Do you have a holistic brand that’s solely on social media? If so, you may have amassed an excellent following on the surface, but you’ve likely noticed that your brand simply isn’t performing at full speed toward sales and your bottom line.
Without a website for your holistic business, you’ll continue to struggle to turn leads into sales and pull prospects into and through the sales funnel. Let’s explore exactly why that website is so crucial.
1. Your Customers Demand It For Vetting
Today’s customers are savvy, cautious, and demanding. Gone are the days of build it and they will come. Today, you must build your brand and customer pool simultaneously. After all, there’s a competitor on every corner.
The breadcrumb trail is your holistic healing website. If you do happen to have a niche cornered, then you have to value-proof to customers that it’s legit and a worthwhile purchase.
This is true of any brand, but it’s particularly applicable to holistic businesses. Despite holistic approaches being ancient, many people remain leery, skeptical, and just unaware.
It doesn’t matter if you’re an energy healer, acupuncturist, holistic dentist, or hypnotherapist, you’re potential customers demand a way to learn everything about you and your service or product before they pull the buying trigger. That’s not something that can be conveyed purely on social media.
Your website is a place to detail vetting points, including:
- Who is your brand
- Your brand’s value proposition
- The people and mentality behind your brand
- Supporting research, experience, and education
- What satisfied customers think
- Brand ambassadors
Customers in the digital age use a website to answer all their buying questions and feel confident in their purchases. Entrepreneur details the top ten items customers want to see on your website.
2. Take your products/service offerings to the To The Next Level
Would you trust a business without a website? Would you jump through hoops to make a purchase or book an appointment when other entities offer a painless buying or reservation process? If no, then why are you asking such of your patrons and potential customers?
Without an website that allows customers to schedule appointments or buy products/services from your holistic business, your brand is doing business the hard way, and you’re doomed to never grow.
A customer finds you on social media and is interested in learning more or purchasing. No website means that they must make direct contact with you and wait for a reply to get product or service details and offer a payment for an order.
Given that the average attention span is less than eight seconds, do you really think the majority of customers are going to stick around and wait for your reply on social media when they can just move on to one with a website?
Check out these stats to see just how invaluable speed of service is to today’s consumer.
Selling without a website is an inefficient process that lacks the assurances of consumer protections.
It’s a process that means you miss many purchases because even the most patient consumer isn’t confident in giving some random social media user (ie social media business) their personal and financial info.
Sure, you’ll have some that are willing to buy, but think of all the lost sales from those that aren’t going to even consider buying from an entity that doesn’t even have a website.
With a website for your holistic business, your customers don’t have to wait or take alternative actions to learn more, book, or buy. It’s all a click away on a website a secure socket layer (SSL) to protect all sensitive data and the convenience of multiple payment options.
3. Provides Systematic Social Proofs
Did you know that over 93 percent of potential buyers say that online reviews influence their personal buying decisions? Customers want proof of value, and they’re looking to peers to get it.
Social media has comments, likes, and even review and rating segments. But, there’s a huge digital world out there beyond just social media. Google, Yelp, BBB, Manta, Yellow Pages, Foursquare ... the list is endless, and that doesn’t even account for niche review sites that specifically target your holistic brand’s category.
A website is a way to direct customers directly to those reviews, which expedites their social proofs and demonstrates that you’re confident in your customer service and brand performance.
4. Puts You In Control Of Your Brand Narrative
Social media is fickle. Yes, it’s a great free and low cost marketing tool, but it’s still controlled by user perspective. Few users are going to scroll your entire account to find individual responses and posts that mitigate a bad comment or review.
What they will do is look to your website for an explanation. Your website’s blog is where you get your message and narrative in front of concerned and curious customers. Your mission statements become loud and clear without getting lost in the magnitude of social media posts.
And, as influencers see your message, they’re shared on social media in a way that links back to your website where customers can follow calls to action, not just reread the same info on your social media page.
5. Your Business Is Never Closed
With social media presence alone, it’s nearly impossible to offer the consumer 24/7 customer service and availability. Plus, when you are live, you’re reliant upon a message system designed for individual use, not business purposes.
It’s a recipe to miss customers and dissatisfy those you do serve. Meanwhile, your website is live 24/7 working for you. If a customer wants to make a purchase at 2 a.m., they’re not forced to wait until you’re available on social media to have their request fulfilled.
Your website supports every single facet of your sales funnel and revenue stream - customers have FAQ to consult, reviews in their hands, contact info, and an easy purchase process that’s live 24/7.
6. You Show Up In Searches
The benefits of showing up in Bing, Google, and other search results is priceless. Businesses of all calibers and sizes spend countless hours and dollars for those prized top four spots.
Without a website, you’re playing ball with a rock and rotten tree branch while your competitors have a Louisville Slugger.
Over 80 percent of consumers do online research with keywords prior to making a purchase. So, they’re typing in “holistic healing website,” and guess what - you don’t even show up as an option on SERP because you don’t have a website.
That sale just landed in the lap of your competitor. The same is true for local searches.
Social media has a massive following. But, in the grand picture, it’s a blip on the radar.
If you want true visibility, brand recognition, and customers, then you must build a website for your holistic business.
7. Give The Full Picture To Prospects
Instead of short blurbs, hashtags, and hidden text, you’re free to give your holistic products and services the presentation they deserve.
- Highlight your flagship products/services
- Make supplemental buy recommendations
- Give price breakdowns
- Offer video tutorials
- Downloadable PDFs
- Brilliant pictures and 3D images
- Interactive displays
- One-click buying
- Spec sheets Testimonials
8. It Grows With Your Brand
Building a website isn’t a difficult task. You don’t need extensive coding or technical skills to build a beginner’s small business website. The focal point should be ease of navigation and security.
There are also innumerable reputable companies you can outsource website building to for a very reasonable price. As you grow, your website grows with you. Easily add new products/services to your lineup.
Collect consumer data to establish reach out programs to existing customers. Link to influencers, media recognition, donations, and other marketing efforts. Include bots for customer service tasks. The possibilities are only limited by your imagination.
Even in terms of employees, your website can be a useful growth tool. Businesses use all different sorts of channels in their marketing and sales.
Some use MLM, whereby buyers can become sales agents themselves, and others may opt to contract remote agents or franchise agents.
Whether this is the case or your employee pool internally expands with growth, your website can help you manage any brand representatives.
Orphan pages and employee sub-portals offer you a secure and singular place to provide these representatives with info, resources, internal forms, in-service materials, marketing materials and read sheets, applications for promotions and transfers, and so forth.
Where’s Your Website?
In closing, these are just eight of the reasons why your holistic brand simply can’t survive as a social media presence alone.
It’s hard enough for any niche to edge out a profitable social media business, but the holistic niche is one that customers are certainly going to hold to the highest standard because of its nature.
Give your brand the best chance of success by having a website for your holistic business.