Do microsites make marketing sense?

A microsite is a stand alone website that has or should have a specific marketing message. Often it is a tactical marketing activity that includes a viral component. These microsites have their own unique URLs, integrating a derivative of their brand. Lets take the example of a resent UK TV advert: Hellmanns Squeezy viral campaign.

The concept is excellent and you can visit the Hellmanns Squeezy viral site here.

But what is the problem with microsites?

No brand leverage, No optimization, No Integration
Leading to confused customers, lack in marketing and brand performance, wasted marketing money
So what happened that lead to this bad decision? I would not be surprised if a small team of marketers came up with this excellent idea, then hit a couple of hurdles in the Unilever Website policies not allowing them to put the viral campaign under there main UK site. Or perhaps the internal management structure in charge of the Hellmann’s sites couldn’t or wouldn’t support the viral campaign on the UK site. Even better, Unilever policies and internal structure specifically dictate what the use of local area sites can and cannot do, blocking the integration of the microsite into the .co.uk main site. Or, even worse, if the Agency hired to do the viral proactively suggested to put the viral site on a separate URL. Shame on them…

The TV advert mentions, very briefly, the Viral site URL (link):
www.hellmannssqueezy.com
You cannot find any mention of the ad campaign on the .com main Hellmann’s site: http://www.hellmanns.com/default.aspx. So this is a specific UK based viral campaign, at least that is what the marketing organization of the campaign points to.
So what are the major NONOs in this incredibly confused campaign?

1- Customer loss:You’ve seen the TV advert but can’t remember the exact URL. Unless you already use the product it is unlikely you will know how to spell Hellmann’s. Finding the right site is a bit of a trek as the homepage of Hellmann’s UK really isn’t functional nor in the search engines.
http://www.hellmanns.co.uk/home.php needs to be typed in manually
http://www.hellmanns.com has no mention of the ad
http://www.hellmanns.co.uk used redirects to landing pages (http://www.hellmanns.co.uk/landing.html) that are not referenced in search engines.
The Unilever site, that does rank in search engines doesn’t have the URL structure to point to branded sites that you are looking for… good grief…A bit confused at Unilever are we not?

2- SEO inefficiency:The current micro site and Hellmanns.co.uk are virtually in-existent in search engines. The micro site should be integrated into the main .co.uk site. The viral component would reinforce the top level domain name, thus increasing its relevancy in the likes of Google, but ohhh no. It does the exact opposite here by increasing dilution of PR and Link “Juice”.

3- Wasting TV budget: Seriously, this type of marketing integration begs the question, do big brands care about their marketing effectiveness? I would be curious to see how accountability is measured, what success metrics are used, how the marketing plans integrate.

4- Why do it right when you can do it wrong: The utter lack of common sense is staggering at times. How hard would it have been to put the viral under: www.hellmanns.co.uk/squeezy?
How hard would it be to properly structure your URLs on the main site and remove the redirects to the squeezy campaign, instead of having: www.hellmanns.co.uk/landing.html

5- Poorly integrated marketing strategies:If you had taken a consultant and spent a few £ in the planning and strategy phase perhaps you could have increased efficiency by 20%, 30% or more. Perhaps you could be better ranked in search engines with virtually no additional effort, perhaps frustrated customers would have embraced the brand and bought the product if they had found the site in the first place. Instead, TV and online aren’t synched up and integrated. I’d bet the TV marketing team and online teams have separate offices…

Micro sites are awful, period! They are the reflection of a lack of commercial integration within the online channel. They reveal “siloed” (Vertical structures that don’t horizontally communicate) departments that cannot cooperate and communicate with each other. Or better yet, If you are ashamed of a particular marketing activity and don’t want to put it on your main sites, then don’t do it at all. There is, to my knowledge, no advantage of micro sites in big or small brands.
Micro sites :

A symptom of commercial flaws
Lack of strategic vision and global planning

Lack of marketing integration

A reflection of antagonistic points of view, departments and people
Absence of brand wide marketing policies, guidelines and marketing channel integration plans
Lack of competency and utter common sense
Lack of accountability and performance metrics
A sign that you’re marketing budgets are too big if you can waste so much
A bit harsh? Certainly. It is all part of the growing pains of embracing online channels of distribution and marketing. But it is heart breaking to see such a fantastic idea (viral Hellmann’s Squeezy campaign) be so underutilized. What’s worse, the level of effort of doing it right is no greater than doing it wrong. An online marketing consultant would have been a good investment…