In the blog, If You do Everything, You’re Irrelevant, we focus on how you go about positioning yourself as an organization with vertical expertise. This blog extends to the creation and value of the microsite as a sales and marketing tool to establish your company as a vertical leader.
Websites are valuable sales and marketing tools but like so many others they can be tough to manage, too large to find anything useful, not vertically focused, and unless you have a marketing person or department, often out of date.
The utilization of a microsite can keep your marketing focused, concentrate your message and drive vertical prospects to a site that has relevant content and a much shorter path to contacting a subject matter expert than wading through a corporate site.
Keywords
It is very important that you compose a short list of relevant long tail keywords for your vertical. You will use these over and over when creating your microsite. If you’re at a loss as to what to do, speak to some of your existing customers and ask them what terms they would use to search for you. You can always change your keywords but establish your starting list and then share them with everyone in your company and get going.
The power of the URL
When considering a microsite strategy, ensure that the URL you secure for it utilizes the keywords you want to use on the site. For example, choosing a URL that says ‘Distributionsoftware.com’ when you focus on frozen food distribution may be way too broad so try to include the specific vertical category in your url. You would want to focus on search terms that the industry uses and find out what is available, and you’ll want to find one that is short and easy to remember.
Copy
Write copy that is informative and focuses on the pain of the vertical, the benefits of your solution and why they should work with you. You shouldn’t have to mention product at all, it shouldn’t matter. The prospect needs to know that YOU know exactly what they want and you’ve worked with companies like them before and you provide end to end solutions for them. Make sure you include those important testimonials, references and case studies to reassure your prospects that you do work with other companies just like them.
Resources
This can be the toughest nut to crack. We have become very reliant on utilizing resources provided by vendors. Take the time to create 4-5 really useful and powerful vertically-specific pieces. They can consist of:
- Case Studies –read our blog on how to improve the ROI on your case studies. You’ll be surprised at what you can do.
- Video demonstrations – this should be a teaser and designed to have the prospect contact you to learn more.
- eBook – keep it short, sweet, to the point. Explain their pains, explain the solution and how you will solve them.
- Infographic – especially useful in vertical marketing efforts, the infographic is a powerful tool that end users and decision makers find easy to consume. Jam packed with information they get your point across quickly.
- Blogs – keeping a steady flow of blogs focused on your vertical industry will help nurture prospects along and keep them engaged with your company. Make sure you keep your topics vertically focused and use them to provide content for your emails or newsletters.
Contact Us
Make it easy for the prospect to contact you from the website. Don’t smatter your phone number all over the place. Users expect to see phone numbers on the top right hand corner of your website, and if you decide to use a form, make sure you keep it to the basic information you need to make contact – Name and email in most cases will suffice; add in the company name too if you truly need it. Try to make this as non-threatening as possible.
And don’t forget to contact the prospect when they do request it. It never ceases to amaze me when requests are not followed up on.
A microsite is a powerful tool, invest in one, it’ll be worth the effort.
From Cheryl Salazar at www.ThePartnerMarketingGroup.com, a marketing firm that specializes in working with technology VARs, ISVs, and MSPs.
