The Power of Microsites To Your Lead Nurturing Program

I attended the beginning of the Marketing Profs B2B Online Tradeshow this morning, and listened to the keynote presented by David Meerman Scott, author of "The New Rules of Marketing and PR" (well worth the read!).  As I listened to the shifting realities that Marketing Departments face in effectively using the Internet for marketing activities, there are several ideas that converged for me. These are important for companies looking at getting started with effective Lead Nurturing programs.  Here are a few questions and thoughts:

1.  How easy is it for you to update and post content to your corporate site?  If you cannot easily (within minutes) update that site and its content, it's not a good candidate to house the thought leadership content necessary for an effective Lead Nurturing program.  If you find yourself in this camp, think about how a microsite (with its own domain name, or a sub-domain of your corporate domain) might work to your benefit --without all the hassles and political hot-potato scenarios that surround your corporate site.  The Marketing Interactions Blog talks about how Microsites make a difference with Lead Nurturing campaigns and the necessity to be responsive.  To check out that article, click here.

2.  Do you have a way to easily create and publish a Microsite?  Not just a landing page, which many of the lead nurturing vendors offer -- but a full blown, specific domain name, SEO capable, microsite -- that will allow you to easily publish and host content for your Lead Nurturing program.  And easily create and modify the content on the pages, allow for downloads of PDF's (for those eBooks and whitepapers), etc. 

3.  As David's presentation said -- it's all about the content. But the perspective of that content is important -- it's no longer marketing-speak content (which he labels Gobbledigook), but content that your prospects (buyer personas) will understand and relate to -- that is meaningful to THEM.

But in order to use effective content, you've got to have a place where you can easily make it available -- in this new world of Online Marketing, it's about publishing content that is valuable to your target markets and audiences.  Plus you need to optimize that content so that it can be found. In the Google-it mindset that people have today you have to enabling them to find you rather than interrupting a mass audience and begging for attention.

4.  Can you produce valuable content that matters to your buyer personas (target markets)?  If you feel challenged in this regard, there are people who can help -- folks that aren't just copywriters, but folks with a journalist and story-telling background, who understand how to write compelling content, and who you could work with to produce the sort of content necessary for an effective Lead Nurturing program.

Joe Pulizzi, at Junta42, is putting together a new offering, that I mentioned in my last blog post -- but he is connecting folks who need content, with folks who can deliver it -- and since this new world of Online Marketing is all about the content, having access to folks who can help is something that will help ensure you are successful. The Junta42 blog has an article that talks about content and microsites - and having a content strategy that enables the success of the microsite.  David Meerman Scott's recent blog post on understanding an audience and creating great content is also something to check out -- click here.

For those of you interested in establishing an effective Lead Nurturing content strategy, consider attending the webinar, "Create a Content Strategy for Lead Momentum" by Ardath Albee (www.marketinginteractions.com) on March 26th.  You can register for it at www.on24.com

With shrinking Marketing budgets and more scrutinized investments in what is still seen as a risky investment, having an easy way to create and publish a microsite, that can also easily be search engine optimized, is quickly becoming an imperative.  To that end, Einsof is forming a strategic partnership with a new company, Genoo (of which I am one of the founders) -- that will launch in April. Genoo will offer an integrated set of marketing tools at your fingertips including the ability to easily and affordably create and publish Microsites.   If you want to check out Genoo's prelaunch marketing site, go to www.genoo.com -  more of the functionality will be revealed each week.  After all, the tools and technology should be easy, and the 'relevant' content should get the focus -- as that is what will ultimately determine the success of your Lead Nurturing program. 

Comments

[Darin Dixon]

Microsites sound like a great idea. Just a couple of questions. How do you promote/market these microsites? And are there any adverse side effects of using these sites that companies need to be aware of?

[Kim Albee]

Darin,

The idea with microsites is to target in on a niche interest or segment, and then provide content that is relevant for that interest area. With a microsite you can search engine optimize it for that specific niche interest, which your main corporate website will never get optimized for -- so you have an opportunity.

As far as linking to your main website -- you've accomplished more links that point to your main site, and now you've got an avenue for marketing into the niche.

Re: how do you market them? Email, social media where people are talking about the sorts of issues that your product/service addresses, paid search has potential so people find your microsites easily as well. There are all sorts of ways you can market that microsite.

The thing to watch out for is not continuing to evolve the site and add relevant content -- they take care and feeding to continue to be relevant. You want a good content marketing commitment to them.

Hope this helps,
Kim