These days, if you don’t have your business online, you are definitely leaving a lot of money on the table. This is because everyone is online.
We find information about products, check reviews, shop, and connect with people online. Therefore, it makes sense to do your business, not just offline, but online as well.
However, I’ve come to realize that most businesses allow their brands to rest solely on the shoulders of social media platforms. It’s not to say that It’s wrong to have your brand on social media. Entrusting your business onto Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any other social platform entirely would definitely harm your business.
Here’s why.
With social media, you don’t have absolute control over how things are operated. Secondly, monitoring customer actions accurately would be very difficult, if not impossible. Furthermore, with social media, you won’t be able to follow up on your customers and hence can’t build customer rapport.
Another problem with these social platforms is that with time, the terms and conditions update would no longer favor your business, and therefore they’ll have to close down your business. Worse yet, we don’t know when these social platforms would vanish from the system.
In short, it’s not wrong to use social media to market your business, but setting up your brand on social media alone would be a very bad idea for your business.
What’s the best solution to make your business thrive online?
Why you need a website
You guessed right. You need a self-hosted website, with your brand as the domain. There are so many benefits when it comes to owning your own space on the internet.
Think of it as having your own real estate online. You don’t have to be worried about someone’s terms and conditions. You can do whatever you want with your website; anything I prefer to call “money-making activities”.
Apart from doing whatever you want with and on your website, here are the other benefits of having a website that you control.
- Having a website serves as the home base for all your online activities. It’s like the headquarters of your business. That’s where you direct all your prospects to on the internet.
- It allows you to collect the email addresses of your site visitors, thereby facilitating communication between you and your customers.
- Your website serves as a hub where you could answer questions that your customers may have regarding your business and thereby build trust over time.
- Having your own hosted website helps you control what people see when they google you or your business. It makes it easier to make your business found in case someone searches for it.
- With time, when you think you no longer need your website, you could sell it off at a really good price, depending on the age and its value.
Now that you’ve seen why the website is necessary, how then, could you have your own?
Where to get a website
You have two options; either you hire a web developer or you do it yourself, as I did.
If you choose to create your own website, Wpbeginner is a great resource to give you all the tutorials and tools you need to start with your website. I used their step by step procedure to get my site up and running within one weekend.
If you choose to hire a web developer, then there are a bunch of guys on Upwork who are willing to help you out. Find one which suits your budget and then you’re good to go.
Take away
Technology has made things a lot easier to grow your business online. It’s up to you to make good use of these advancements. Although everyone is on social media these days, it’s not a good idea to let your business rest solely on a platform that you don’t control. Instead, have your own website, and then drive traffic to your business using social media.
After you successfully create your website, you would need to build rapport with your customers and earn their trust. You could achieve this by having a blog on your site, where you’d provide useful and entertaining content for you customers. You would also need to update your customers about your promotions and offers, and that could be achieved through sending them emails.
To execute these tasks, you need a copywriter to help you with that.
In case you want a copywriter to help you with your email and blog posts, feel free to send a message to abadede98@gmail.com. I’d love to take a look at your work.
Do you have a business you ran on the internet? Do you agree with the points outlined above? Let’s hear your comments.
