New to marketing and expanding your online presence through microsites? Plum is here to help! You may be wondering, what is a microsite anyways? How does it differ from a regular website? A microsite is defined as “an individual web page or small cluster of pages which are meant to function as a discrete entity within an existing website or to complement and offline activity.”  In other words, a microsite is a site-within-a-site – a way for a company to highlight a specific product or showcase a business unit separately from the parent site. Microsites are a fantastic marketing tool for limited-edition or one-time advertising such as T-Mobile Tuesdays, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, or even movie trailers.

Microsites are consumer-friendly due to their simplicity; these sites are usually a single page scroll, light on options and menu items. One can think of a microsite as a “postcard for the web.” They are light, concise, and very defined. Microsites are easy (and budget friendly) to set up, and they save you the headache of managing different pages, databases, shopping carts, login accounts, or even search bars. The best kind of microsites should pop out of the parent site with a click- that is, you should be directed to the microsite page in a separate window or tab. Why is this important? It keeps the primary focus on the special interest, while also maintaining the presence of the parent site. This is beneficial because it attracts click traffic from customers browsing the parent site as well; these topic-specific microsites will increase hits on the parent site and possibly generate new revenue and clients.

Examples of fun holiday microsites can be found here:

Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade (https://social.macys.com/parade/)

Black Friday Opt Outside with REI (https://www.rei.com/opt-outside)

Allstate Holiday Decorator (https://holidaydecorator.allstateonline.com/)

The Plum Perspective:

Creating a microsite for targeted advertising is an easy and cost-efficient way to add some click traffic to your parent site as well as possibly gaining more clients. Simplicity is key- remember that the microsite is specific, clean, and direct. Make it fun. Make it matter. And remember- Plum is here to help!