A smaller scale site designed to showcase targeted products and solutions is often considered a microsite or campaign site. But why and when would you want to use one? Here’s more insight on why your business might want to develop a microsite:
1. Urgency
Often clients want to move forward on a microsite idea because there is some kind of pressure in the schedule. Product teams tend to have market-sensitive priorities. But at medium- and large-sized companies, developers are often committed to established projects they can’t so easily be pulled from.
Technology and markets move fast. So a marketing director may rightly think, “Why would I allow our competition to get way out ahead us?” When a corporate site can’t accommodate new product or campaign needs right away, stakeholders will look for other ways to accomplish the same goal.
A microsite can serve as a landing page to collect data and help you gauge the viability of a new product or service.
2. Incompatibility
Smaller companies face challenges that can be addressed with microsites as well. Recently, we helped a consumer brand launch a site to coincide with a new line of products about to hit retail stores.
Main challenge? They needed to differentiate branding from their main product line, so inclusion on the larger corporate site wasn’t terribly practical for the launch. Complicating matters, their main website hadn’t yet been made responsive, and they knew mobile devices would be a critical factor considering the prospective audience for their product.
Company stakeholders needed an “outside the box” solution, so the Spark Creative team jumped in to help implement a modest site in a matter of weeks — not months.
3. Focused, Updated Content
If a large company site is designed to accommodate a wide range of content and initiatives, it may already be easy to add targeted messaging, or even a whole campaign. But if not – and you want to contribute value to a niche market – having a specific platform to do so may serve you better.
Posting curated content will better position you to drive traffic and interest through social media tools. A microsite also enables you to build a more qualified audience via relevant content. Additionally, you can focus your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts to content on this one, unique URL.
4. Flexibility
Leveraging an outside resource to help you develop a microsite delivers three qualities teams in large corporations crave; agility, autonomy, and speed. Considering the number one reason above is urgency, you can see why a faster, shorter development schedule appeals to decision makers. The other benefit here is you often have more latitude to experiment with ideas that might otherwise cause problems on your main website.
A campaign site with original content gives you the flexibility to test ideas as you bring them to market.
5. Lack of Internal IT Resources
Access to qualified developers is a universal challenge. Corporations both large and small find it difficult to maintain staff required for ongoing initiatives these days. Even when they do, your team’s latest initiative may not be their highest priority. This is another area where an outside team can really help propel your efforts forward.
6. Cost Efficiency (Bonus Reason!)
Development costs for a microsite are often a lot less than you’d expect, especially if you are flexible. And, it may seem counter-intuitive, but a microsite can actually turn out as a great, strategic investment. A microsite gives your marketing team a “sandbox” so they can work quickly, test ideas, and gather immediate feedback from results.
Essentially, you can test the viability of a product, solution, or idea without complicating the assets on your main site. The intelligence you gather from the effort will definitely help you make better decisions on how to integrate the content and marketing approaches on your main site later.
Think You’re Ready?
A microsite can be a great tool to help you accomplish either high-level or specific marketing goals. Focused content on a standalone microsite enables you to try new ideas and measure response very quickly. What you learn from the campaign site may serve as valuable intelligence when you’re ready to fold that content back into the larger corporate site later.
Spark Creative works fast and is typically ahead of our clients’ decision making processes. That means campaign site engagements can scale up quickly. Please let me know if you have questions!
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