Digital Marketing - Should you use microsites for marketing campaigns?

Digital marketing now gives us so much more flexibility and ability to target certain audiences and campaigns separately from our main brand and main website.

Using a microsite for a specific campaign or even for a specific market segment / sector can have advantages. My experience at Haines Watts meant that we used microsites for a number of things over the years, with both disadvantages and advantages. If you’re thinking of whether a microsite is right for you then read on…

What is a microsite?

A microsite is a separate website to your main website, generally they are simpler, smaller and built to focus on either one campaign or market segment and have their own url/domain name.

What are the advantages of a microsite?

1)     Push the boundaries of your brand

Often your main website will be the showcase for your main brand. However, during the life of a brand and even a main website, you may want to push the boundaries or evolve your brand, by testing out new imagery, new tone of voice and new topics that you wouldn’t always associate with your main brand. A microsite can be an ideal way of doing this.

In Haines Watts we did just that, with a strategic marketing campaign aimed at business owners called, For Love or Money – The Secret Life of the Business Owner. This campaign microsite not only pushed the boundaries of the Haines Watts brand, but also presented unique content, new imagery and a new tone of voice that you wouldn’t always associate with an accountancy firm. This campaign and approach would have looked out of place on the main Haines Watts website, so building a separate microsite allowed us to push boundaries, test out new things and see how they were received by our audiences.

2)     Google rankings and SEO

Since a microsite has its own URL, it gives another digital access point to your brand. If you write content that is keyword-rich and specific to the topic of the site – the site will be more valued and higher ranked by Google and other search engines.

It can often be easier to get better Google rankings by using targeted keywords and targeted urls on microsites, then burying the content as sub pages in a main corporate website.

3)     Cost efficiency

If budget is tight or if you want a completely different look and feel to your main website, but don’t have the budget for a new corporate site, then a microsite can often be a way to design something that has a different look and feel and different navigation, without a large website rebuild or redesign project costs.

4)     Increased awareness in different segments / sectors

If you want to target a completely different sector or maybe a completely different service line to a very niche audience, then a microsite can often be a good way to do that. Also sector specific areas of your main website can also work well if they are well thought out and built, promoted and optimised.

What are the disadvantages?

Depending on the purpose of your microsite, often one of the main disadvantages is having to keep another website up to date and relevant. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen people so keen to develop specialist microsites for sectors or services, with the promise they’ll keep them up to date and relevant, and within a short space of time they are out of date and actually damage the brand far more than improve it.

If you’re developing a microsite for only single campaign purposes, then just remember to take it down when the campaign has ended.

Also, if not developed in the right way microsites may confuse your audience by only seeing a very small segment of your work or brand. An easy way to overcome this is to ensure there are links back to your main website from the microsite to give people the option to find out more about your wider brand and services.

Driving traffic to a microsite

Building a microsite and expecting to get loads of traffic organically from Google just isn’t going to work. That said, don’t forget to submit the site to major search engines and optimise the site content and messaging. But also have a clear plan on how you will drive traffic to the site. Support your microsite with online paid promotion. At Haines Watts we used banner ads across the web and LinkedIn advertising to drive traffic to microsites. Social media posts, social advertising and email marketing are all great ways to drive traffic to your microsite.

The value of microsites is sometimes underestimated, but done correctly, they are a great way to promote a specific service, sector expertise or a stand alone campaign. They can enhance your brand, give you scope to push boundaries of your main brand and can be cost and time efficient.