What can I use instead of a website?

A free Google Business Profile and a Facebook page are the two real substitutes, and together they cover a lot, as long as you know where each one stops.

The Google Business Profile is the better of the two for strangers. It’s the box that shows up on the map when someone searches for your trade near them: your name, hours, phone number, reviews, and a few photos. It’s free and it takes an afternoon. If you only do one thing from this page, do that one. Where it stops: it can’t say much. You get a short description and a list of services. You can’t explain how you work or answer the questions people ask before they call. And Google decides how it looks and who sees it.

The Facebook page is better for the people who already know you. Posts, photos from this week’s jobs, a quick reply when someone messages. Where it stops: it’s weak with strangers. A new customer who searches Google for your trade rarely lands on it, and if they do they see a feed, not an answer. What they see also depends on what Facebook decides to show that day.

A situation. A church has an active Facebook page and a Google listing with the service times. A family that just moved to town searches for churches nearby, finds the listing, and wants to know what a Sunday is like, whether there’s a kids’ program, what time to show up, and what the church believes. The listing can’t say. The Facebook page says it across a year of posts, if they dig. Neither one answers them in a minute, so they try the next church that does.

So: start with the profile and keep the page. Both are rooms in buildings you don’t own. The thing you own, where the full answer lives, is the website. Even a small one is enough for that.