Microsites: The Big Guide for Ambitious Brands

Amidst an ever-evolving marketing ecosystem, microsites are a powerful strategy.

Unleashing branding brilliance in bite-sized packages, these small and mighty web experiences have captured the hearts of savvy marketers. By unlocking a world of creative possibilities, microsites empower you to leave an indelible impression on your audience.

In this article, we delve into the captivating benefits of microsites, unveiling how they unlock new avenues for brand promotion and propel businesses forward with their unique, transformative potential.

Let’s get started.

Table of contents:

What is a Microsite?

What is the difference between a microsite and a website?

What makes a good microsite?

What are the benefits of a microsite?

What are the cons of a microsite?

7 of the best microsite examples and why they work

How to build and launch a microsite

What is a microsite?

A microsite is a branded webpage or a group of webpages, that exist separate from your main website.

The idea behind a microsite is to offer another platform for potential customers to discover your brand with the objective that the unique content it holds will drive them to perform an action.

This action can range anywhere from simply reading the content to signing up for email newsletters.

The great thing is it allows you to introduce factors such as gamification, which can be incorporated into how a microsite is built, therefore providing a more interactive, engaging, and satisfying experience for the user, without interfering with your main website.

While a microsite will often contain your brand components (logo, colour schemes, fonts etc.), you have the option of varying these to make the microsite standout from your normal website or to drive home a specific message (more on this later).

The idea behind a microsite is to offer yet another platform for potential customers to discover your brand. They should not be confused with a landing page which is a single web page used for lead generation.

What is the difference between a microsite and a website?

• Different domain name

  One of the main differences between a microsite and a normal website is that a microsite lives on its own independent domain i.e. its own web address or URL that doesn’t necessarily need to contain your brand name. If your website is www.example.com, your microsite domain could be, say, www.bestmarketingcampaignever.com.

• Microsites are not subdomains

  It’s important not to confuse microsites with subdomains, which are, as the name suggests, sites that exist under your main domain. You might have noticed the blog section of some of your favourite websites having the word ‘blog’ in front of their normal URLs. What you have there is a blogsite that exists under the main website’s domain. Using the example above, your blogsite subdomain would be www.blog.example.com.

• Microsites are temporary

  Diamonds might be forever but microsites are not. In most cases, microsites tend to be temporary sites. Brands use them as part of specific marketing campaigns or strategies (more on what microsites are used for below). Once the campaign comes to an end, so does the microsite. This is not always the case however, some microsites are continuously updated, repurposed by brands, or end up being incorporated into the main website. A microsite example of the latter is Red Bull’s ‘Red Bulletin’ microsite that was later amalgamated with the brand’s main website and now sits under the redbull.com domain.

• Microsites hold different content

  A microsite is for all intents and purposes its own entity. It often contains media elements such as audio, image, or video that aren’t on the main website. Creative engagement functions are often exclusively built into microsites.

• Size doesn’t always matter

  Compared to a regular website, a microsite often has a small amount of pages. What brands want to do with microsites is to minimise clutter and distraction so content is much more focused.

• Microsites require their own strategy

  A digital marketing campaign is not a real one if it doesn’t factor in keyword targeting, user intent, customer targeting, call-to-action, social media strategy, link building (referral links from high quality third party websites to your microsite), and email marketing amongst others. How a brand approaches these factors for a microsite will differ from how it handles them for its main website. The idea is to streamline these factors for a specific, targeted campaign. These factors can then be used as metrics to measure performance and set benchmarks.

What makes a good microsite?

Targeting is a word that’s come up a few times thus far in this article and that’s because it is foundational to microsites. It goes without saying then, that a good microsite has to be precise with its messaging and satisfy both the marketing intent of the brand and satisfy the user intent of the visitor. A good way to do this is to make your microsite simple while still packing a punch. Here are a few more things that make for a good microsite:

• Unique Content

  The microsite should have content that’s as unique as possible and can stand alone and stand out from what is on a brand’s regular website.

• Unique Content

  The microsite should have content that’s as unique as possible and can stand alone and stand out from what is on a brand’s regular website.

• Intuitive Navigation

  If a microsite has more than one page, it should be easy and intuitive to navigate.

• An interactive element that engages the user

  Gamification (the integration of gaming mechanics) is a great way to get the user to participate in a campaign and make them stay on the site longer. The longer they stay, the longer the memory of their visit lasts.

• Shareable

  A microsite should have buttons that make it easy to share on social media, mobile apps, email, etc.

• CTA

  A good microsite has to have a call to action that is clear and actionable.

• Analytical

  Great microsites are connected to performance analysis tools that allow you to measure your KPIs (who says it has to be all about the user).

• Optimised URL/Domain name

  When possible, a good microsite should have a URL that includes any of the slogan, campaign name, target keyword, product name, etc., the microsite was built for. This gives the microsite the chance to rank well on search engines while being specific as to what the microsite is about. A user is more likely to visit a microsite that has a web address that contains the keywords they searched for.

What are the benefits of a microsite?

By now you’re probably starting to have an idea of how beneficial a microsite can be as part of your digital marketing campaign. Time to dive into the specific benefits of building a microsite.

• Increase brand visibility

  Microsites offer another way for brands to boost their brand awareness online. Because they are used for content that is engaging, fun, informative, creative, from left field, innovative, they can help gain or maintain top of mind awareness. The internet is a competitive field. Anything that can give you the edge over competitors is worth investing in.

• New Lead Generation

  The headline sounds like the name of a modern-day punk rock band, but this microsite benefit is an important one. Gaining new leads is at the heart of every business’s marketing objectives. Done well, a microsite can pull a potential customer in, rather than push them towards an action that will turn them into a lead. Customers have never been more conscious or wary of targeted advertising online. The way successful brands are circumventing this is by creating experiences that come across as informative and engaging rather than the usual hard sell or push marketing tactics. The right microsite provides an effortless, seamless process from curiosity to genuine interest. Prospects move on to the next step in the sales funnel because a microsite has offered them an experience.

• Affordable

  When it comes to pricing, a microsite can be as cheap as you can afford or as expensive as your budget allows. Because lots of money spent doesn’t always equal great results (you’ll be amazed how rubbish some expensively built websites are), the affordability of microsites can even out the playing field. This means smaller brands can compete with the big boys by being creative and providing great content.

• Part of a customer’s purchase journey

  The internet has added layers to the way consumers go through the sales process. Touchpoints and the purchase funnel are elements that have been forever changed by the web. The Google coined “Micro-moments” (consumers reflexively going on devices – often smartphones – for information gathering purposes that can lead to purchase) is becoming a huge part of customer behaviour. Having a microsite that can deliver the information sort out by a consumer is a fantastic way to be right there wherever they are in their purchase journey. You can create a microsite for every one of the steps in the purchase funnel.

• Boost customer engagement

  We are in an age where mega star celebrities reply to the tweets of their fans. Likewise, consumers demand more from brands these days. A television advert, radio commercial, or a “Please buy from us now!!!” banner on a website just won’t do anymore. Customers want interaction, they crave engagement. A microsite is an easier way to do this. If you offer this to them, they will thank you for your efforts by sharing your content, growing your brand popularity through word-of-mouth marketing therefore becoming brand advocates, coming back for return visits, and more.

• Can improve SEO performance

  When it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) you might be wondering how a Microsite can help, when most SEOs will tell you to focus all activity on your primary website.

  Microsites are incredibly useful SEO tools because they offer your brand a versatility and flexibility that may not be available to marketers on the company website.

  Want to try something a little risky to grab media attention? Promote a particular product? Target some different buyer personas or a specific audience? This is where a Microsite can really come into its own.

  Launching the campaign on a microsite – as opposed to your corporate website – allows you to be far more creative, which helps you engage the media more, which can result in better press coverage and lots of those all important backlinks.

  3rd party websites are far more likely to link to a fun, creative microsite. You then have the power to link your microsite to any chosen pages on your parent website, without having to go through the endless rounds of stakeholder ‘buy in’ that often stifles creativity.

  And once the campaign is over, you can have the microsite URL redirect to a relevant page on the main website and continue to gain the benefit of all those links for many years to come.

  Microsites aren’t just about user experience and conversions, when it comes to SEO, these small websites can pack a powerful punch.

• Great for CRM

  newsletters are still a great way to keep your existing/previous customers informed and (hopefully) coming back for more business, they can end up being repetitive and boring. With a microsite, your marketing communication can be more diverse, dynamic, inventive, engaging, and memorable. Depending on your business type, you can personalise a microsite by including features that make it unique to the user. It could, for example, use their previous purchase history to show their personality type. Cross-selling additional products and services to existing customers via this channel can be more effective than a simple “You might also like this” email. Want to keep them coming back for more? Give them more!

• Measuring success

  Search engine marketing can be a very complex thing which leads to complex data and analysis. Compared to a regular website however, a microsite is focused on one campaign and a set of goals and/or objectives (sometimes as few as one). This means setting KPIs and determining what metrics should be used to gauge success is much easier. With fantastic tools like Google Analytics, figuring out the ROI of your microsite is a breeze. In fact, working on a microsite can possibly help you streamline how you approach measuring success on your main website.

• Honorable ‘Benefits of a microsite’ mentions

  Now that we are officially in the “mobile first” age where Google is prioritising content that is mobile friendly on its search results pages, a microsite is more likely to show up on Google results; they are quick to load, self-contained, highly SEO optimised and tend to offer great UX.

  Using microsites to do split tests offer another way to analyse customer behaviour and what they respond to and engage with, information which you can then apply to your main website

  You can use a microsite to show another side to your business. This can be anything from your charity work to interviews with employees to the history of your company.

  TL;DR – with people increasingly preferring to consume information in small chunks, what better way to relay information to them than a site built specifically for that purpose?

What are the cons of a microsite?

The cons of building a microsite are far less than the pros, but they are worth mentioning. But since we are definitely a glass half full bunch here at Smack, there is a solution for each disadvantage.

• Brand confusion

  In cases where the branding and content on a microsite is very different from what visitors to the normal website are used to, there can be some confusion. This can especially be the case when the content is more text driven rather than product or service driven. Us humans love being in our comfort zone and any change that disrupts that can put us off (remember New Coke? That didn’t go down well. Ba dum tish!).

  Luckily, this can be avoided by finding that sweet spot between what the customer recognises and something new that will pique their interest.

• Brand leveraging

  For companies with huge brand recognition who are used to drawing a large number of visitors to their website based on this alone, the idea of not leveraging this built up equity on a microsite could seem counterproductive.

  To overcome this fear, big brands can leverage their financial might and access to resources to build microsites that are truly magnificent. This will lead to engaging content that speaks for itself and gets attention regardless, which will end up giving them even more brand recognition and boosts the brand leverage they feared not using in the first place.

• Small businesses

  A new business still in the early stages of building the reputation and visit numbers of its main website might view a microsite as a platform that takes attention and sessions away from it. This is a valid con to consider.

  However, a great microsite can get a lot of buzz and increase brand visibility. A microsite can be the entry point for new customers who will end up on the main site if navigation and engagement on the microsite is executed smartly. A well put together, unique microsite can go viral and lead to, well, lots of leads.

• In conclusion

  A microsite is a webpage or a cluster of webpages that are usually temporary and exist to serve a specific purpose ranging anything from a new product launch to demonstration of expertise in a given field. While microsites differ from normal websites in URL and branding, the ultimate goal is to get visitors to eventually browse the main website and increase overall brand awareness. While there are a few cons of investing in one, the benefits of a microsite are far greater. Smack is fast becoming one of the best digital agencies in London having created microsites that have helped brands boost online visibility, generate new leads, and gain worthwhile ROI.

7 of the best microsite examples and why they work

So, what makes a successful microsite?

One of the great things about the internet from the point of view of brands is the opportunities it provides to reach audiences with creative, innovative marketing strategies.

Out of the ether of digital marketing emerged the microsite, a perfect medium for meeting the expectations of a consumer now demanding more from brands if they are to gain and hold their attention.

Taking into consideration factors such as shorter attention span, the rise of mobile browsing, gamification, and increase in app usage, the way consumers react to digital marketing has become more sophisticated. This is why a microsite is so effective in today’s online marketing landscape.

With that being said, let’s take a look at some great microsite examples.

1. What is Your Food Personality? – Weight Watchers

They say it begins at home and right there is where we start our examples off.

Often, people overlook some simple factors that affect their approach to food. The objective of Weight Watchers with this microsite was to help people better understand their eating habits. With this in mind, SMACK was able to create a microsite that was fun, engaging, and offered great tips. This sort of microsite is especially good for targeting users in the research stage of the customer journey.

Losing weight can be a daunting task. In order to make researching it less intimidating, SMACK went with the choice of quirky text fonts and bright, attention grabbing colours to give off an informal vibe that says, “This is going to be fun.”

A clear call to action is important for an effective microsite. The idea is to make navigation as easy as possible. SMACK achieved this by giving prominence to the call to action and by using a colour palette that has been proven by research to be effective in catching the eye of the user.

The beautifully presented questions and answers and how easy it is to navigate through them is perhaps the best thing about this microsite.

If providing information to the user beyond what is on your main website while also raising brand awareness is an aim of yours (and it really should be for any brand), then this is a great example of a microsite to consider using as a blueprint.

Check it out here:
https://creativepool.com/smackagency/projects/what-is-your-food-personality-quiz-for-weight-watchers

2. My Creative Type – Adobe

If I could go on a date with a microsite, I’d take Adobe’s Creative Types microsite.

It knows me so well!

This beautifully designed microsite is a great example of the world microsites can open up.

By asking some simple but interesting/abstract questions and matching your answers to creative traits, it offers the user a breakdown of the type of creative they are and advice on what they can do to further flourish.

Clearly, the objective here is to showcase Adobe’s own creativity (which is done well via animation between each question and answer page) while raising brand awareness.

It’s also a way for Adobe to connect with audiences while showing how much they know them, which in turn expresses why they are the brand that can best cater to their creative needs.

Yours truly tried the microsite out and was genuinely surprised at how accurate it was about my creative as well as personality type.

It even pointed out some areas I could improve creativity-wise, areas I myself have recognised need to be worked on (the “Your greatest challenge is learning to balance dreaming with disciplined action” part hit home especially).

This is a testament to the amount of work Adobe put into the microsite.

Want to confirm your brand as an authority in its sector therefore raising and maintaining top-of-mind brand awareness all while blowing the user’s mind? You can’t go wrong with a brand positioning microsite like this one.

Check it out here:
https://mycreativetype.com/

3. RS Components – 33 Ways 3d Printing is Changing the World

Humble-bragging can come across as a disingenuous way of not tooting one’s own horn, but sometimes it’s all you can do when you’ve created a piece of work that you are proud of, that is truly informative to a target audience, and helped a client achieve its digital marketing objectives.

RS Components wanted to highlight the successes of 3D printing, specifically in relation to medical, science, and transport, the three areas the brand’s main target audiences were interested in (a conclusion SMACK came to after thorough research).

SMACK agency worked on an infographic microsite that showcased 33 ways 3D printing is affecting us, from the human body all the way to space.

As you scroll, the infographic comes to life. You can scroll or simply click on the white circles on the far right to go through each area of focus (medical, science, transport) and its levels.

You then click on the white dots around the graphic to be presented with bits of information on what is to come in the world of 3D printing in relation to that area. The scroll function is intuitive and works smoothly as you glide the cursor.

Transition from each area of focus to the next is fluid, the graphics moving, changing sizes, fading, popping up. This gives it an animation quality that is engaging.

At the core of this microsite is the objective of providing information on an area yet to be fully understood by the masses.

By having a link to well established brands with authority under the bit of information in every box, RS Components is communicating (1) It is a brand that has more than its own self-interest at heart (2) it has used information from trusted sources for its research.

This provides a platform for the user to delve deeper into the world of 3D printing without having to do lots of searching. This is infographic design at its best (if we do say so ourselves).

5. Crabtree & Evelyn – No Tricks, Just Treats

One of the great benefits of using a microsite is how a brand can use it as a platform for a specific campaign to achieve a specific goal. By placing content on a separate site away from its main website, a brand can give it concentrated visibility that making it engaging instead of it competing with everything else on the main site or being restricted by the main website’s functionality.

When beauty brand Crabtree & Evelyn approached SMACK with the marketing objective of using Halloween as an opportunity to increase engagement and build its mailing list to boost footfall into physical stores, our creative digital agency took advantage of the aforementioned benefits to create a very effective, targeted microsite.

This is a great example of a microsite that has employed an aesthetic that differs from that of the brand’s main website. Going this route has an immediate impact on customers who have become familiar (and you know what they say about familiarity) with a brand’s usual, well, branding. By incorporating a slogan and colour scheme that hint at Halloween, SMACK was able to differentiate the microsite while taking advantage of seasonal recognition.

For comparison, here’s Crabtree & Evelyn’s main website’s homepage:

By interacting with the microsite, customers were able to claim a free gift with a purchase at a physical store. It was vital to make the microsite engaging but very simple to navigate so that users could get to their free gift code easily, something they could achieve in three basic steps, each including bold, unmissable call to action.

If there was ever a microsite example that proved how effective and versatile a marketing tool it is, this would be it. Online retail has gone through the roof in the last decade, with people preferring to do their shopping online.

Anything that can bring customers to a brand’s physical store where there’s a higher likelihood of impulse purchases and cross-selling is a golden goose to retail brands. This is what made this microsite so effective. Giving customers an easy way to get a free gift offered an incentive for them to visit the store, therefore increasing footfall notably.

In the process of claiming their free gift, another of the brand’s objectives – building its mailing list – was achieved via the email capture stage. With this information, Crabtree & Evelyn can build customer profiles and create targeted CRM campaigns. These two vital elements were achieved via a simple but effective microsite.

Check it out here:
https://smackagency.co.uk/work/beauty/crabtree-evelyn-halloween/

6. Red Bull – Karl Meltzer

Red Bull is a prime example of a brand that understands its position in the mind of the audience. The company’s market positioning efforts has even taken it to outer space. RedBull is very much self-aware of the sector it operates in and how it is not only in the business of selling an energy beverage, it is also in the business of sports, adventure, and human activity experience.

The brand has created quite a few microsites, but the microsite they built for ultrarunner Karl Meltzer really showcases this understanding. This interactive microsite allows the user to recount the runner and his crew’s experience as they set a new speed record for an Appalachian Trail thru-hike.

The microsite presents this achievement as a story. At the top, the user can go through notes made by those actually involved from day 1 to the last day, 46. This is accompanied by some lovely images of Karl doing his thing through beautiful settings, as well as pictures that paint a picture of the camaraderie of the crew and a sort of behind the scenes look at what was involved with this achievement.

Lower down the microsite, the user can really get to know who Karl Meltzer is and get more information about the trial by clicking the little white arrows. The information is delivered in digestible chunks, a microcosm of the microsite as a whole. This microsite example shows you don’t have to have the biggest budget in the world to deliver great, targeted content. Even big-name brands with deep pockets go the simple route sometimes because they understand the message is the most important thing.

One of the benefits of a microsites is that you can target a specific keyword that you want to rank for in search engines. A microsite is a great avenue to use for this because the search engine robots can view it as a one-stop-shop for all the information concerning the keyword searched by the user.

Because the microsite has its own domain and is not competing with other pages as it might do were the content on a larger, main website, it has a better chance of performing well for a given keyword. With this microsite, Red Bull has been able to achieve page 1 rankings on Google for users searching for Karl Meltzer. This is thanks to the amalgamation of great SEO and a focused microsite.

If your aim is to create content that showcases how your brand is more than just a corporation that only cares about selling its products or you want to rank better in search engines for one of your keywords, a microsite like that of Karl Meltzer is a great example of how it’s done.

Check it out here:
https://atrun.redbull.com/karl-meltzer-appalachian-trail/p/1

7. Dishoom – Attracting the Perfect Employee

So far, all the microsite examples we’ve covered focus on targeting customers/consumers in one shape or form. But microsites are not limited to this purpose, there are other creative ways to use the platform to achieve a given objective.

When award-winning Indian restaurant chain Dishoom was inundated with job applications and was struggling to find the right candidates for specific roles, they approached SMACK digital agency to find a solution for their recruitment problem. We were able to come up with the innovative idea of using a microsite to weed out unsuitable candidates and move the qualified ones to the next stage.

One of the main issues when it comes to recruitment is applicants not having a full understanding of what the role entails and what a business is all about. The first stage of the microsite addresses this by featuring a portal that gives them a clear understanding of what Dishoom is about as a business. For this microsite, SMACK decided to go with only minor variations to the client’s main website branding in order to have a seamless transition from potential candidates visiting the main website, then going on to the microsite to apply for roles.

The next section of the recruitment microsite allows the user to view job listings by location. Then, by clicking the call to action button, the listing expands to give details of the specific role.

From here, it is a simple case of clicking ‘Apply’ to go on to the next page. These microsite pages are presented without clutter and with easy navigation via unmissable call to action buttons.

When creating a microsite, it is important to understand the core value of your brand so that when it is visited by a user, there’s no confusion with messaging. What made this microsite so successful was that SMACK took into consideration Dishoom’s want for candidates who really get the business’s values and have a passion for what it does.

This led to us delving deep into what makes Dishoom tick as a brand including its history, food, and culture so that when it came to developing the microsite and how it should function and what content to give priority, it aligned with Dishoom’s values while also presenting the ‘soul’ of the business to potential candidates. The latter made it simple for candidates to decide whether this was the right employer for them or not, therefore weeding out those who may just apply on a whim or casually.

Check it out here:
https://smackagency.co.uk/work/dishoom-recruitment-microsite/

9. Waterwise – Every Last Drop

Water shortage and environmental awareness such as climate change have been big news in recent times. People are actively seeking information on what they can do to make a difference in their own lives. What better way to provide this information than a beautifully put together microsite? Every Last Drop is an example of a well-executed microsite that uses what I call a ‘One page, One message’ delivery.

The microsite is delivered in an interactive infographic style. It starts your avatar off in bed. As you scroll down, the avatar and setting shifts and fade from one scene to another, the first being bedroom to bathroom. This scroll and move function gives it an animated element that is engaging.

Each setting has a water consumption statistic, delivered in a clear, concise way. This water usage information is not limited to the obvious. It also covers water usage/wastage in the making of clothes, food, and its delivery to our homes via pipes.

Via an embedded video, a clear call to action on the last part of the microsite gives the option to learn more about water consumption and what the user can do reduce waste. There are also links to other websites where more information is available.

This microsite works in a similar way to the one SMACK built for RS Components in example 3. And similar to that microsite, the objective of delivering information in an engaging, unique way is its standout feature. With such a well put together microsite delivering non-sales driven information, Waterwise is staking its claim as a brand that cares about the environment and society at large.

Another feature worth mentioning is the gamification element of the microsite. There’s one particular section where the user is ‘driving’ the avatar down a road. Little elements like this can be the difference between a memorable experience of a microsite and one that is out of the mind once the user exits.

Check it out here:
http://everylastdrop.co.uk/

How to build a microsite

Well done! You’re one of the savvy, visionary people who recognises the potential a microsite has in helping your brand achieve specific digital marketing goals. While the popularity of microsites has increased over the years, it is still one of the more under-utilised or poorly executed marketing tools. This comprehensive guide on how to build a microsite takes you from setting the objectives of your microsite, all the way to launching it.

It’s worth defining exactly what a microsite is in order to make sure the process of building a microsite is as vivid as possible.

• Why are we building a microsite?

  This is a vital question to ask when deciding to build a microsite. Whether you’re aiming for improved brand positioning or launching a new product, the only way clear marketing objectives can be set is if you know why a microsite is the best option as a marketing strategy.

  Perhaps the greatest benefit of microsites is that brands can be very specific with what they are trying to achieve with them. Unlike larger websites whose purpose is to service every type of customer and can have dozens of metrics for measuring success, microsites are more targeted, filtered, and refined so that messaging is more precise and clearer objectives can be set.

Step 1. Set the objectives of your microsite

There must be a reason why you feel your main website is not the platform for whatever marketing campaign you’re building a microsite for. That reason should be what informs the objectives of the microsite.

Say you have just created an in depth piece of content that incorporates an interactive/engagement element. Being the visionary you are, you decide placing it on a microsite is the best way to get as many eyes on the content as possible, circumventing the possibility that it might get lost amongst the hundreds of pages on your main website. From this reasoning of why you need a microsite, the objectives of your microsite begin to emerge.

But before making the objectives concrete, first analyse which section of your audience you wish to target. Using customer persona profiles – their interests, demographics, desires, pain points, behaviour, stage of customer journey – and other data sources such as your CRM software, you can get an idea as to who this piece of content would be of the most interest to. This can be an objective in itself e.g. We want to reach women between the ages of 21 to 31 who own their homes and have shown prior interest in the content’s topic.

Once you’ve decided on your target audience, you can begin to set objectives. I’m a huge fan of using the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timebound) process in deciding goals and objectives.

Specific – The whole point of placing content on a microsite is the specificity factor. In the example above, your overall objective could be to raise/maintain brand awareness. However, it’s not enough to simply say you want eyes on the piece of content. Set out an exact number of unique visitors you want. You could say you want at least 20% of the women in your target group to visit the microsite. Going wider than the example, other specific objectives for placing content on a microsite can include:

Increase user engagement by 40%

Capture 1000 email addresses

Achieve 500 downloads of a white paper

Increase traffic to main website by 20% via the microsite

Increase lead generation for a product by 30%

Gain 50 organic links from reputable websites to improve link profile

Increase quarterly revenue by 7.5% through leads/sales from microsite

Double the number of listeners to your podcast

Setting these specific objectives will help you with all the other processes involved in building a microsite including design and how to measure ROI. Speaking of which…

Measurable – Your objectives have to be quantifiable in order to gauge how successful your microsite will be. Being specific with objectives makes this easier, as can be seen in the bullet points above. Setting objectives with predetermined metrics in mind will make not only measuring success easier, it will help when deciding the elements that need to be built into the microsite. For example, a form may need to be included on the microsite to measure how successful it is in capturing email addresses.

Achievable – Setting a high benchmark for what you want to achieve is not so much a terrible thing as it is a factor that could lead to a negative trickle down effect on other factors. Objectives too high to achieve could lead to budgeting issues or resource allocation problems, for example. Make sure the objectives of building a microsite are achievable.

Realistic – “The sky’s the limit.” “Reach for the stars”. “If the mind can perceive it, the person can achieve it.” But they also say “It’s a marathon, not a sprint.” This is still business so setting realistic goals and achieving them is a step towards winning the race. Setting unrealistic objectives for your microsite will affect factors like ROI measurement and outreach strategy to name but a few.

Timebound – One of the things that differentiates standard websites from microsites is the fact that the latter are usually temporary. Microsites are built to serve a purpose and once that is done, they are taken offline. So by its nature, a microsite requires a time limit to achieve its objectives. This makes perfect sense when you think about it. Most marketing campaigns last for a given period and a microsite is a marketing tool that works best as part of a campaign. Setting a time limit will also allow you to set specific, measurable, achievable, and realistic goals and objectives.

• Step 2. Decide on a domain name and purchase it

  At its core, marketing of any kind is communication. Because your microsite exists away from your main site, therefore reducing automatic brand recognition in the form of your domain name when a user sees it on Google or elsewhere, it’s vital that your choice of domain name for the microsite truly represents what you’re trying to say or achieve with it. Some of the best examples of microsites have catchy, memorable, or idea driven non-brand domain names or URLs that emphasise what the content is trying to communicate. Do not overlook the importance of this.

  Others may beg to differ, but it’s the author’s belief that registering a domain for a microsite should be sorted out as soon as possible for the obvious reason that all around the world people are registering thousands of domain names everyday. There’s nothing more disappointing than building a campaign around a slogan, theme, idea, or motto only to find out its domain name has been taken by some cyber squatter who can’t be contacted or wants you to pay through the nose to purchase it off them. You wouldn’t put the cart before the horse so why build a house (microsite) without a foundation (domain name)?

• Step 3. Have an SEO strategy

  Any sort of content that exists online should have a search engine optimisation plan. A microsite is no different, as it is a mini website. If you want your microsite listed in Google’s and indeed any search engine results pages, there is a minimum level of SEO work that has to be done for it to be picked up by search engine crawlers or robots.

  In order to make sure the microsite doesn’t end up in the abyss that is page number 3 and onwards on the results page however, you have to do more than the minimum. Having your objectives and your domain name sorted are important clogs in creating an SEO strategy for your microsite. In fact, you might even have to start thinking about SEO before registering a domain name as keywords in a URL is a major factor in rankings on search engine result pages. Speaking of which…

  Keywords

  Keyword research is, well, key. It can not only help in optimising content, but also be the reason you decide to build a microsite in the first place. For example, you might have a certain keyword that you want to rank better for or gain more brand recognition/association for and decide building a microsite is the best way to achieve this because it’s great for specific targeting.

  Knowing what your target audience is searching for and how they are doing so will help you build a microsite that the crawlers pick up as relevant to a search phrase and that satisfies the user’s intent. Google is very stringent when it comes to SEO best practice. You don’t want your microsite to fall foul.

  Other SEO-related factors to consider are meta tags, inbound and outbound links, domain name, URL structure, choice of CMS (Content Management System), mobile friendliness, responsiveness, design elements such as images and videos which can affect load speed.

• Step 4. Look at microsites competitors have built

  Like any sort of marketing process, building a microsite requires a bit of competitor analysis. This should apply to setting objectives but also the actual delivery of the final product. If you’re new to microsites, this is an especially useful step. Looking at what others have done and how they’ve done it will paint a much clearer picture of the online marketing possibilities of a microsite.

  From information driven microsites, to ones that are more focused on interactivity and engagement, to sales driven ones, no matter your marketing objectives, there is an example of a microsite out there that has been built to achieve the same. Use these microsite examples as a template or canvass to start brainstorming microsite design ideas.

• Step 5. Make a decision on your microsite’s design

  You’re now at the stage where you have a clear picture of the purpose of your microsite and the foundation it should be built on based on objectives, SEO, and examples of other microsites. It is now time to come up with an actual, concrete design. Aside from the aesthetics of the microsite, some important elements to consider during the design development stage include:

  Number of pages – Is the objective better served by having just one page or several?

  Navigation – Will the microsite have the traditional navigational functionality using clicks or is it more scroll-driven or will it be a combination of both?

  Gamification – is there a gameplay element to the microsite? Some of the best interactive and engaging microsites have this functionality but they require a very precise design.

  CTA (Call to Action) – Where on the page(s) will your call to action or instructions go? What colours will make them stand out and be attention-grabbing?

  Media – Will the microsite contain videos, images, audio, animation? Answering this question will have a noticeable impact on your design plans.

  Social media – How and where does this fit into the microsite?

  This is the best time to bring in an agency such as SMACK (hey, one plug isn’t so bad) that specialises in website development and design with particular experience in the building of microsites. The agency’s knowledge will help you in understanding what is possible, what works best for the elements listed above, as well as bringing in additional ideas.

  It’s worth mentioning again here that a microsite is not bound by a business’s usual branding elements. Depending on objectives, you may consider doing something completely different to make the content stand out or you may decide to only make minor changes in order to keep some sort of continuity and brand recognition. It really depends on what you’re aiming for. It makes sense to keep most of your branding elements if the microsite is part of the marketing campaign for a new product launch, for example. For a microsite built to show another side to your business, going for a radical change of branding to further emphasise this point could be a better option.

• Step 6. Create the content

  “Content is King” is a slogan that might be overused but it’s used often for a reason. Content is the bottomline of any marketing campaign no matter what guise it takes.

  Work can start on this step as early as after step one i.e. after you’ve decided on the objectives of the microsite. The analogy of putting the cart before the horse also applies here; you don’t want a beautiful machine without an engine. You should at least start creating some sort of draft early on.

  As you go through each stage, tweeks can be made to content in order to facilitate SEO strategy, competitor analysis, and design. With all those elements fully realised, you can now create the final content the microsite will host.

  It is key here to have a perfect idea of:

  Tone of voice

  The user intent or pain point you want the microsite to satisfy or cure

  What you’re trying to communicate

  The actions you want the user to take

  What you want them to take away from their visit

  The interaction between the text content and any other elements such as video, audio, images, animation

• Step 7. Connect the microsite to analytics and marketing tools

  The easiest way to measure the success of the microsite is by connecting it to the analytics tools your main website is connected to. Google analytics and other such platforms will allow you to track the performance of the microsite so you can monitor the objectives you set based on specific metrics.

  If the microsite has an email marketing element, you can connect it to your marketing automation platform or customer relationship management system.

  These tools can also help you when it comes to testing the microsite. They are particularly helpful for A/B split tests whereby you publish two different versions of the microsite randomly (preferably to a test group) to see which performs better. Based on these results, a decision can be made as to what the final version you publish to the general public should look or function like.

• Step 8. Launch the microsite

  Now that all your hard work as culminated in the building of a fantastic microsite, it’s time to unleash it to the world (or your target audience). But the work doesn’t stop there.

  A separate step that covers outreach and promotion could be added to this guide, but suffice to say the same sort of effort you put into promoting your main website should also be put into the microsite, albeit with variations that suit the target audience and what it is you’re communicating. Internet marketing platforms such as social media, blogs, content distribution platforms, PPC advertising, display advertising are ways you can get eyes on your microsite.

  The process of building a microsite might seem daunting but it can prove to be very educational in further understanding your customers and digital marketing as a whole. Contact SMACK creative digital agency (okay, I lied, two plugs isn’t so bad) if you’re interested in creating a microsite and need assistance. We can support you from any of the stages in this guide.

• Conclusion

  Well, thanks for sticking with us. We hoped you enjoyed our guide to microsites. If you are looking for an microsite design agency why not check out some of our recent work over on our microsite portfolio.

  And hey, if you found this guide useful, please feel free return the favour and give us a quick share on your social channels!