For about ten years, "we don't have a website, we're on Facebook" was a reasonable thing for a gym, a barbershop, a food truck or a car club to say. The page was free, customers could find your hours, and when you posted, the people who liked your page saw it.
Two of those three are still true. The third is the one that mattered.
What happened to the free page
A Facebook page's posts go into the same ranked feed as everyone else's, and that feed has a limited number of slots that paid posts are also bidding for. When unpaid reach was high, it was because the auction was young. As more businesses and more advertisers piled in, the share of your own followers who see an unpaid post from you fell, and kept falling. The Boost button is the product; the page is the on-ramp to it.
That's not a conspiracy against small businesses. It's just what the feed is for. But it means the thing you were promised, "people who follow you will see your posts", is now a paid feature. For a gym with three hundred members or a barber with a loyal neighborhood, paying every week to reach people who already said yes is a strange deal.
What a small business page actually needs
Strip it back and a page has four jobs:
- Be findable with the basics. Hours, address, phone, a line about what you do. Someone who already knows your name should be able to confirm you're open.
- Reach the people who chose you. When you post "closed Monday for the holiday" or "new class Saturday 9am", the people who follow you should see it. All of them. That's the whole point of following.
- Take a message. A customer should be able to ask a question and get an answer from a person.
- Hand off to the next step. Book, call, buy tickets, go to the website.
Notice what's not on the list: reaching strangers. That's advertising, and it's a separate thing with a separate budget. The mistake most small businesses made was letting one platform blur the two, so when the free reach went away it felt like the page had broken.
The honest alternatives
- Google Business Profile. Free, and the most important listing you have for people searching your category near them. It covers job 1 better than anything, does job 3 adequately (messages, Q&A), and job 4 via your website link. It does nothing for job 2; nobody "follows" a Google listing.
- Instagram. Same company, same auction, with the added problem that a barber's post competes with the entire internet's video. Good for a portfolio, bad for "we're closed Monday".
- A simple website. Jobs 1 and 4, done properly and permanently. Costs money or time, does nothing for jobs 2 and 3 on its own.
- An email list or text list. The best tool for job 2 if people will give you their address or number. Most won't for a barbershop.
- A page on a network with no ranking. This is the gap. If a network has no promoted posts and no ranked feed, then following a page means seeing the page's posts. Job 2 comes back for free.
How a POINT business page works
A POINT business page is a separate business Space, run by you and any team members you add, with:
- The basics: category, description, address or service area, phone, email, website, hours by day, and a list of services with prices if you want them.
- A call-to-action button: Visit Website, Call, Book, Reserve, Buy Tickets, Shop or Contact. One tap to the next step.
- Followers who see everything. When you post, every follower sees it in their feed, in order, with no boost button because there's nothing to boost past. A business can't reach people who didn't follow it, which is also the reason the people who did follow you actually see you.
- Messages. Customers can message the page, and anyone on your team can reply as the business. You can turn messaging off.
- Posts from the business with photos, video and polls, like any member.
It costs $4.99 a month for the Business membership. That's the whole price; there is no paid reach because there's no reach to sell.
The honest limitation: your customers have to be on POINT to follow you. For a gym, a club or a shop with regulars, that's a "Find us on POINT" sign by the register and a link in your bio, and the people who care will come. For reaching new customers in a city, you still want Google and, if it works for you, paid ads wherever your customers are.
A setup that works for most small businesses
- Keep (or claim) your Google Business Profile. Keep it accurate.
- Make a POINT business page for your regulars. Fill in hours, services and the button. Post the things that matter to people who already like you: schedule changes, new things, the occasional photo of a good day.
- Put the link everywhere your regulars are: the counter, receipts, your Instagram bio, your email signature. The Find us on POINT badges are made for this.
- Treat Facebook and Instagram as what they are now: paid advertising with a free preview. Post there if it's worth your time; pay there when you want strangers.
Your followers chose you. A page should honor that, and that's the entire design brief for a POINT business page.