The short answer is yes. The long answer is: Instagram is rented land, and you're building your business on a plot you don't own.
Look, Instagram is brilliant for showing off your work. I'm not telling you to delete it. But if it's your only online presence, you've handed control of your business to a company that doesn't care whether you eat this month.
You don't own your followers
This is the one that hurts. All those followers you've built up over years of posting? You don't have their email addresses. You don't have their phone numbers. You can't reach them directly.
What you have is permission for an algorithm to maybe show your post to some of them. You don't decide how many, and you can't see the rules.
Tomorrow the algorithm changes and even fewer people see your posts. You have no say. No appeal. You're a tenant.
You can't rank on Google with an Instagram page
Search "plumber Blackburn" right now on your phone. Look at the results. How many of them are Instagram pages?
Hardly any, if any. You'll see Google Maps listings, business websites and review sites. Instagram pages sometimes show up if you search for someone by their exact name, but nobody does that for a tradesman they haven't heard of yet.
And that's the problem. New customers don't know your handle. They know what they need: a boiler fixed, a roof patched, a new patio. They type that into Google. If you only live on Instagram, you don't exist for them.
A website works around the clock. Stories disappear in a day
You spend an hour filming, editing and posting a Reel of your latest job. A day later it's gone from the top of feeds. A week later you'd have to dig through your profile to find it.
The same hour spent writing a "Services" page on your website? That page works for you for years. Every visitor who lands on your site sees it. Every customer who Googles you next year still sees it.
Social media is a treadmill. You keep posting just to stay visible. A website is a building. You put it up once, refresh it now and then, and it earns its keep around the clock.
Customers check your website before they ring
This is the trust piece. When someone hears about you from a neighbour, or sees your van, or spots your Google listing, what do they do next?
They Google you. They want to see:
- What exactly you do, and where
- Roughly what it'll cost
- Whether you look professional
- Whether other people have used you and been happy
- How to get a quote
An Instagram page can answer some of this, badly. A website answers all of it in seconds. The firm that looks professional online gets the call. The one that doesn't, doesn't.
This matters even more when the job is in someone's home. They're letting a stranger through the door. A real website tells them you're a real business.
Instagram should drive traffic, not replace it
Here's the actual model: Instagram is the megaphone. Your website is the shop.
You use Instagram to get attention. To show your work. To show people who you are. Then every post, every bio link, every Story should point to one place: your website, where people can see your jobs, find your number and ask for a quote.
You don't have to choose between them. They do different jobs. But running a business on Instagram alone is like driving a van with no phone number on the side. Everyone can see your work. Nobody knows how to book you.
"Instagram is the megaphone. Your website is the shop."
If you've been putting off building one because it feels like a big project, it doesn't have to be. A clean site that loads fast, shows your best jobs and tells people how to get a quote is a small job for someone who knows what they're doing.
It pays for itself the first time it brings you a job your Instagram never could have.
Need a website that actually brings in work?
I build sites that turn searches into phone calls, and leave your Instagram to do what it's good at.