Website vs Social Media – Which Is Better For Your Company?

One of the biggest debates that happens within a marketing team is whether to focus efforts on a company’s website or their social media channels.

What will generate more leads? Which channel offers the highest return on investment? What option will expedite the company’s growth?

Which is the clear winner? Website vs Social Media

When discussing website vs social media and how it pertains to your business strategy, one thing is clear: neither should be overlooked or neglected. 

There’s a lot to dive into when discussing how social media and websites generate viable leads for a business. When debating website vs social media, there are ten key things to consider:

Website’s are great for:

1. Helping your company get found online 
2. Promoting your services In the digital space 
3. Integrating into your sales funnel
4. Establishing credibility and social proof
5. Providing key data for your company 

While social media is great for:

1. Helping you connect with your audience 
2. Building your brand and reputation
3. Sharing your content
4. Reaching new audiences 
5. Encouraging interaction with your brand 

Website – Your Company’s Go-To Digital Space 

When debating the role of your website in lead generation efforts, keep these five important things in mind. 

1. A Website Helps Your Company Get Found Online 

When discussing website vs social media and its impact on lead generation, one of the most important concepts to remember is that a website is the way your company gets found online.

If you don’t have a website and properly maintain it, you’re missing out on critical opportunities to be found. 

Having a website means your business can utilize a search engine optimization (a.k.a SEO) strategy to grow its online presence. Statistics show that 53.3 percent of all website traffic comes from organic search, so if businesses double down on their SEO and organic search strategy, they can see incredible growth in their lead generation efforts. 

Strategies you can utilize for organic growth include: 

• Creating a blog that provides valuable information for your audience
• Targeting a local audience via local SEO strategies
• Gaining a national audience by utilizing national SEO strategies
• Choosing relevant keywords to rank for in search results

If you focus on building a website that’s clean, valuable, and can be found easily, you’ll get quality leads flooding your website before you know it. 

2. A Website Promotes Your Services In The Digital Space 

Another crucial aspect of a website is its ability to promote your services in the digital space. Fundera reports that 1.79 billion people shopped online last year, which means there were 1.79 billion people who could have found your website and looked at your services. 

The internet is an incredibly powerful tool for lead generation, which is why your services need to be outlined and promoted properly on your website. 

You can promote your services in multiple ways, but one of the most effective ways is to have a targeted landing page. 

A landing page is a webpage leads land on after they click on a link, whether it’s from a marketing campaign or an organic search. You can create landing pages that target specific locations (a.k.a. Geo-specific landing pages) as well, in case your business has several locations spread out across the country. 

Your landing pages should effectively describe what your services are and how they solve your audience’s problems. You can also spruce up your landing pages and further reward your website visitors by displaying special offers. 

For example, you could create a landing page that describes your services and encourages leads to provide their email addresses to receive a special offer, such as: 

• 15% off their first order 
• A free demo with a sales rep 
• A free PDF download when they book a sales call 

The more effective your landing page is, the more conversions you’ll see. The more conversions you see, the better your chances of gaining new customers.

3. A Website Is a Crucial Part Of Your Sales Funnel 

When debating website vs social media for your business, keep in mind that a website plays an important part in your sales funnel. Your website guides people from the top of the sales funnel (where they learn about your business and services) to the middle and end of your sales funnel, where they convert and become customers. 

A website aids in the efficiency of your sales funnel by doing the following: 

• Taking users from the awareness stage (top of the funnel) to the interest stage (middle of the funnel). 
• Offering free resources for your audience in exchange for email capture. 
• Creating a unique user experience that leaves a positive impression on leads. 

A website also serves as a great sales automation tool for your business. 

It’s a space where leads can learn about your services 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days per year. That makes it incredibly valuable to your sales process. 

You can automate parts of your sales process by: 

• Installing a 24/7 live chat feature. 
• Creating forms leads can use to schedule appointments and demos. 
• Having leads fill out questionnaires to identify their pain points and streamline the scoping process. 

Your company’s website is an all-day, everyday sales tool to capitalize on.  If you aren’t utilizing these strategies, you’re leaving valuable sales leads on the table. 

4. A Website Helps Your Company Establish Credibility 

Credibility means a lot to consumers in today’s digital-first landscape. 

If a business looks credible online, their website visitors are more likely to trust them and turn into customers. In fact, the 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report shows that 81 percent of consumers said that they need to be able to trust a brand in order to buy from them. 

A fundamental way to build trust with your audience is to establish credibility through your website.

Ways to establish credibility online include: 

• Posting content such as helpful blogs and how-to videos. 
• Creating free resources available for leads to download. 
• Encouraging leads to follow your brand on social media to get more helpful tips.

Part of increasing your search engine visibility is providing valuable information to your users. 

The more valuable information you provide, the higher your chances are of ranking well online and establishing a good reputation with your audience. 

Another way to establish your company’s credibility is to showcase testimonials and reviews from customers. Positive reviews of your products and services shows that other people have done business with you and were happy with the results. This tactic can validate your services and show that your brand can be trusted. 

5. A Website Provides Key Data For Your Company 

When looking at the tactics surrounding website vs social media for your company, remember that a website provides important data that’s important for your business’ web, sales, and marketing teams. Forbes reports that 64 percent of marketing executives “strongly agree” that data-driven marketing is crucial to success in a hypercompetitive global economy. 

The more data you have, the more you can piece together what’s working for your business’ web presence. 

Your team can use tools like Google Analytics to track user behavior on your website.

Data to track includes: 

• The number of visitors to the website 
• The time visitors spent on the website
• The number of conversions on the website 
• The bounce rate for important web pages 

Your company’s web and marketing team can also install tools like heatmaps to determine where leads are clicking and where they’re dropping off. 

Your company’s website can provide a lot of valuable data that, when analyzed correctly, can tell a clear story about how your leads are interacting with your brand. 

Social Media – Where Your Brand Shines 

While your website provides a lot of value for your company, social media helps spread the word about that value. Here are five things to remember when thinking about social media and your brand. 

1. Social Media Helps You Connect With Your Audience 

Something vital to consider when discussing website vs social media in lead generation is that social media helps companies connect with their audience on a personal level.

Digital Information World reports that internet users are now spending, on average, 142 minutes per day on social networking and messaging platforms.

Companies need to make sure their brand’s social media accounts are getting seen within that time frame. 

One way to do this is to create a community your audience will want to participate in and follow on social media. This also allows your brand to reach new audiences and build brand awareness.

Tactics for connecting with your audience on social media include: 

• Responding to questions and comments
• Sharing inspirational quotes to motivate your audience 
• Giving shoutouts to loyal social followers and celebrating their wins

These tactics also encourage people to learn more about your brand and go to your website to check it out. These leads may not have found your website on their own, but did find more information about your company because of what they saw on social media. 

2. Social Media Is Where You Build Your Brand 

Social media is also a vital channel to use when building your company’s brand. The more connected social audience is with your brand, the more likely they’ll become customers and brand advocates. 

One key way to build your brand on social media is to humanize your company. Some ways to do this include: 

• Showcasing your team members and celebrating their wins
• Filming short video interviews with the leadership team
• Sharing the key pillars of the company’s culture

Another way to build a trusted brand that people connect with this providing product and service support on social media. The more people know that there’s an actual human being on the other side willing to help them, the more likely they’ll trust the brand you’re building. 

3. Social Media Helps You Share Your Content 

As you debate website vs social media and how they help your company, remember that social media helps you share your content with the masses.

All it takes is one piece of valuable content to reach the right person at the right time to create a loyal customer. 

Social media users like to consume content in different ways on different platforms, so keep this in mind as you share your content.

If you’re on Facebook or Twitter, you could share a link to your blog. If you’re on Instagram or TikTok, create content that’s primarily images and videos.

When you’re on YouTube, make videos about your blog posts or your free resources.

Sharing content across multiple platforms can also increase your company’s status as an industry-leader. The more you share, the more you enhance your gravitas, which can influence people to keep following you to obtain valuable information. 

4. Social Media Lets You Reach New Audiences 

Another thing to consider when discussing website vs social media is that social media lets you reach new audiences in ways you can’t solely through your website. Social media platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram allow you to use hashtags to follow specific topics.

If you post content on these platforms and use hashtags, your content can be seen by people who follow those hashtags. 

Using the hashtag strategy can help you reach targeted audiences organically on social media. You can also reach targeted audiences through paid social media marketing, but that will come with a price tag. 

5. Social Media Encourages Interaction With Your Brand 

Something that’s unique for social media usage is that it encourages interaction and engagement between brands and their audience. Think about it: every like, comment, or share is a validation that your brand is worth engaging with. It’s a form of social proof that everyone on social platforms can see. 

The more you engage on social media, the more your brand will be seen. 

You can also study when people interact with your social posts most and adjust your social strategy to capitalize on it. Sharing a piece of content that people will want to share at the right time can get your brand’s name in front of hundreds (or even thousands) of new people.

Study the data and capitalize on when your peak engagement times are to increase your chances of a post going viral. 

Website vs Social Media – Which Is Better For Your Company?

When paired together, your website and social media channels are complementary parts of the same well-oiled machine. They have the same goal: to get your brand out to the world and convert leads to customers.

When done right, your website and social media strategy will be fundamental pillars in your lead generation and growth strategies.