5 Important Reasons When Considering A Microsite

Your main corporate website can’t evolve as quickly as your ever 1 changing campaigns.

A microsite is a good way to get people to engage with your brand that has an entirely different focus in content and even design than your main, corporate site. Your main site may handicap any potential “wow” factor needed to drive campaign goals.

Testing out a new branding initiative? A microsite is a great way 2 to test the waters.

Not only are microsites great for certain advertising campaigns, they also serve as a great way to test out new branding initiatives, to observe consumer behavior and conversion rates.

Tie in your digital efforts to drive to a specific microsite, which 3 will help drive better brand engagement.

“Driving people to a main corporate site will be confusing unless that page makes a connection between your specific campaign and the site,” shares Bill.

According to an article from eMarketer in 2008 (which still holds true today), “With interactive advertising, the consumer must be presented compelling content to draw him or her into the interaction. The consumer must be engaged.” Microsites are a great way to drive better engagement with your brand.

From a search perspective, there are different benefits to 4 housing your microsite within your main site as a subdomain or subdirectory versus externally as a different domain.

One example of a microsite that lives as a subdirectory within the main site is found on Porsche’s website. Here, it’s neat to see how Porsche uses specific messaging to call attention to their microsite.

With the significant amount of brand recognition that already exists with Porsche, the fact that their microsite lives within the main domain doesn’t have nearly the negative search impact as a lesser known brand would feel if they chose the same route.

An example of a brand that effectively used a microsite as a separate domain is TD Bank.

TD Bank ran a campaign in 2013 to bring the human element back into banking called “Bank Human, Again”. In this campaign, they effectively utilized a microsite to drive traffic and engagement. According to PR Newswire’s article about TD Bank’s campaign, “A robust digital effort will incorporate a variety of executions including rich media, video and dynamic banners. All activity will drive to a custom campaign microsite-www.BankHumanAgain.com”.

At the time, having the microsite www.BankHumanAgain.com as a separate domain certainly provided more search engine benefits. It’s important to consider where you want your brand to appear on search engine results. If you’re not on the first page, your competitors will be.

We wouldn’t advocate creating a microsite just for the sake of trying to pump up your search engine results. However, having a microsite with the purpose of trying “ to better connect to a subset of your audience and provide them with more targeted, and more useful information, will help provide your brand with more search engine benefits.

- Bill Zoelle

Another key element to the life of your microsite is planning for the user experience with the site once your campaign is “over”.

Here’s an example of what the TD Bank’s microsite looked like shortly after it launched in 2013. The award winning site was modern, built using responsive design, and created opportunities for engagement.

And here’s a screenshot of what www.BankHumanAgain.com redirects to today. The current TD Bank site is a dated fixed width site that is not mobile friendly.

Creating a new microsite is an investment, but having the right 5 interactive partner is key.

Compared to the traditional advertising realm, it is much harder to coordinate radio ads, TV ads, billboard advertising, and others than managing various microsites. “Adding a new microsite to your digital strategy may seem costly, but it is easy for a digital partner with expertise in this area, like Envano, to manage. A microsite can vary in size and purpose. A microsite can be as small as a landing page and as complex as a custom social community. It is important to define your marketing strategy with your digital partner to ensure the right tool is used to connect to your desired audience,” shares Bill Zoelle, Creative Director at Envano. One site does not serve all.

Overall, microsites serve as a powerful way to shift how your brand is perceived to different targeted audiences. Take Yahama for example. With a company that manufactures many products from dirtbikes to drum sets, it is near impossible to compel each of their target audiences with one all encompassing website.