6 Powerful Benefits of A Microsite

What’s a microsite?

A microsite is a brand-specific website (or a single web page) that companies use to promote their individual products, events, or campaigns.

These are hosted on their own domain or company’s subdomain and have a different URL than their company websites.

These are usually non-application based sites. They would not have eCommerce (like most Shopify competitors offer) functionality or an elaborate sales funnel. 

Instead, they are information-laden sites, aimed at engaging as many users as possible. The content on their page(s) is invariably fun and interaction-based. This helps their brand connect with users. 

Furthermore, they do not provide any information about the parent brand (or company). They do not contain web pages like “About Us,” “The Team,” etc.

Launching a new product

Whenever a new product is ready for a launch, a ton of promotional campaigns are carried out to generate interest and curiosity about it, among potential customers. 

These campaigns typically include print media promotions, promotion in exhibitions, social media and email campaigns, and more. 

The audience of these campaigns, which is interested in knowing more about the product, can be redirected to a microsite that has all the information about the product. 

The microsite will influence the audience further, by offering detailed and engaging multimedia content. And since the microsite is completely branded with the product’s characteristics, it will help the audience recall the product more.

Generating targeted leads

You can use microsites to capture those leads who already show an interest towards your product (or service). Such leads have a greater chance of converting into customers.

Why consider microsites?

Marketing driven organizations can utilize microsites for:

Targeted campaigns

They allow brands to deliver highly targeted content to specific segments of their audience.

Lead generation

Microsites can be used to generate high-intent leads for businesses.

Brand awareness

They help brands establish their brand presence on the internet, through their own web space.

Virality potential

Their engaging content helps create buzz — word of mouth publicity — around a certain product or event.

SEO for niche keywords

Microsites can help businesses attain better search engine ranking for particular keywords — using focused content.

Easy to manage

As microsites are created for a targeted campaign, only a small group in your company can dedicatedly work on that.

This way you will be able to manage a smaller team better, which is cost, energy, time, and resource-effective.

Disadvantages of microsites:

With so many advantages of microsites, it’s almost irresistible to have one of your own.

However, there are two sides to the story. Microsites have big disadvantages, too.

Find them below.

Leave users confused

The users, who are your target audience, don’t make a note of the URL that they just stumbled upon and visit it later when they have time. However, they might just remember something out of the ad and then probably Google it, which would take them to the main site.

You see. The effort is lost; purpose defeated.

Many brands assume that their users are decently adaptive to the different user interfaces, which harms the user experience. It can leave them confused and they would probably never visit your site again.

Huge costs

A microsite is essentially building a new website. When building a website from scratch, there are various expenses involved. 

The cost of website-domain, cost of maintenance, and cost of developers and designers are just to name a few. And the more elaborate a microsite is, the higher its cost will be.

Content development efforts

Since the main goal of microsites is to engage users, the site’s content has to be top-notch. The text content, images, videos, and user-generated content that goes into a microsite must relate to the audience, the brand, and search engine optimization (SEO) strategies.

Significant time commitment

A microsite is not a one-time setup thing. It has to be updated with content regularly, during the whole duration of its marketing campaign.

Short life-cycle

Once the marketing campaign associated with a microsite ends, the microsite is practically abandoned. The resources invested in developing the microsite go under-utilized.

Be sure to weigh up the pros and cons of building a microsite for your brand. If you proceed, don’t forget to maximize ROI by A/B testing your content, features and functionality.

Conclusion

Microsites are a great way to promote brands and events — separately from their parent brand/company. They offer great freedom to design their web space according to individual brand characteristics, without any restrictions. 

Moreover, together with paid search-ad campaigns, microsites can generate targeted leads for your business.