Microsites are small websites made of one or a few pages, customized and branded for a specific purpose and function, which work in conjunction with a larger website. They provide visually stunning presentations and are used to drive specific campaigns. As such, they play a major role in online marketing. Cutting right to the chase, some of their roles include:
- Effective Branding
Given that microsites are created to focus on a given product or service, they play an integral role in effective branding. These sites are employed as branding tools for driving a particular strategy in getting the said good or service to its intended target audience while separating it from the mother brand. Consequently, all pertinent information on the product or service is easily available allowing it to stand on its own. This way, a consumer can easily find out all about a product without having to deal with everything else associated with the mother brand. This property has proven how effective microsites are especially in introducing a new product or service to an already existing or new audience.
- Boosting SEO
As already mentioned, each microsite is a website on its own that comes with a unique URL, preferably one that can be easily remembered. Given this feature, consumers or users looking for more information on your product or service can easily locate it faster and with greater ease. This in itself gives you an SEO advantage but the use of domains rich in keywords positively contribute to your ranking on search engines like Yahoo and Google.
- Driving Email Campaigns
There are now 3.7 billion email users worldwide. Incorporating a microsite in an email campaign enables you to easily track conversations surrounding the campaign, enabling you gauge its effectiveness. This way, potential and already existing consumers can quickly look into the featured product or service being offered.
- Experimental Tool
If you are looking into testing your market for a specific product or service, a microsite is the perfect experimental tool. It will help you to gauge the effectiveness of your message and which version of it your target audience resonates and responds best with. Given that they are stand-alone websites, microsites do not interfere with your overall marketing campaign while ensuring that you can easily reach your target audience.
- Arousing Public Interest
People are known to visit home pages and leave without digging into what the website is all about. Microsites contain detailed information on a product or service. This way, the target audience can easily get information on what your online marketing campaign is all about. This has the effect of arousing public interest in your product or service. Taking an interest in an offer is the first step towards an actual sale. If you are running a fundraising campaign, a microsite enables your audience to know exactly what they will be contributing towards.
- Driving Seasonal Promotions
Microsites improve the online footprint of any online marketing campaign and are great audience grabbers. As such, they are ideal for seasonal promotions of products or services since they can be easily and quickly deployed for short-term online marketing campaigns. This way, once your campaign is done, you do not have to worry about reorganizing your entire website back to normal. Simply remove the microsite.
Microsites have been shown to play a critical role in online marketing. The different roles they play in driving online marketing campaigns have seen more people, businesses, and organizations employ them in their day-to-day marketing campaigns since they are specific in nature and ease the process and hassle of reaching a given target audience.
