to the complicit roles Facebook has played in the political arena, the use of personal data, and beyond, users are increasingly more skeptical of the information that is provided on the platform as a whole, including any marketing efforts your business might undertake. That means despite the increased cost of ads, you’re getting less and less reach and return.

That distrust, combined with Facebook’s mediocre ability to leverage photo and video as well as its more focused contemporaries like SnapChat and Instagram, is also causing a growing disinterest in using the platform as the whole.

It’s a generally poor fit for B2B businesses

Most people spend a majority of their time on the platform as individuals, not representing businesses or seeking business opportunities (or solutions), so although 78% people have found some retail products through Facebook in recent years, for all the reasons we’ve listed above, it’s just not a common place to make business contacts.

Beyond there being a significant lack of B2B and networking opportunities – even if they did exist – Facebook’s clumsy interface and absence of CRM-like tools and outside integration makes curating and managing prospects nearly impossible.

Summary

Regardless of how you look at it, there are far too many glaring reasons why Facebook is not an appropriate substitute for an actual website.

Although it takes more time, effort, and resources to assemble a professional website, your business will yield significantly better results with every marketing effort you put forth. Sure, it may look like a lot more to manage, but with the right web development and marketing teams handling the legwork, you can worry about the more important facets of your work—like growing your business.

For any help on putting together the foundation for your brand or moving your marketing strategy forward, check out our comprehensive Brand Blueprint Checklist below!

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