Terri Golas and Alan Powell are discussing M. D. Anderson Cancer Center’s Microsite strategy.
MD Anderson invests a tremendous amount into advertising. I am excited to see how they’re doing leading-edge work in this space, but hope that it will be applicable to organizations that aren’t MD Anderson.
MakingCancerHistory.com – a Microsite to supplement an 8-page advertising insert for Texas Monthly magazine and state-wide tv ad campaign. The Microsite presents a summary of information that then links back to the primary, deeper, information source within MDAnderson.org site. Thousands of visitors each month (most considered highly qualified leads) – 30% of traffic via ad banners, 70% direct, so this is working well for them.
It’s a really beautiful Microsite and worth having a look at.
Takeaways that can be applied by others:
- They ran a campaign around lung cancer that sent people to MakingCancerHistory.com/lung. They felt that this got too long and won’t do this again. Collect this information a different way.
- Make the Microsite an extension of the campaign that is driving traffic in. use similar imagery, language, etc. so that visitors understand that they’ve landed in the right place.
- Place banners linking to the Microsite on the main site for when consumers don’t remember the URL and Google the organization.
- Keep the Microsite focused, simple and action-oriented.
- Don’t duplicate information from your main site. Link to that content live.
- Be careful about co-branded content and Microsites for your organization that lives on other organizations’ sites.
Implications of Microsites for Search Engine Marketing
- Focused sites are good
- Links back to your site may help in search algorithms
But
- They can compete with main web site rankings
- Hurts user experience if sites are not well-integrated
