What is a Microsite, and why is it different from a website?
A microsite is a website that is typically used in targeted marketing campaigns. It is simply a stripped down website, with only 1 or a few simple and easy to use webpages on it.
A microsite generally has one clear marketing message and may feature a strongly defined "call to action".
At Shifted we use a number of microsites for our SEM (Google Paid Search) marketing. If you search Sydney Marketing Agency in Google you are directed to a Microsite Landing Page for our Marketing Services - rather than to our homepage which covers a broad range of subjects and messages.
Why do we need a Microsite in our web marketing?
That's a question that comes up often in discussions with clients. Why would any company need more than one website?
If you're a large corporation, it is fairly obvious that you need a separate site for each brand you offer, and a separate site for corporate background material and perhaps investor information.
But what if you're a small or medium-sized company with a limited number of products or services? Then the question becomes, do your products relate to one another? Does one item flow into the next? Is your audience for each product or service the same?
And what about totally different audiences for the same product: audiences that need to be approached with totally different tactics? And then there are special circumstances like new product launches, time sensitive marketing campaigns, and limited availability offers?
Microsites or Mini Campaign Websites or Alternative Marketing Websites are an effective method of enhancing your marketing efforts and targeting optional audiences you wouldn't have otherwise reached using your traditional sales marketing approach.
Here are 7 reasons why microsites improve your web marketing ROI.
1. Focus Your Presentation and Message: eliminate distraction and non relevant clutter.
It is human nature to want to get your money's worth, but when it comes to web marketing this can be counter-productive. Wanting to cram everything you provide into one website aimed at every interested audience only creates clutter and confusion.
Forcing visitors to sift through reams of website material only creates frustration and irritation, and with a click of a mouse they're off to the next competitor listed on their favorite search engine before they even get to your relevant information.
A campaign or brand specific website allows you to get right to the point. Greet your targeted audience with a signature video Web-host supported by appropriate images and text. If a lot of text material is required, then have it turned it into an audio presentation so the material is made more accessible, understandable, and easy to absorb.
A focused brand or campaign site can shorten your sales cycle by making what you provide clear and distinct.
2. Use Alternative Tactics: experiment with non traditional campaign and sales' approaches.
Most companies follow a consistent sales approach that they have found successful. This is both a good thing and a bad thing: following a plan that has worked in the past aimed at your traditional customer base makes sense, except that it also limits you in reaching new audiences for your products and services.
There may be markets for what you provide that you haven't ever thought of, or that you are afraid to approach because they conflict with your current methods, promotions, or initiatives. Why give up on these potential customers when you can create an audience specific Web-presentation on a separate campaign website aimed specifically at that market. With a series of highly targeted websites you speak to the needs of specific audiences and at the same time insulate your regular clients from the alternative approaches.
In a highly competitive marketplace, your competition will be looking for every opportuníty to take advantage of markets you ignore. Don't let them. You can get to them first and establish your company as the niche leader. All it takes is a little imagination, effort, and a budget to implement. This way you can have your cake and eat it too.
3. Create Urgency & Impact: campaign sites urge quick response, while creating a memorable impression.
Website visitors are always complaining how much time it takes them to search for and find the products and services they need. This often translates into complaints about download times, but the fact is, with the extensive availability of broadband, it's not download times that frustrate people, it's having to search through multiple pages and levels, in a hide-and-seek game to find what they want.
A campaign or brand-specific alternative marketing site gets right to the point and delivers the information or the promotíon referenced in your email, banner, and print ads, or television and radio commercials.
And if you use a signature video Web-host to deliver the information, you are making sure the presentation has impact; so even if a visitor doesn't view everything, they at least get the core message in a way they won't forget.
4. Target New & Alternative Audiences: create new markets for old products and services.
Not every audience for a product can be approached with the same tactics. Specific brand or campaign sites allow you to customize your approach for new or alternative audiences appealing to their specific lifestyles or behavior patterns.
If you've had experience running a sales staff or rep network, you know that salespeople who call on one specific market are rarely successful when asked to simultaneously call on another. Different markets require different approaches. Like a one-size-fits-all hat, it rarely fits anybody. Customize and isolate your approach to different markets, so you can speak directly to that market's needs and attitudes.
The marketplace is often more innovative than the marketer in finding new ways to use old products; ways the manufacturer hadn't realized existed. Ask your customers how they use your products and then go after that market with a direct campaign that takes advantage of that specific niche.
5. Isolate & Differentiate Brands: target specific audiences with specific tactics.
Companies that provide a large number of products or services often confuse potential customers by presenting far too many options and alternatives. The result is the Web-visitor doesn't buy anything because they don't want to purchase the wrong thing, or not get the best deal. Even if you get the sale, you may lose the customer because they made the wrong decision.
You want to provide prospects a limited number of distinct alternatives, just enough so they feel they have been given a choice, and don't have to look elsewhere. But too much choice within the same product category creates buyer indecision. If a product or service is aimed at a particular market because it has specific features, create a separate website to sell it. Isolating a product line on a separate website allows you to create a distinct image and brand story for that offering.
6. Accelerate Comprehension & Shorten Sales Cycle: be clear, be understood, be direct, and sales will follow.
Campaign websites get right to the point. They present the marketing message quickly, and promptly direct people to take action without making them wade through mission statements and corporate histories that for campaign purposes just get in the way.
The longer it takes for someone to understand what the campaign is all about, the less likely they are to stick around long enough to make sense out of it. This is why we strongly recommend adding video and audio to the presentation. Video and audio allows you to say what needs to be said in the most understandable, persuasive, and memorable manner.
When it comes to website visitors you probably only have one shot at making a lasting impression, so don't blow it by delivering a boring or confusing presentation.
7. Support Other Advertising Efforts: supplement other marketing material with engaging, viral presentations.
Campaign websites can function as landing sites and contact venues for print, television, radio, online video, banner, and display ads, as well as for articles, newsletters, and news releases.
By segregating your campaign site you can more easily track responses better than if the campaign material was integrated into your corporate site. Separating your campaign website from your main site allows you to experiment with marketing tactics aimed at new or alternative audiences, with approaches that may not be suitable for your regular site visitors. You may not even want your regular customers to know that it is your company that's running the campaign, so people will regard it as something completely new.
Labels: marketing efficiency, sem
Posted by Nick HaC @ 11:26 PM
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Digg thisAt Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
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We have been experimenting with the power of search engine domain name relevancy.
For example, in our business, we want to be top 5 in google for a whole bunch of keyphrases.
This includes some fairly competitive search keyphrases that many other companies want to be in the top 5.
Apparantly, one of the interesting thing about google and other search engines is that they place significant relevancy to keyword matching within domain names.
So we have just purchased
http://www.SydneyWebMarketing.com - Sydney Web Marketing
http://www.SydneyVideoProduction.com - Sydney Video Production
http://www.SydneyAdvertisingAgency.com - Sydney Advertising Agency
http://www.SydneyMarketingAgency.com - Sydney Marketing Agency
In theory, this will help us jump our rankings. We have redirected these domains to our existing website, which most importantly does have lots of relevant content to these keywords.
We will post an update in a week or 2 and let you know how effective domain name relevancy is for Search Engine Rankings
If your interested in Search Engine Optimistation and internet marketing, give us a buzz, we want to talk to you :)
Labels: Keyword Research, search, search marketing, sem, seo, Sydney Internet Marketing, Sydney Online Marketing
Posted by Nick HaC @ 7:46 AM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
Give us a buzz! We want to talk to you!!!
Interesting news from the ACCC who say that Consumers consider blogs as reliable and as influential as mainstream media.
Sounds like call to action for online reputation monitoring :P Its also interesting to consider how the ACCC see's its role in new media. Will they try to control and censor australian bloggers and online review sites.
"CONSUMERS who get their news from the internet are likely to trust a blog for reliability as much as a mainstream media site, the competition watchdog said today.
"For a growing base of users, these are all equally valid sources of news, information, entertainment and gossip, and users are not necessarily discriminating between traditional and new sources.""
This is very cool but also scary, what has made the internet great is its total freedom. Will that be eroded by Australian governments and what can we do to ensure that bloggers cannot be held legally liable if they critisise an Australian Company online.
Source: Courier Mail
Labels: Blog, blogs, consumer, conversations, internet, Marketing, online, pr, PR 2.0, reputation, reputation management, reputation monitoring, sem, seo, social media
Posted by Nick HaC @ 6:29 AM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
Give us a buzz! We want to talk to you!!!
We have started a Video Blog as part of our blog. Please excuse the sound quality, it will improve in future episodes. (Our warehouse office inst that conducive good acoustics)
Look forward to your feedback! If you have any topics that you want answered, let us know!
Posted by Nick HaC @ 12:24 AM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
Give us a buzz! We want to talk to you!!!
A client of ours recently asked for a brief explanation as to how Search Engine Optimisation works, we couldn't resist but share this on the blog. Leave a comment and let us know what you think?
SEO is a combination of keyword research, onsite optimisation and offsite link building.
Keyword Research
Keyword research involves finding the right keywords to optimize for, in the context of SEO Budget and Keyword competition. For example "Resume Template" receives 10 times the search volume of "CV Template', thereby making it a more attractive keyword to rank for.
Onsite Optimisation
Onsite optimization requires tweaking the placement and density of specific keywords on your website, as well as ensuring page names, file names, internal links and alt tags are targeted to your chosen keywords.
Basically if you want to rank well for a keyword, eg "ipod fitness" you need to ensure that this phrase is in the page title for your website, and appears in with an appropriate "Keyword Density" throughout your website copy.
Link Building (Offsite Optimisation)
This process involves researching and building links from contextually relevant external websites that have as high a Google Page Rank as possible. It is often necessary to buy high quality inbound links to achieve rankings for competitive keywords.
Posted by Nick HaC @ 2:26 AM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
Give us a buzz! We want to talk to you!!!
A lot of our clients seem scared or overwhelmed by PPC advertising these days. We find this interesting, but not surprising. They are concerned that keyword costs are rising, there are too many advertisers, and the entire method is becoming cumbersome and overcrowded. Don't be scared! PPC advertising can be very effective and should be considered in your marketing campaign.
Posted by Nick HaC @ 7:58 AM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
Give us a buzz! We want to talk to you!!!
We recently came across a 'whitepaper' from Daryl Wilcox of Daryl Wilcox Publishing (associated with Sourcewire etc), which provided a very interesting overview of the future of traditional PR, which began with an interesting conjecture in 2017
However it soon returns to normality, and highlights what many PR organisations are starting to consider, namely whether to adapt to changing trends and behaviours as to how people read and gather news. To quote the whitepaper:
''The worst case scenario for PR, and this is real world and not fantasy, is that PR loses significant ground to an apparently more dynamic and imaginative profession - search marketing. The danger is this new discipline will take a bigger slice of the marketing budget at the expense of search marketing will start to take on communications roles which were previously part of the PR function''.
As the report goes onto state, there is already significant evidence of this. Many traditional offline publishers are now pouring money into online.
Search engines are also the weapon of choice when researching products or services, once the sole domain of offline publishers. Companies are getting wise to this, and the associated spend online is reflective of this trend. Added to this, is the ability of search marketing in order to drive traffic to the site.
Search marketing budgets are often similar to PR budgets nowadays - ranging from retainers for small clients of circa $500 per month to budgets of over circa $50000+ per month. However search marketing has one significant advantage over traditional PR in as far as it can demonstrate return on investment more effectively, easily and objectively. This is particularly important in many companies where every penny is accountable. As a result many search engine marketing companies are offering a range of online PR services such as PR syndication. This impacts PR as many organisations that would never have previously considered PR are now introduced to PR by search marketing agencies.
However the PR industry have been fairly slow in response. The report highlighted the CIPR conference in November 2006, where not one of the 14 sessions had any Online PR bias. As the report puts it - ''The transformation of the media by the Internet was not a revolution, it was a slow burn. Now it as a raging fire''
However we are in danger of singing the whitepapers praises too highly. Whilst we fully agree with much of the report (particularly with my SEM hat firmly on), the reference to PR professionals being potentially better at SEO than search marketeers seems slightly of the mark. SEO is not all about numbers, numbers is merely a part of the fully equation, and it is this attention to the numbers along with the terminology and phrasology, that allows us search marketeers to leverage this ROI from online.
However Daryl's document is written with the PR sector particularly in mind, and as such does an excellent job as such in advising PR of the potential of the Internet, whether or not they choose to utilise that information is another question. To be honest, there is no reason why Search Marketing and PR cannot cohabit side by side.
We am currently working with a well respected PR agency, who are wholly embracing Online PR and the opportunities it can offer, and we are sure they want be the last.
To PR agencies. If you haven’t embraced the Internet, call us for a quick chat.
Posted by Nick HaC @ 2:59 AM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
Give us a buzz! We want to talk to you!!!
Once you've optimised your website copy, you'll find that the most important part of optimisation happens off the page - where links from external sites back to yours play a vital role in telling Google and other search engines how important your site really is.
Link building works best when you have a one-way link from another quality site to your own. You can try all sorts of tricks to build up the number of links you have, but to maximise your results concentrate on obtaining links from quality sites.
Of course quality links are not that easy to get! But many companies have an under-used resource that could generate hundreds if not thousands of quality links. That resource is public relations.
Good public relations and the online practice of link building are natural bedfellows. First, because the dynamics of each is remarkably similar and second, because when used in tandem with important keywords in mind, they can produce spectacular results:
- Public relations is the process of building a company's reputation, largely through the use of positive media coverage.
- Link building is the process of building a web site's 'reputation' by getting links from relevant and respected web sites.
- Success cannot be guaranteed
- Relationships and industry knowledge are important
- You've got to give up some control
- Results can be spectacular
Posted by Nick HaC @ 2:53 AM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
Give us a buzz! We want to talk to you!!!
