In today's digital world, you must own your website so that you have full control over your brand AND your data!!
What is your brand? It's the accumulation of all your advertising, marketing and messaging. It's the how people know who you are and what you can offer them. It's your website, your social media platforms, your business cards, your networking, etc. All those things and more go into building your brand. However, the hub of your brand is your website. It's where anyone looking to learn more about you and your services will go first.
Ok...what if you don't own that hub? You may be wondering what that means. Why wouldn't I own my website... Well, what if your franchisor, your real estate broker or someone else had control of your website? Now imagine you wanted or needed to leave and start over. Can you? Well no, you don't own your website. They do. Any brand recognition you earned during that time is GONE! You get to start all over and who has time for that?
What about the data piece you mentioned? Why do I care about data and what does that even mean? Just as important these days as your branding is your ability to put your messages in front of the people most likely to do business with you. These days, most everyone has tried their hand at running ads on Facebook, and why wouldn't you. It's the most powerful advertising tool out there. If you have spent any money on ads, you will have paid for valuable data in the hopes of starting to build out an audience that will engage with your content and purchase your products and services. Any audiences you have built would be lost if you had to leave a website behind. That data is super valuable and in today's world losing it would be extremely costly to rebuild.
So why do you need a custom website? You need to make sure that your business is never at the mercy of someone else. You need to make sure that if you were to make a change for any reason, that your website and the data you collected is coming along with you.
Your brand is your biggest asset! Make sure you are in control of it!