CuriousOwl

Businesses do marketing so that their products and services attract customers and sell more. In any organization, marketers do the work of coming up with promotional brand strategies that increase profits. The 2020 Digital Marketing Report by Ascend2 reported that 49% of marketers aimed at improving customer acquisition, while 54% were looking to increase their sales lead generation.

Marketers use different strategies to keep the brand on top. Optimizing websites for search engines is one of the responsibilities of marketers, and this is where we often come across the two terms — microsites and landing pages. Landing pages and microsites help companies increase their sales and conversion rates through various digital assets.

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To decide if products and services need a microsite or a landing page, we must understand each of them and how they function and compare their similarities and differences.

What is a Microsite?

It is a small website that targets a specific purpose of the company’s operations. Microsite refers to a page containing branded content within the main website but includes a different domain and independent URL.

So, we can say that – A microsite is a website connected to an organization but hosted on a distinct subdomain or domain with its navigation, visual identity, and content. It is not limited to a company’s primary website and frequently has one to three pages. When it makes sense to tailor your information to that specific user experience and necessity, a microsite can appeal to a specific environment, advertising, or keywords. It might be built around a particular occasion or marketing initiative.

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In simple words, a microsite is a website within a website. It uses a subdomain with a different design, content, and navigation. As a small website, it can have one or many pages. Microsites are used to cover a particular topic or campaign. Many organizations divert their customers to various microsites to increase engagement by offering specific products.

The purpose of a microsite is to enhance customer engagement and promote brand awareness. A microsite can consist of a single or multiple pages with complete contact details and information about the targeted product/service/topic linked with the main website. Microsites offer unique and interactive experiences to customers while promoting awareness about a specific product or service.

What is a Landing Page?

A landing page is a single hyper-focused page or a particular web page under the website’s domain. Its web address looks like www.website.com/LandingPage. A landing page has a different purpose and appearance than the main website and is designed to promote a specific product/service or campaign. It is the first-page user visits after clicking on social media advertisements, posts, marketing emails, or SMS.

The primary goal of a landing page is to encourage visitors to a CTA. A report by Hubspot says that personalized CTAs convert 202% better than regular ones. A landing page is aimed at convincing customers to take action, like registering and creating an account, subscribing to services, making a purchase, etc. Ideally, a landing page should not have a link to another webpage but just one CTA.

The Pros & Cons Of Microsites

Pros	Cons
They are a great way to increase brand awareness and brand loyalty.	They can cost a lot to set up.
They help drive more organic traffic to websites.	One will have to invest more to buy additional domains.
They increase customer interaction on the website by offering clicks through the site.	It is difficult to measure the ROI of microsites.
Microsites can help decrease the bounce rate.	Microsites can confuse loyal customers with their specific URLs.

The Pros & Cons Of Landing Pages

Pros	Cons
They are hosted on the main website under the same domain.	They cannot be used instead of the main website.
They can be easily created and deployed.	They have limited information, which may not interest many users.
They are budget-friendly and don’t need high maintenance.	Creating and maintaining landing pages can be expensive.
They can help measure ROI through UTM tags and short-link services.	They can come across as poor in terms of engagement.

Microsites Vs. Landing Pages: Similarities

• Both are smaller than the main website, making them attractive for small businesses.
• Both allow businesses to customize their digital assets to support a marketing campaign, promote a particular product, or convert customers from a specific segment.
• Both use fewer resources than the main website, which means less security investment, employees, time, and money invested.
• Both focus on specific goals, such as pushing conversion, developing sales leads, or promoting a particular product.
• Both have a limited lifespan and are developed to serve specific campaigns. Once the purpose is achieved, companies retire them.

Microsites Vs. Landing Pages: Differences

Microsites and landing pages are beneficial for business and positively impact marketing. It’s important to understand that they both serve different purposes. 

Microsite	Landing Page
Microsites help with brand awareness and growth.	Landing pages help increase the conversion rate of a website.
Microsites allow experimenting with the website and creating campaigns for targeted customers.	Landing pages are aimed at getting the audience to make the final conversion.

Can a Landing Page Be Turned into a Microsite?

Landing pages may get long but are completely acceptable, especially if one employs sticky anchor navigation to allow users to scroll up and down to different page sections. However, there are times when creating a small, multi-page website—also known as a microsite or mini-site—can offer important advantages.

The microsite will include a homepage and five to six child pages, each with persistent global navigation to link the pages if the landing page is a single page with six sections.

When To Use What?

Despite certain similarities, a microsite and a landing page serve quite different purposes. What visitors want to use them for will determine which is ideal for the company.

So, whether we need a microsite or a landing page for our marketing campaign is easy to decide when we have a fair understanding of the two digital assets. If our goal is conversions, a landing page is an excellent choice. However, microsites will help us get there if we want to improve brand awareness and growth. Apart from the campaign’s goal, other things to consider while deciding between microsites and landing pages are the budget and campaign scale. It is essential to analyze requirements before investing time and effort and determine which will suit the business more.