Rules for Building Engaging Microsites
Offering businesses a chance to add value to their brand via interesting, fun, and engaging microsites are effective online marketing vehicles. Adhering to best practices can help guarantee you get the most out of your microsite campaigns.
First let’s define a microsite and how it differs from a main website. A microsite is an individual web page or group of web pages which are used to support, enhance, or supplement the primary website. The main difference between a microsite and the main site is its focus on one main topic or theme compared to the broader scope of the parent site. Often, microsites are used to target new markets or to create different content for niche audiences.At times a microsite is created for a certain demographic group. Microsites can also be optimized with keyphrases for better search engine rankings and click-through rates.
Choose the size of your microsite carefully of your microsite is essential}. The size and depth of your company’s microsite may very well depend on your resources and campaignbudget. You can simply design a one-page microsite that acts as a great landing page for a pay-per-click campaign and links back to the parent site or you could design a fully functional, self-contained mini website with its own contact page and e-commerce capability (if you are selling products). Including user-generated content features such as forums, enabling comments, and file uploading should also be considered at this stage.
Deciding on a domain name depends on several elements. If the product or service is something not normally associated with the parent brand, then it may be best to consider a secondary, non-branded domain name. Keep in mind, however, that branded URLs generally produce higher click-through rates. Also think about subdomains or subfolders.
The microsite’s topic, information, and call-to-action should be compelling. Once you get a visitor to the site, provide content that leads the user down the path you planned. That end goal could be filling out a form, calling a number, downloading a white paper, making a purchase, or simply clicking over to the main site. Tracking these goals is crucial and can be done easily with a product such as Google Analytics.
It’s crucial to consider how to tie the brand into the microsite. It could be as simple as placing the logo somewhere on the site and having multiple links back to the parent website. Use of a similar theme or style can also help generate brand recognition. For smaller brands, the microsite may act as a launching pad to introduce the brand to a new audience.
Microsites can and should be tweaked for search engines using effective internet marketing tactics. Take advantage of the focused content by using topic-specific keywords and key phrases oin your microsite.
If you build it, they will come… but only if you promote the website. Once your microsite is live, be sure to let everyone know about it by utilizing your internal email list, pay-per-click campaigns, social media (Facebook, Digg, Reddit), and industry-related blogs.
