Delivery apps for restaurants, booking portals for beauty salons, referral platforms for tradespeople, marketplaces for retailers: platforms bring customers. That’s their promise, and they often keep it. But they come at a price – and it isn’t only the fees.
What platforms cost
Fees and commissions. The obvious costs. They often grow with the revenue the platform brings you.
Comparability. On a platform you sit right next to your competitors, sorted by price and rating. What makes you special quickly gets lost in the list.
Someone else’s rules. The platform decides how you’re shown, what you’re allowed to show and what it costs to appear higher up. When the rules change, you have to follow.
No customer relationship of your own. The customer booked with the platform, not with you. Next time they search there again – and may find someone else.
Don’t abandon platforms – complement them
This isn’t about leaving platforms overnight. For many businesses they’re an important channel. It’s about not depending on them alone. Every customer who finds you directly and books directly is a customer without commission and with a relationship to you.
Your own channels
Website
Your website is the only place where you set all the rules yourself. Here you can show what you do differently without competitors right next to you. A website with your own pictures and videos is much stronger than one with blocks of text and stock photos.
Google profile
The Google profile is free and often the most important entry point for local businesses. If it shows current pictures, opening hours and a direct way to get in touch, you get enquiries without a detour.
Instagram and other social networks
This is where you build a relationship with people who follow you. They see your work regularly, get to know your team and remember you when they need you.
Direct contact
WhatsApp, phone, email: people who can reach you directly don’t need a platform in between. Make it easy for customers to contact you directly.
Why video helps
Your own channels only work if something happens there. An Instagram account without new posts or a website with outdated pictures convinces nobody. Video is the format that shows fastest who you are and how you work – and it can be used on all channels at once.
A Reel can run on Instagram, be embedded on your website and appear in your Google profile. Photos from the same shoot end up in your feed, profile and website. That way one date produces material for all your own channels.
A realistic path
- Take stock: how many of your customers come through platforms, how many directly?
- Look after your own channels: update your Google profile, check your website, post on Instagram regularly.
- Produce material: a Content Day produces material for a month in one day – 8 Reels + 40 photos or 10 Reels.
- Offer direct contact: show clearly on every channel how people can reach you directly.
- Watch: after a few months, compare whether the ratio is shifting.
All usage rights to our material pass to you – so you can use it on any channel, including platforms.
Conclusion
Platforms are a channel, not a foundation. If you build your own channels and regularly show what you can do there, you win customers who choose you directly – and come back.
In the free check we show you how your own presence compares with your industry.