Creating Compelling Microsites

www.waterandstone.com


Creating Compelling
Microsites
This presentation shows the use of
promotional microsites in two diverse
circumstances. One example supports the
direct promotion of a product, the other is an
indirect promotion focused on building
community & brand goodwill.

Direct Marketing: The Mambo Book Site
!   author site to promote the release of a book:
The Mambo Visual Blueprint, (Wiley & Sons)
!   Purpose is to raise awareness and drive traffic
into sales channels

Brand Building: DESIGN TWENTYTEN
!   crowd-sourced design contest
!   purpose is to build community and foster brand
goodwill

example #1:
The Mambo Book
Microsite Project

Content Strategy
Designed to spark –  Includes basic information on the title (Cost, page
interest; drive count, ISBN)
–  Includes Table of Contents for book.
purchases
–  Includes excerpts. In this case, complete chapters in
PDF format.
–  Includes links to purchase on Amazon & Barnes &
Noble (affiliate links that benefit author).
–  Includes reviews of book.
–  Includes form for direct contact with Author.

Preview chapters to
download.

Marketing Strategy
a complementary –  Press releases announcing title linked back to
resource microsite.
–  Links to microsite were placed on publisher's site &
author's blog.
–  PDF Excerpts were released through file sharing
channels, and linked back to microsite.
–  Promoted aggressively through social bookmarking.
–  Site was heavily optimized for search engine
competitiveness and manually registered on numerous
search services.

Links to purchase
online.

Cost
A low cost solution –  No additional hosting cost; no software cost.
•  Site was built using an open source CMS and an open source
template for the design.
•  Deployed as a sub-domain on the author's blog site.

–  The cost issues here were:
•  Design implementation
•  Content creation
•  Deployment
•  Ongoing maintenance
•  Search engine marketing

Time to Market
Rapid time to market –  Site was conceived, prototyped and deployed within 5
business days.

Success Metrics
Raise awareness, –  Site ranked well for relevant keyphrases and achieved
drive sales. a Page Rank of 4.
–  Drove a number of contacts with author as well as
traffic to author's primary site
–  Sold a meaningful number of books through the
affiliate links.
–  Lifespan of almost 2 years.

Lessons Learned
What we would do –  Blog integration would have been useful to give the
differently. site more "life."
–  Given today's market, if we did this site right now,
social media integration would be a necessity.
–  Posting of errata would have been a useful feature for
users and would have justified repeat visits (as it
happened, errata was only available on the publisher's
site, where it was rarely accessed by purchasers).

example #2:
The DESIGN
TWENTYTEN
Contest Site.

Content Strategy
It's all about the –  Site includes only basic information: i.e., the contest
contest. rules and a single page about the sponsor.
–  The heart of the site is the Gallery.
–  Designers can register and upload designs.
–  Site visitors can vote on their favorite designs and add
comments.
–  A contact form allows visitors to reach the sponsors.

The public can view,
vote & comment on
designs.

Marketing Strategy
a place to interact –  Press releases announcing contest linked back to
with the brand microsite.
–  Promoted with an aggressive social bookmarking
campaign.
–  Postings in design forums raised awareness.
–  The nature of the promotion tapped into the passion of
the online design community.
–  Blog postings from members of the design community
helped drive traffic.

Simple access
control regulates
votes & submissions.

Cost
A mid-priced solution –  No additional hosting cost; no software cost.
•  The microsite was built on an open source CMS with an open
source Gallery plugin.
•  Deployed as a sub-domain on the client's site.

–  The cost issues here were:
•  Design of bespoke template
•  Customization of Gallery
•  Access controls
•  Deployment
•  Ongoing maintenance
•  Search engine marketing

Includes brand
message &
contact form.

Time to Market
Rapid time to market –  Site was conceived, prototyped and deployed within
14 business days.

Success Metrics
Build goodwill, –  Nice traffic spike surrounding contest opening.
stimulate interest, –  Got people talking about the brand. Created a positive
buzz in the design and art communities – it was an
create engagement. unexpected, non-traditional move from the brand.
–  Jury still out on effectiveness of contest: (Promotion
still on-going at the time of this presentation).

Lessons Learned
What we would do –  Achieving critical mass is the challenge with these
differently. types of promotions.
–  Seeding the gallery with entries at launch would have
been good to generate interest and stimulate
competition.
–  In these types of promotions, the client really needs to
fine tune the requirements and avoid imposing too
many limitations on the designers. Too many rules &
regulations discourage submissions. The desirability of
the prize is also a key to success.


Learn More…
water&stone is a full service digital agency based in Bali, Indonesia.
We created the content in this presentation, including the sites that are
the subject of this presentation. Many more examples of our work can
be found on our website:

http://www.waterandstone.com
http://facebook.com/waterandstone
http://www.twitter.com/waterandstone

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