Wait! Don’t Kill Microsites Yet!
Moving into its third or fourth year as a Web design / marketing mantra, it seems the people marching to the drumbeat of “Death to Microsites,” has had a confluence with Facebook surpassing 300 milion registered users.
To a chorus of rousing applause, more and more large brands are discontinuing the practice of creating microsites and instead create campaigns that exist solely on Facebook.
This is a hideous, awful idea spawned from the same lazy thinking that made microsites so bad in the first place. So let me play the role of the Lorax here and take a minute to speak for the Microsites, for the Microsites have no voice:
What’s Facebook’s Business Model Again?
If you can answer this question, more power to you. I can’t. Why would I invest all of my digital development dollars into a company or a platform without clear direction? Will they shift all their features tomorrow in a way that drastically affects how your fan page acts, or is visible, or gains traction with the target audience? Will some VC pull all their money out of Facebook on Monday and shut it down? As someone with fiduciary responsibility to invest client money well, this is a huge bet that the brand equity coming back in the short term is worth dropping cash on a site who’s future I can’t reliably predict into next month.
Can I Haz Database?
The other trade brands make with social platforms is their database. Anytime a brand makes its own microsite, the secondary goal (if not the primary goal) should be retention: always providing a value exchange for contact information that helps build a database helping marketers to continue streamlining and creating future offers that delight potential customers. It’s a compounding investment in making better products, experiences, and relationships with your audience. There are lots of takeaways from any experience on a social platform, but almost no tangible effect on building a database that you own. Again, taking the “Facebook gets hit by a bus tomorrow,” scenario in effect, what is a brand left with?
Thanks For All the Metrics
Can you imagine the kind of insight you could get if as a fan page creator, Facebook returned even 10% of the metrics they collect regarding that fan page? Heck, even 1% would be a boon. Right now, Facebook gives you what amounts to eye candy. And eye candy is actually significantly more than what they gave back before. When you make your own site, 100% of the metrics you collect are owned by you (well, in most cases today it’s you and Google, and Google is another atrocious offender, but that’s a whole other story).
The Answer Lies in APIs
Since I’m already past 400 words, I’ll have to dedicate another post in exploring this answer a little more fully, but continuing to build microsites using social network APIs are the the solution for a myriad reasons, most of all because they keep the real ROI of digital marketing and PR with the enterprise that pays for it. What do you think? Continue the conversation in the comments section below or on Twitter @mleis.
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