Top 5 reasons to avoid building campaign microsites
July 10th, 2008 by Jim AmosAhh, that much loved stalwart of digital advertising: the ‘campaign microsite’ - don’t we still see them as absolutely essential to the promotion of our client’s brand or marketing message?
Well, in short. No. Or at least, we probably shouldn’t think that way anymore. Here’s 5 reasons why:
1. Microsites are not usually very ‘findable’: I’ve never encountered a microsite that wasn’t short-lived (it’s in the etymology!). Typically, an agency-created microsite has little to no search engine visibility. Yes: you paid for search placement, you slapped down cash for all kinds of fancy media buys and full-page take-overs – but as far as google/yahoo/msn search et al is concerned, your microsite is not even on the map. Users won’t find your microsite mainly because they by-and-large consist of very ’static’ content. Even in-light of the tremendous uptake of blogging and social media networks, agencies continue to churn out the static microsite which google spiders just love to ignore. Way to go.
Even worse is when the entire site is built using Adobe Flash: though the technology is quite brilliant at dazzling the web visitor with animation/slick transitions (if applied skillfully) it painfully lacks the SEO friendliness inherent in it’s older cousin, HTML. If you decide to go with an all-flash approach be prepared that your only hope of sucess is that either your million-dollar paid advertising is spot-on or that your campaign is just so darn cool that it spreads virally. I think everyone wants to think their latest campagn is ‘this year’s Subservient Chicken’ (look it up if you don’t know) – but 99.9 percent of you are just delusional if you think that’s going to happen. Hat’s off to the lucky .1%.
Note: a recently popularized update from the googleplex regarding their new ability to ‘index flash sites’ should be treated with caution. Though I welcome the advances, so far the solutions are limited to the most basic of sites that lack most of the best practices adhered to by professional flash developers.
Also worth keeping very fresh in your mind is this:
, so wether your microsite is built using Flash, HTML, or marzipan, if it’s not designed to be user-friendly then even the people who do manage to find it will balk at the prospect of spending more than 2 seconds on your site, and they certainly won’t want to ‘tell-a-friend’ about it either (Nooooooo!)
2. Microsites are not always as compelling as you think: This leads on from my previous point. Many, many microsites give the visitor nothing to come back to. Sure, you might argue that all those dollars spent planning, creating, building and maintaining the site were for the benefit of pushing an ‘online commercial’ onto your ‘target audience’, or you are just promoting an ‘interactive brand experience’ (gotta love that one, very buzzworthy) - no more, no less. But if you’re still thinking that way in 2008 I’ve got to wonder: were you hiding in your bedroom playing WoW when everybody else was discussing how the future of advertising is all about engaging with the customer and creating 2-way, authentic conversations? How do you achieve that, pray tell, with a 4 minute TV commercial sliced up for the web; poorly written marketing-speak thrown into a series of little scrolling text-boxes; some spinning logo graphics; a paid actor voice-over which leaves user’s clawing for the mute button; and no real way in which to interact with the brand aside from the default ‘tell-a-friend’ feature that has become a tattered and stained piece of generic furniture in the world of the traditional microsite?
Admittedly, that may be a pretty brutal review of microsites and I fully realize I’m making sweeping generalizations here, but there’s not an awful lot of truly compelling, content-driven, consumer-focused microsites out there to change my mind. Unless that is, I just can’t find them. Get this: you can still spend your million bucks for a 30 second spot on TV until the cows come home, but understand that your online audience expects a lot more than a few seconds of entertainment. If you still adamantly believe in the power and pull of the mighty microsite, at least put some real strategic thinking, consumer insight and compelling content into play – don’t rely so heavily on pure creative that is literally going to be hit or miss with every visitor to your site.
A microsite by it’s very nature is a small boutique in the grander metropolis of your brand, but that doesn’t mean it has to be a one-hit attraction like the seasonal fireworks store destined to be burned down by some juvenile delinquent 1 week after independence day.
3. Microsites are too much effort: Why spend all those marketing dollars on putting up road-signs all over the internet pointing to your microsite when you can (at least potentially) tap into a more natural and exponentially larger audience spreading out from social media networks? Promoting your campaign in spaces like Youtube, Facebook, Myspace, Ning, Hi5 etc is almost a no-brainer for many brands and can cost significantly less with far better results, and yes - even some real semblance of measurable ROI. The future of advertising is very much about spreading your brand in as many different channels as possible, divulging your interest in the consumer’s social make-up, not just in the potential depth of his wallet.
So it’s about aiming for a better dialogue with your customers as well as not relying on only one core website/gimmick or feature to deliver on all possible fronts. It’s plain to see why a microsite doesn’t gel nicely with these ideas. Plus, don’t forget that traditional advertising is losing ground with a growing movement of consumers who don’t want to be ’sold’ anything – consumers who are growing up ad-savvy and with less time to spend being immersed in passive media. Probably best not to insist on giving them just an ‘experience’.
4. You already have a website! Instead of purchasing a swathe of new brand-appropriate domains (often wrestling them from cyber-squatters) – build new sections onto your existing website, or even add sub-domains like www.campain.yoursite.com. You can swap out, modify and otherwise promote new campaigns as necessary from the homepage as well as relevant pages, navigation elements, promo widgets and content sub-sections throughout the rest of the site. Rather than forking out cash for every new campaign to be as findable and compelling as your main site, try to build on the SEO (organic + paid), mailing lists, banner ads, TV commercials and whatever else you already pay for to do the job of getting visits to your site and then work on converting them over to campaign specific drives once they get there and you have their attention. of course, if your main website lacks the real estate or a flexible enough design in which to incorporate new promotions/campaigns in the manner prescribed or your website is so old you don’t want to fix ‘er up in case she busts a spring… you might want to consider hiring some help.
5. It’s one more site you’ll need to track: Professional-grade conversion tracking and analytics generally do not come cheap and you could end up with more campaign dashboards and reports than you can accurately manage. In my experience, microsites have a tendency to drift off the radar somewhat in light of newer campaigns – almost as bad as when your only reminder that you own a site is the ‘domain-expired’ email you get from the webhost when you forget to renew the contract. Doh. If you’re one of those owners/agencies you might want to consider consolidating all your efforts into one space – or at least reduce the size of your marketing universe to keep all your campaigns in the same local orbit.
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Now that I’ve had my say, I want to know if I’ve left off anything important that should be in the list, and I also want to know if there are actually any compelling reasons why in some instances you do still want to go with a microsite. I’m listening.
Tags: advertising, agency, Old thinking, strategy
