I get this question a lot, usually from somebody who has been in business fifteen years and has never had a website. “I have a Facebook page and I stay busy. Do I really need a site?” It is a fair question, and the honest answer is that it depends on where you want your next customers to come from.
Here is the way I think about it. A Facebook page works on people who already have your name. A website works on people who do not.
Two different customers
Picture two people who need what you do this week.
The first one got your name from a neighbor at a birthday party. She has your name written on the back of a receipt. She looks you up, sees your page, sees a couple of jobs and a phone number, and calls. Your Facebook page did that job fine.
The second one does not know you exist. Her water heater is leaking and she is standing in a wet hallway typing what she needs into her phone. She is never going to find your page, because that is not where she is looking. She is going to call one of the three businesses that come up in front of her. If you are not one of them, you never even knew she was shopping.
Most owners around Lancaster have the first kind of customer covered and the second kind completely uncovered. That second group is not small. It is everybody who moved here in the last few years and does not have a neighbor to ask yet.
What people look for before they call a stranger
When somebody has no personal connection to you, they are trying to answer a few questions fast, and they will pick whoever answers them first.
- Do you do the exact thing I need. Not “we do it all.” The specific job, in the words they would use.
- Do you come to my town. They want to see their own town in writing. Indian Land, Fort Mill, Kershaw, Camden. Not “the greater area.”
- Have other people around here used you. Real reviews from real places nearby.
- What happens if I call. Do you come look first, is there a charge to come out, how soon can you get there.
- Are you a real, stable business. Licensed, insured, been here a while, a person’s name attached to it.
A Facebook page can hold some of that, buried in posts. It is not built to lay it out for a stranger in ten seconds, and it is not what shows up when somebody searches for the work you do.
You are renting the page, and you own the site
The other thing worth knowing is that your page is not really yours. I have watched a business owner lose access to a page because the guy who set it up years ago left and nobody knew the login. I have seen pages get locked for reasons nobody could explain, and the only way to talk to anybody about it was a form on a screen.
Every customer, every review, and every photo of your work sat on the other side of that door. That is a bad week you do not want to have. Your own site cannot be taken away from you by a rule change or a lost password nobody wrote down.
When a page really is enough
I am not going to tell you every business needs a site. If you are booked out three months on word of mouth, you are not taking new work, and you plan to keep it that way until you retire, a well kept page and a good Google listing will carry you. That is a real answer and I have given it to people.
But if any of these is true, the page is holding you back:
- You want work in towns where nobody knows your name yet.
- You want bigger jobs, and the people awarding those jobs look you up before they call.
- You are competing against companies from Charlotte who show up above you.
- You get calls for work you do not want and few for the work you do.
- You are the second or third person somebody calls, and you want to be the first.
They are not a choice, they are a pair
The best setup I see is simple. The site is where a stranger finds you and decides you are the one to call. The page is where somebody who already heard your name confirms you are real and still working. Same name, same phone number, same towns listed, same kind of work shown in both places.
When those two match, the whole thing gets easier. A neighbor recommends you, the person checks two places, sees the same business twice, and calls. When they do not match, that person hesitates, and hesitation is how you lose a job you already earned by being good enough to get recommended.
Start with what you actually have
Before you spend a dollar, find out what a stranger sees right now. Search for the work you do plus your town on your phone, without your name in it, and see whether you turn up anywhere. Then look yourself up by name and see what a person finds. That is the real picture, and it usually surprises people.
If you would rather have somebody else do that looking, I will do it free. I will write up what a customer sees when they search for what you do and when they search for you by name, tell you plainly where you stand, and include your options in the report so you can decide what is worth doing. No obligation. If you are in good shape already, I will tell you that and you can get back to work.