What Is a Microsite? A Guide for Small Businesses in 2024

Do you know what’s the biggest challenge when it comes to online marketing? Sharing the right content for your target audience to engage them. One important thing to realize here is that not everyone in your target audience will engage with every content you share.

Thus, using a single main page of the company’s website is the focal point for all your digital marketing efforts. In the oversaturated world of digital ads and other distractions, you can only set yourself apart by developing a clear content creation and distribution strategy.

Start building a microsite to create content focusing on one product, service, or campaign. These sites will provide a potent solution that streamlines your cluttered home pages. Furthermore, they allow you to focus on promoting and creating content that will help drive awareness and boost conversions.

In this blog post, we’ll discuss what microsites are, the different types of microsites, the benefits they offer, and more.

Table of Contents

Key Takeaways

With less information to distract users, microsites provide a more focused and precise presentation of your business’s specific product, service, or campaign.
Integrating social media with a microsite is essential to expand your audience reach, nurture relationships, and increase product visibility.
Incorporating interactive content like quizzes, games, polls, and multimedia in microsites can help small businesses get higher engagement.
A microsite is about creating shareable, relevant, and helpful content for a target audience responding to their queries.
Your microsite should be easy to navigate so visitors can instantly understand what you offer and how it can benefit them.

What is a Microsite?

A microsite is a cluster of pages that promotes a company’s products, services, events, campaign, or entire brand. It occupies a stand-alone domain or sub-domain of the parent website. Microsites are beneficial mainly for small businesses, as they can create a separate page for a particular campaign or initiative and power up their presence online.

Furthermore, businesses can showcase their unique identity, messaging, and visual branding elements in a targeted manner.

Microsites can create buzz and word-of-mouth publicity. With so many features, such as interactive elements, multimedia presentations, targeting specific audiences, or exclusive behind-the-scenes insights, they can help grab visitors’ attention and interest.

Understanding More About a Microsite

Microsite holds many strategic benefits for your current and upcoming marketing program. They are also referred to as independent brand pages that exist outside the company’s domain.

These sites are created to promote specific campaigns or target particular customer segments. However, many people get confused and consider a microsite a regular website.

To make it clear, there is a huge difference between the two. But how? Let’s discuss this in the bulleted section below:

Websites are your primary online presence, whereas microsites are an extension of your web presence.
Websites cater to a larger audience; however, microsites are geared toward a specific audience.
Websites are your business or brand’s permanent footprint, but microsites are relatively small and can be temporary. You can also shut them down once the campaign is over.
A microsite is ideal for experimenting with your new or existing products. However, doing that on your primary business website may not bring the desired results.
The main objective of a microsite is to get a large amount of exposure to a new product or future event. On the contrary, your primary website focuses on your business and brand, not any particular product, service, or campaign.
Microsites are hosted on your business website’s domain or subdomain with a different URL.

You can choose from different types of microsites, depending on your requirements. Let’s learn more about all of them.

Types of Microsites

Here are some of the types of microsites that you can create.

1. Product-launch microsite

During a product launch, creating a microsite can catch your target audience’s attention by focusing solely on its USPs. For example, if a chocolate-making company introduces a new line of chocolate treats with specialized ingredients, it may create a microsite dedicated to the new product line.

When you create this product-launch microsite, you should include all the information about the product, its benefits, and how it solves customers’ problems. Simultaneously, including a strong CTA that directs your users directly to the buying page will also help you close deals faster.

2. Campaign-focused microsite

You can also create microsites to help with your digital marketing campaigns.

Creating such a page will allow you to send website traffic and encourage them to learn more about your special campaign offer. The target audience of these campaigns who are interested in learning more about the product can be redirected to this microsite, which has all the information about the product.

The microsite you create to help your marketing campaign is independent and uses the content designed and written for that particular product or offer.

For example, a jam manufacturing company highlights its raspberry-flavored jams as being different from the rest of its brands, offering a special introduction offer for them.

3. Event promotion microsite

Regardless of the type of company you run, microsites can be used to promote your upcoming or existing product or campaign. You must include all the event information on these sites, such as the launch date, time, location, and host.

Creating a microsite is beneficial for expanding the reach of your campaigns or new products market as it gives your audiences all the information required before they would like to make a purchase.

For example, suppose you are sponsoring an event to help disabled children. In that case, you can create a microsite for that purpose and provide them with information about the charity, how they can donate, how their contribution will help the underprivileged, etc.

4. Lead capture microsite

These microsites are created to generate leads for your business. They can help identify potential customers who have already shown interest in your product, and such leads have a relatively high chance of being converted into customers.

Lead capture microsites usually have an intuitive design and comprise a form that users can fill out to request more information. The CTA you include on these sites should clearly state what the user will get by filling out the form.

For example, a washing machine manufacturing company taps those web users who have already shown an intent to purchase a washing machine. You can run an ad campaign around the best washing machine and the brand name.

Once users click on the ad, they will be redirected to this microsite. This site will have a minimalistic interface, including a single web page with an inquiry form.

5. Target market microsite

If your target audience is in different geographical boundaries, you can create microsites to cater to their distinct requirements. Target market microsites also enable businesses to find users from diverse demographics and target users looking for products in specific states or countries.

Take the above example; the customer who clicks on the ad will be redirected to their specific location page.

Benefits of Using a Microsite

You know the types of microsites; below-mentioned are some of the significant advantages of using microsites.

1. Increased brand awareness

The primary benefit of microsites is that they help increase brand awareness by reaching the right audience. These engaging sites allow one to promote one brand, product, or service.

By creating a microsite for a particular campaign or initiative, brands can differentiate themselves from others in the market and improve their online visibility, strengthening their brand presence.

2. Improved SEO

You can create microsite content aligning with the best keywords to increase your visibility in search engines. Using the right keywords helps target the right audience and also allows better ranking on SERPs.

Every microsite has its URL, which is relatively easier to remember. Therefore, people can find what you have to offer easily. Websites do not have more than one or two keywords in their domain names, whereas microsites have numerous keyword-rich domain names.

Another added advantage of microsites is their traffic to your primary website. So, the SEO benefits microsites offer are commendable.

3. Enhanced user-engagement

With less information to distract users, a microsite provides a more focused and precise presentation of your brand or product. Instead of showing your entire inventory, your audience will be able to see what is relevant to them and will be able to access it easily.

For example, a microsite specific to a region is an excellent way to show the target audience in that area what you have available in their region.

A microsite highlights just one particular product/service or line, giving potential customers a faster shopping experience.

4. Cost efficient

When running a small business, you must consider how to save money while maximizing sales. Setting up a microsite is more affordable than building and maintaining bigger websites.

Many people think running an individual page or site can be expensive, but that’s not true. The results you get from it help you create value for your customers and generate more revenue.

Apart from the limited number of pages, the content also fits page limits. It allows your audience to scroll through and spot lines that have just a few words on them. Another excellent part about microsites is that they are quite easy to manage.

Best Practices for Microsite Development

After learning about the benefits, you should create a dedicated online space for your product, service, or campaign.

Here are a few tips that you should keep in mind for microsite development.

1. Clear objectives and audience targeting

Many businesses create microsites to communicate with different audiences, but it is recommended that they be distinct from their main website. These sites should be clear about their objectives and create concise content to target the right audience.

Before building a microsite, remember that it will serve a specific purpose and support your existing website. Do not repeat the same content you have already published on your website; keep it unique.

However, you need to explain your organization, as new people might visit your microsite unaware of your brand.

Keep the objectives on your microsite clear and focus on motivating visitors to take immediate action. Minimize the clutter and hook your audiences to get the message in a jiffy.

2. User-centric design

Your microsite should be easy to navigate so visitors can instantly understand what you offer and how it can benefit them. Microsites are quite different from regular business website designs. In microsites, you can post content that displays out-of-the-box creativity and builds curiosity about your product among visitors.

Another important aspect is using mobile-first indexing, which is only possible if your microsite is mobile-responsive. Nowadays, most site traffic comes from mobile devices; therefore, your microsite design should start with a mobile-first approach.

Use visuals to grab visitors’ attention when they open your microsite. There are various ways of doing this, such as using bold typography and attractive colors, adding social proof like badges, client logos, and testimonials, mentioning discounts or giveaways (if any), etc.

The website must be easy to use and have a captivating microsite design. These things go hand in hand to get the best results from your microsite.

3. Content strategy

You cannot just post anything and everything on your microsite. Creating a content strategy to make the most of it would be best.

A microsite can increase brand awareness and drive more leads by positioning the right, relevant, and compelling content on these sites. Remember, the content you post on these sites must comprehend your target audience’s pain points, and they should understand your message within a few seconds of landing on your page.

Furthermore, using a clear call to action is important, as it will help increase the effectiveness of your business’s campaign.

One of the major reasons people leave websites is that they don’t know what to do next. Thus, you should never expect your visitors to be able to read your mind and evaluate the hidden message. Instead, make it transparent by guiding them with powerful calls to action (CTAs).

4. Analytics and optimization

Monitor your microsite’s performance regularly to know what works best for you and what parts are available for improvement. You can also use tools like EngageBay Web Analytics to monitor your site’s performance and make data-driven improvements.

EngageBay allows you to monitor and analyze your microsite’s indexing status and optimize its search visibility accordingly.

You can gain valuable insights into how users interact with your microsite and monitor the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. The report can tell you the page views, unique visitors, sessions, bounce rate, and exit rate, based on which you can change your campaign.

Case Studies and Examples

These are some of the best microsite examples used by some prominent brands.

1. Nike’s Air Max Day Microsite

Nike needs no introduction as it has been one of the biggest shoe brands since 1971. Its Air Max series started in 1987. After 25 years, in 2014, Nike started celebrating Air Max’s 25th anniversary with the launch of Air Max Day, on which they launched numerous new styles and different shoes.

For this, they created a microsite to launch new models and provide updates on the upcoming models. This page got a great response as they mentioned every small detail required by all their potential customers, such as the time of release, colors in which the shoes will be launched, sizes, features, and whatnot.

This made it easy for customers to find and purchase these shoes, as they knew where to get all the information instead of searching their main website.

Another major benefit of creating this site for them was market segmentation. Nike also used phrases like “We gave up giving up,” “My better is better than your better,” etc. in their campaign to connect with people emotionally. All this worked well, and its microsite grew targeted traffic and drove sales.

2. Patagonia’s Blue Heart Campaign

Patagonia is an American retailer of outdoor recreation clothing founded in 1973. They are also famous for making numerous environmental sustainability efforts.

For this, Patagonia started a campaign and created a microsite for it. This campaign aims to protect Europe’s last wild rivers. The brand also requested the banks stop investing in destroying Europe’s last wild rivers and offered proposals to build over 3,000 hydropower projects.

In this microsite, they requested citizens worldwide to stop funding these dams and protect these rivers. They mentioned the cause, made people aware by providing the facts and repercussions, and provided the solution.

In the end, they asked readers to sign the petition and provided a link to their documentary film based on it, Blue Heart.

They separated this campaign from their main website because people come on that platform to buy products with a different intention; mixing them would not give this cause the desired results they are getting now. Thus, creating a microsite can help you get more attention, whether it is for a campaign or a product.

3. Chipotle’s A Future Begins: Support for young farmers with multimedia storytelling

Chipotle is an international chain of fast-casual restaurants specializing in fresh Mexican food throughout the US. They started a campaign to encourage people to support farmers by creating a small film on it. In this film, they wanted people to know how competitive industrial agriculture is and that taking over the family farm isn’t alluring anymore.

The story tells of a farmer whose farming did not yield much return, so his son did not take over that business and went out to build a successful career.

However, after a couple of years, he returned and decided to pursue farming as his career. He used all his dad’s farming knowledge, researched extensively, and implemented various modern techniques to maximize the yield. Eventually, he could get a good yield and make a good profit.

Chipotle supports farmers and is committed to investing $5 million over five years to help the next generation succeed. With this short film, they want to raise money and ask people to support farmers to create a brighter food future.

Advanced Features of a Microsite

Here are some of the features you get by building a microsite.

1. Interactive content

Building a microsite is primarily about creating seamless content experiences for users. To increase engagement, you can incorporate different elements, such as quizzes, games, polls, and multimedia. These aspects improve engagement and keep visitors on your website longer.

Microsites’ objectives and audiences are targeted so that you can create specific, experience-based content that fulfills your objectives.

The quizzes or games you offer on microsites will provide information about your customers and help you learn about their buying behavior, issues, and requirements.

Using such interactive content, microsites can transform from static pages to engaging experiences that keep visitors returning for more. In fact, by using surveys and polls, you can gain insights into the preferences of your visitors, which can be used to create future content and alter marketing strategies.

2. Personalization and customization

Microsite is about personalization and customization as you create it to promote a particular product or campaign. To get the best outcome from your microsite, ask yourself a few questions so that it targets the right audience:

What specific outcome are you expecting with your microsite?
What metrics can be used to determine if your microsite design is effective?
Can you achieve the goal with the strategy and features you use on your microsite?
What content is most relevant to your goal?
What is the time frame you want to achieve your objective?

Once you have answers to all these questions, you can create a perfect microsite design for your audience. There are various other advanced features, such as custom pop-up forms to capture the attention of your website visitors and personalized emails based on how they interact with your microsite.

3. Integration with social media

Are you thinking of developing a promotion strategy to drive traffic to your microsite? Leveraging social media platforms can help elevate your business! Doing this will enable your users to make well-informed decisions.

Moreover, it can also help improve customer experience, as these social media platforms will help you truly understand your customers by letting them raise their concerns and provide feedback.

Other interactive ways to keep your visitors connected include creating hashtags to increase your brand’s digital presence and adding them to your microsite’s social media links. This will help followers discover and follow your brand’s latest posts and discussions and enable cross-promotion between your social media accounts.

You can also put share buttons on your microsite. This will encourage potential customers to share your content with their friends.

Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

There are some common mistakes that a lot of businesses make while building microsites. We have mentioned all of them so that you can avoid all these pitfalls.

1. Overcomplicating the microsite design

When creating a microsite, remember that less is often more when it comes to navigation. Too many navigation options can make it difficult for the audience to find what they want. Thus, it is better to keep the microsite simple by narrowing down the options.

If visitors can’t find what they’re looking for quickly and easily, they will likely leave. To avoid these challenges, your microsite’s menu should always be organized into clear subcategories.

2. Ignoring mobile users

Most visitors use their mobile phones to access every small piece of information and make a purchase. Thus, it is important to ensure that your microsite is mobile-friendly.

If your website looks and functions poorly on mobile phones and tablets, you will likely lose organic traffic and potential customers. So, ensuring your website does not take long to open and is easy to use on a smartphone is important.

One major benefit of a mobile-friendly website is that the web page automatically adjusts to the type of device. For example, the buttons become bigger for a more straightforward click and the text size changes to fit within the screen.

On the contrary, a microsite not optimized for mobile devices requires zooming and scrolling to find and read information, images are not completely visible, and links are difficult to find and click.

Therefore, make your microsite mobile-responsive as it improves user experience and search visibility and increases visitors’ time on your site.

3. Lack of clear CTAs

A microsite without a clear call to action can be a missed opportunity to convert visitors into customers. They are essential to the microsite as they motivate visitors to interact and engage more deeply with your product.

CTAs can also encourage visitors to subscribe to your email campaigns and help build long-lasting customer relationships.

Call to action can also direct visitors to an inquiry form about a specific topic, encourage them to download a product sheet, or push them to buy your new product by showcasing its features. So, remember to incorporate CTAs on your microsite effectively, make them visually appealing, and position them in prominent locations.

Conclusion

Using microsites can benefit your business if you plan to launch a new product or want to run a campaign.

Microsites allow you to publish relevant information about your business and convey a unique message that differs from your primary website.

Leveraging microsites helps your users avoid distractions and lets them focus on your campaign, product, and the main message. This increases the chances of achieving your goals and driving sales.

Businesses of all sizes can make the most of these microsites as they optimize their site for particular keywords, enhance visibility in the SERPs, and build backlinks for their main website. Therefore, a microsite can be a great complement and a useful addition to cultivating brand loyalty and targeting the right audiences by creating niche content.

EngageBay is an all-in-one marketing, sales, and customer support software for small businesses, startups, and solopreneurs. You get email marketing, marketing automation, landing page and email templates, segmentation and personalization, sales pipelines, live chat, and more.

FAQ

1. What is a microsite, and how is it different from a regular website?

Microsites are branded content sites focusing on a specific campaign, product, or service rather than the entire company and its offerings. On the contrary, a website is a broader platform intended to represent a company or a brand.

2. How can microsites improve your business’s SEO?

A microsite is like a hub of information for specific keywords, which allows better ranking on SERPS. By using the right keywords, you can reach your target audience, which will help get more organic traffic to your website and increase your ranking in search engines.

3. What are the best practices for a user-friendly microsite design?

The major things you need to remember when creating a user-friendly microsite are that it should be easy to navigate, less cluttered, linked to the main website, have concise content, and have a compelling visual design.

4. How do I measure the success of my microsite?

You can use tools like EngageBay Web Analytics to measure your page views, unique visitors, sessions, bounce rate, and exit rate.

5. Can microsites be integrated with social media platforms?

Yes, you can integrate your microsite with social media platforms. This can help you increase engagement and virality, as visitors might share your page or product with their friends or followers.

6. What types of content work best on microsites?

The primary goal of a microsite is to keep the customer informed and engaged. Therefore, you can use text content, images, videos, and user-generated content on your microsite.

7. How can I ensure my microsite is mobile-friendly?

You need to ensure it’s responsive to adapt and rearrange itself to fit the screen size.

8. What are common mistakes to avoid when creating a microsite?

The major mistakes to avoid while creating a microsite are unclear navigation, weak call to action, too many elements, poor accessibility, and not making it mobile-friendly.

9. How do I target a specific audience with a microsite?

To target a specific audience, you must define goals before you start working on the site.

10. What tools can develop and maintain a microsite?

You can use marketing and analytics tools to develop and maintain a microsite.