“You don’t need a website to run your business.”
“You don’t need a website to be a business owner.”
“You don’t need a website to get clients into your business.”
No, I’ve not completely lost my mind.
This is something I saw someone posting about in a Facebook group – a BUSINESS Facebook group – a couple of weeks ago. They were talking about how you don’t need a website for your business, because they were advocating what they do, which was about funnels or lead management or some sh*t, and saying how successful their business was, and how the website wasn’t doing anything for them, so it just wasn’t necessary at all.
According to them, a website is just something that you send to people to say, “have a look at my website! See what I do!”
Therefore, according to them, it was a waste of money.
A lot of people starting commenting on this, saying, “yeah you’re right – you don’t need a website! I get all my business through social media”, or, “all my business comes through referrals from networking!”
Quite frankly, I was pleased to see this – because, from the perspective of running a digital marketing company, it makes our job a lot easier.
So, go ahead, delete your website – that just means less competition for our clients.
If you want your ideal target customers to be able to find you, and they’ve never heard of you before, you might want to reconsider your choice of not having a website.
A website allows your ideal clients to find you when they’re searching for the solution to the problems that they have – the problems that you’re going to solve for them. If you’re not producing content about the problems that you solve, then they’re not going to find you – they’re going to find your competitor. And if you’re quite happy for your ideal target clients and customers (who have never heard of you) to find your competitors instead, then b*llocks to it – delete your website. If you’re not there to be found, then that’s exactly what’s going to happen.
Someone else might say, “it’s alright, I get all my clients from Facebook, I don’t need a website”, or, “I get all my clients from LinkedIn or TikTok” – and that’s brilliant, good for you! But if your business is reliant on your Facebook page, you don’t own that – Mark Zuckerberg does. He can change everything about the way Facebook works with the snap of a finger. What happens if your access gets taken away?
If all your leads come from your LinkedIn profile – you don’t own that either. Microsoft does. And we all know how reliable they are.
The only thing that you own, that is yours, that you have control over, is your website.
So, if you rely on any social media platform for all of your business, tough sh*t if it ever goes down the drain – when you get blocked, or when the algorithm changes, and you no longer get any more leads into your business, because you should have had a website for it.
You could be using paid advertising, but do you want to keep using paid ads on Facebook? Do you want to keep using paid ads on Google, or LinkedIn? Because I tell you something – that’s really bloody expensive, no matter how good you are at it.
We had an inquiry into our business recently for someone who wanted tailored newsfeeds, because they they were looking for newsfeeds for their gaming website, which we know a lot about ( I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, but I used to be the web designer for Game – not that I like to brag or anything). Anyway, they found us through a piece of content that was written on our website back in 2010 – 2010! I’m recording this in January 2024, a whole 14 years after that piece of content was written. They found it on Google, because they were looking for exactly what we were talking about in that post.
This is the kind of inquiry you can get through a website, which you will not get through Facebook, which you will not get through Twitter, and you will not get through LinkedIn. So, go ahead, delete your website – get rid of it, it’s not important. You don’t need it to run your business, but you DO need it to run a successful business that is scalable. Word of mouth marketing from your clients is a great way to get business, don’t get me wrong – if your clients are recommending you to other people, then that’s brilliant, and you must be doing a fantastic job.
But that only allows you to grow so fast. That only allows you to grow so quickly.
If you’ve got people looking for what you do, and they are coming directly to you and you’ve never met them before, THAT is scalable, and that can only be done through a website.
Thank you very much for listening. I hope you found that useful, and I’ll catch you on the next podcast.
About your host:
Darren has worked within digital marketing since the last century, and was the first in-house web designer for video games retailer GAME in the UK, known as Electronics Boutique in the States. After co-founding his own agency, Engage Web, in 2009, Darren has worked with clients around the world, including Australia, Canada and the USA.
iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/engaging-marketeer/id1612454837
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenjamieson/
Engaging Marketeer: https://engagingmarketeer.com
Engage Web: https://www.engageweb.co.uk