Content Marketing with Micro sites: A Deeper Understanding

Microsite is an individual web page or a small cluster of pages with its own design and content on a separate domain or sub domain providing a lightweight alternative to corporate websites. It creates a hyper-focused website that meet the needs of a specific search query.

The purpose of a microsite is to provide deeper content that is easier to absorb. The importance and a complete idea of microsite in content marketing can be best understood from the details of its pros and cons; examples and best practices.

So, let’s begin with the favourable points. 

Pros

• ·      Microsites can often be deployed quickly as they live outside the formal framework of your main website, like the landing pages.
  

 

• ·      Visitors can quickly navigate to their most relevant content.
  

 

• ·    Marketers can use the data to naturally segment their audiences from the available choices paving an easy way of marketing your brand.
  

 

• ·      The new type of microsite is pure HTML and SEO friendly. They load quickly and can be built swiftly and inexpensively.
  

Now, let’s take a look at the unfavourable aspects.

Cons

• ·    For an organisation with lots of brand equity, using a microsite to spin-off a product can confuse the site visitors who are already familiar with the parent organisation and turn them away. Though, the same cannot be said for a less known business organisation.
  

 

• ·    Using a microsite can be an expensive brand-building exercise as it requires long term maintenance to keep it in the best form.
  

 

• ·      A poorly designed micro site can actually reduce growth.
  

 

• ·     The technological advancements may make a site inaccessible to a significant part of its target group, as is the case with responsive design.
  

 

 

Examples of Microsites

 

NewEgg.com:

It is a very popular, highly recognisable website for purchasing all things related to technology. This campaign was a huge success bringing in a total response of 870,000 hits.

Designer social:

An online community where you can buy sell and consign luxury designer goods. It has launched several successful campaigns using microsites. With the help of microsites, it displays all the necessary information required by the user and helps the viewer to get his information at the click of a mouse.

 

Content Marketing Best Practices with Microsites

Avoid Content Duplication – Ensure the content is unique to your message. Simply copying and pasting content from your main site in order to popularise your microsite will end up having a negative effect on your search engine optimization service, potentially for both your microsite and main site.

Be On Brand – In an attempt to realise the benefits of a microsite, don’t break away from your corporate brand. The brand message and the design aspects of the main site integrated with an interesting theme will help grow brand awareness.

Determine your goals – Goal determination and strategic execution of plans are crucial for the success of microsite marketing strategy. According to Social Media Judo, the goal for Elf Yourself was to “warm up” OfficeMax’s corporate image. In 2008, the campaign won three Ad: Tech Awards: ‘Best Word of Mouth Marketing Campaign’, ‘Best User Defined Experience’, and ‘Best of Show’.

To sum up, microsites can provide a great opportunity for webmasters to diversify their web presence, and give the site visitors an experience best suited to address their needs.