Giving businesses a chance to add value to their brand via interesting, entertaining, and engaging microsites are effective online marketing vehicles.  Adhering to best practices can help ensure you get the most out of your microsite campaigns.

It’s first important to know how a microsite differs from a main website.  A microsite is an individual web page or group of web pages which are used to support, enhance, or supplement the primary website. The main difference between a microsite and the main site is its focus on one main topic or theme compared to the broader scope of the parent site. Often, microsites are used to target new markets or to create focused content for niche audiences.  Sometimes a microsite is intended for a specific geographic. Microsites can also be optimized with keywords for better search engine rankings and click-through rates.

Choosing the size and depth of your microsite is essential. The size and depth of your company’s microsite  may very well depend on your resources and marketingbudget. You can simply create a one-page microsite that acts as a great landing page for a pay-per-click campaign and links back to the parent site or you could design a fully functional, self-contained mini website with its own contact page and e-commerce engine (if you are selling products). Adding user-generated content features such as forums, enabling comments, and file uploading should also be considered at this stage.

Deciding on a URL depends on several elements. If the product or service is something not normally associated with the parent brand, then it may be best to consider a secondary, non-branded domain name. Remember that branded domain names and URLs usually garner higher click-through rates. You may also consider sub domains or sub folders.

The microsite’s topic, information, and call-to-action should be compelling. Once you get a visitor to the site, provide content that guides the user down the path you intended. That end goal could be filling out a form, calling a number, downloading a white paper, making a purchase, or simply clicking over to the parent site. Tracking these goals is crucial and can be done easily with a product such as Google Analytics.

It’s important to consider how to tie the brand into the microsite. It could be as simple as placing the logo somewhere on the site and having multiple links back to the parent website. Use of a similar theme or style can also help generate brand recognition.  For less known brands, a microsite may be intended to introduce the brand to a larger audience.

Microsites can and should be tweaked for search engines using ethical internet marketing tactics. Take advantage of the focused content by using topic-specific keywords and key phrases oin your microsite.

If you build it, they will come… but only if you advertise the site. Once your microsite is live, be sure to let everyone know about it by utilizing your internal email list, pay-per-click campaigns, social media (Facebook, Digg, Reddit), and industry-related blogs.