Facebook has about 2.7 billion active users every month. Let that sink in for a minute. Thatโs close to 35 percent of all humanity on Earthย visiting the same website every month. This sheer number alone has web marketers salivating.
To have that many eyes available for your product or service is incredibly seductive. Some companies have gone so far as to open their stores directly on Facebook, using apps designed to allow product purchases without leaving the social site. It seems like a natural extension of the social paradigm: open a store, let Facebookโs social search and integrated advertising platform do your marketing for you, and rake in the profits.
In light of this emerging paradigm, business owners may wonder why they should spend so much time and money building a website and then clawing their way up the search engine ladder. The Internet seems like a cold and forbidding place, especially for a new business trying to break into the market. On the other hand, all your friends and colleagues are already on social media. Why not just skip the Internet completely and set up shop where all the people are?
Well, for one thing, the Internet itself has over 4.9 billion users globally. (source: Internet Statistics 2021) Of course those users are just โout there,โ not collected in one convenient place like Facebook. On the other hand, if half of all your potential customers fall outside the Facebook community, you might well be losing more business than you can afford. Facebook users can still browse to a regular website if they want to, but due to recent changes to Facebookโs algorithm, your brand posts may have limited reach to your intended audience.
But thereโs another, more powerful reason why you shouldnโt drop everything and rush to Facebook: Facebook stores typically undersell regular websites by a fair margin. In April 2011, for instance, GameStop opened a Facebook store to great fanfare. Six months later, they quietly closed it, citing that the return was not worth their continued investment.
Meanwhile, online retailers like Amazon continue to rack up record profits while having a tiny fraction of Facebookโs active user base. This is because Amazon advertises themselves as a store, not a casual gathering place. Having an enormous number of potential customers is not enough to translate into good business numbers. You also have to take human nature into account. To wit: People on social media are there to be social, not spend money.
Having said all that, itโs still good business sense to maintain a presence on social media. In fact, itโs generally expected that any medium-sized company will have a business page. But rather than using Facebook as a sales platform, we recommend that companies use them as part of their branding and public relations strategy. The return may not be immediate, but having an informative and responsive page goes a long way to making customers gain a personal connection with the business, making them feel comfortable and engaged. From there, you can simply leave the door open to your separate, more commerce-driven website and let your customers come to you.
When the time comes toย open a new commerce-driven website, spruce up your old one, or justย put together some strategiesย to gain more customers, we at Matcha Design are ready to assist.ย Contact usย and let us put our expertise to work for you.
