Small Business Digital
Why Facebook Is Not a Website
1 July 2025
A significant number of Irish trades and service businesses use Facebook as their primary or only online presence. They have a Facebook page, they post occasionally, and they consider this their digital marketing sorted.
It is not sorted. Facebook is useful. It is not a website, and treating it as one leaves your business exposed in ways that are not obvious until something goes wrong.
What Facebook does well
Facebook is good for reaching people who already know your business. Existing customers who follow your page will see your posts. People who have been referred to you can look you up and see your recent activity. In some communities and some age groups, Facebook recommendations in local groups are a genuine source of leads.
For building familiarity and staying top of mind with an existing audience, Facebook serves a purpose.
What Facebook does not do
It does not help you appear in Google searches. When someone who has never heard of you searches for a plumber in your area, Google does not show Facebook pages prominently in the results. It shows websites. If your only online presence is a Facebook page, you are losing jobs online by being invisible to the largest source of new customer enquiries.
You do not own it. Your Facebook page exists on Facebook’s platform under Facebook’s rules. Facebook can change how pages are displayed, reduce their organic reach, suspend accounts, or shut down at any time. These things have happened and will happen again. A business whose entire digital presence is on a platform it does not control has no resilience.
Organic reach has declined significantly. Posts from Facebook business pages now reach a small fraction of the people who follow them without paid promotion. The platform has progressively reduced organic reach to encourage businesses to advertise. The Facebook page that felt effective five years ago is less effective today and will be less effective still in another five years.
It does not build credibility the same way. A professional website signals investment and permanence. A Facebook page signals presence. For customers making a decision about a significant home improvement job, the difference matters.
What you need instead
A website does not replace Facebook. It anchors your online presence and gives you something you own and control that appears in Google searches.
The combination that works for most trades businesses is a website that ranks through local SEO versus social media, a Google Business Profile that puts you on Google Maps, and a Facebook page that you use to stay connected with existing customers and post occasional updates.
The website is the foundation. Everything else supports it.
The cost objection
The most common reason trades businesses give for not having a website is cost. A professionally built website quoted by an agency can run to several thousand euro upfront, which is a significant commitment without a guaranteed return.
The alternative is a subscription model: find out what a website subscription gets you with a well-built, maintained website for a fixed monthly cost with no large upfront payment. For most trades businesses, one additional job from an online enquiry covers the full year’s cost. That is a straightforward return on investment calculation.
Maebh Collins builds and manages digital presence subscriptions for trades and service businesses across Ireland.
Maebh Collins is a Chartered Accountant (FCA, ICAEW), Big 4 trained, with twenty years of experience building and running international businesses. She specialises in finance transformation, ecommerce operations, and digital strategy.