Social media is a force that is replacing company websites. According to experts, businesses are now shifting resources away from their standalone websites and putting them toward their brand’s social media presence.
“In the last two years, we’ve seen a tremendous shift in how much time and money our clients are putting into developing their social media presence versus their websites,” said Michael Clark, co-founder, and Principal at Beeby Clark+Meyler (BCM).
Founded by Tom Beeby, Michael Clark, and Stuart Meyler, BCM is an integrated performance marketing agency that has made a name for itself in the travel & tourism, consumer packaged goods (CPG), education, B2B, and financial services industries. The boutique agency also has a unique ability when it comes to helping large enterprises get the most out of their social commerce strategies.
Clark says four primary factors are driving the shift from websites to social media platforms:
- The way people discover and consume content has shifted.
- The platforms have become more sophisticated in their offerings.
- Promoting a website has become significantly more complex and expensive.
- Brand engagement is unmatched on social media.
“A decade ago, most people discovered new brands and products through word of mouth or traditional advertising like TV, radio, print, search engines, and even banner ads directing consumers to websites,” said Clark. “Today, people are more likely to discover new brands through social media.”
This is because social media platforms have become much better at algorithmically personalizing content for each user. This means that people are much more likely to see a range of brands they don’t already know.
If you are working on brand awareness or want to reach new purchasers, social media is the place to be in the modern internet age. A well-developed presence on the platforms can be worth its weight in gold, and the quality of audience engagement can make all the difference for a business.
To explore just how vital social media can be to modern brands, we are going to break down the four factors outlined by Clark in a bit more detail:
1. The way people discover and consume content has shifted
In the recent internet past, people discovered new brands through search engines and banner ads, which click through to branded websites. Today, people are increasingly likely to locate new companies on social media without clicking on ads, but by scrolling through their feeds. The amount of data gathered through social media leads to some incredible methods for marketing firms to target individuals they believe would be interested in a product.
“Using the behavioral data about audiences that social media companies have access to, it can be highly efficient for a brand to target users in specific demographics or attribute-specific groups or to display content to their already loyal audience to build a brand’s reputation or enhance sales,” said Clark.
“The breadth of content delivery tools available to advertisers has been increasing. And, with most social media apps designed to keep users scrolling or to come back to the app frequently, these platforms have an advantage over brand websites that are not necessarily in the flow of day-to-day media consumption.”
The same types of incentivized or sticky use can often take years to perfect on a traditional website, and it may require a total rebuild to make some of the changes that social media platforms enable with a few clicks. Social media has instantly made it easy for a worldwide brand or a small business to connect to the audience they want to interact with.
2. Social media platforms have become more sophisticated in their offerings
The content and ad delivery features of each platform have developed and changed a lot over the years. Throughout the early days of social media with Myspace and Facebook, users would mostly post updates about their day or what they were up to.
Twitter started as a platform where people would post short updates about what they were doing. These platforms have now developed into something much more.
“The addition of live video, Stories, and even e-commerce features on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat has meant that brands can now sell products directly to consumers without ever having to visit the brand website,” said Clark. “Marketers now have the ability to deliver fairly rich on-the-spot shopping, subscription, or buying experiences right to specific audiences by demographic, interest, or even location. The merchandising and purchasing experience that social media platforms now offer is in many ways a superior experience than most branded websites.”
Beyond promotion and selling, brands also connect with users on social media to include them in the product development process, get feedback, and show their appreciation. From a B2B perspective, platforms like LinkedIn have sophisticated features to promote and sell business products directly through a business profile, offering CRM-like features to improve the quality of prospect engagement and more efficiently move prospects through the research and buying cycle.
3. Promoting a website has become significantly more complex and expensive
While developing websites has become less expensive given the emergence of templated platforms such as Shopify and Squarespace, website promotion has become more expensive. Paid search is highly competitive with rising costs. Organic search is also highly competitive, and organic search results are increasingly being crowded out by paid listings as search engines look for ways to maximize monetization. Build it and they will come is no longer the game.
With such competition, it can be challenging for the average business to stand out from the crowd. Continually investing in website content that is on-trend and captures users’ (and search engine) attention can cost a significant amount of money. It is often easier to devote more funding to a social media platform where the brand can amortize the costs of content creation across a much larger audience. Bring the content to the consumer where they are, rather than trying to interrupt their social media flow and redirect attention to a website.
4. Brand engagement is unmatched on social media
The level of customer engagement you can achieve on social media is currently unrivaled by any other platform or method.
“You can test offers and positioning directly with multiple audiences and get feedback in near real-time,” added Clark. “This level of engagement is something that can take months to achieve on a website due to click-through and conversion rates that are sub 2% with many ad formats that direct consumers to websites.”
Social media has made it possible for brands to connect with their audiences in a way that was never before possible, and this is one of the main reasons why it is quickly becoming the preferred method for businesses to reach their target audiences. Many of today’s leading social platforms have high audience composition for most consumer segments that advertisers seek to influence. The old interrupt and redirect method of digital engagement has become highly inefficient and expensive.
As you can see, there are many great reasons why social media is quickly replacing company websites. If you are looking to connect with your target audience in a more effective way, then distributing your content, shopping, and buying experience to social media is a strategy worth pursuing. And according to Clark, there are some simple steps businesses can take to shift more of their marketing budgets to social media. Here’s what he recommends:
- Look at your target audience and see where they spend most of their social media time.
- Evaluate your current website conversion rates and test social media lead generation or shopping ads to see how the social performs against your website.
- Consider a professional audit of your social media platforms to see how they can be improved.
- Develop an organized content strategy to keep your social profiles active. This includes regular updates, post frequency, reposting user-generated content, and more.
- Don’t try to do everything at once! Start with one or two social platforms that make the most sense for your business and build from there.
Following these steps, you may be able to shift some budget from your website to your social media platforms without sacrificing your brand identity. Making your social platforms a priority will lead to better engagement with your target audience and higher conversion to leads and sales.
