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Small, focused websites - sometimes called microsites or feeder sites - have been around for quite a while now, but it seems their importance is becoming realised for online marketing. Brands are actively embracing niche micro sites for products and there is no reason why you can’t do the same for your business.

This article at Livemint (via Bluhalo) focuses on the importance of brand websites for direct customer engagement with the “attitudinal shift from browsing to searching” (Ogilvy and Mather India’s executive director of digital services).

For me this also ties in with a recent report from Google that they say proves that search can have a big impact on branding. The research shows that coming top of an organic listing raised purchase consideration of a brand by 4%, coming top of paid listing, by 20% and combined 22%. (NMA 10.07.08).

So this is all very well but how does it fit your business? The chances of large scale domination of search is very hard and time consuming, but creating niche website offerings allows you to dominate smaller markets.

We have just delivered a feeder website design and build for a client who has seen a remarkable payback in terms of connecting with a specific audience and for them, it happened very quickly.

I’ve bought some niche domain names already for developing feeder sites this year for our business, very much focused on our local market. One for Escape client, TSBeauty, is a product named domain - Zeno Pro. This is driving traffic through to the shop and actually selling product.

Ideas for your micro site

Ideas then. What can you do? I would start with these simple ideas:

1. If you are in the service industry, why not set up a geographically local domain with lots of relevant advice to your business? Basingstoke marketing will do just this for The Escape over the next few months, offering real marketing advice for local companies.
2. Do you have a large amount of clients in one market? Vertical market websites are another great way to create specific market content based on what you sell. Housing Marketing is an example that we created two years ago (it needs some work but it still works well for us).

What may seem like the unnecessary investment of creating and managing additional websites can actually allow you to become noticed as a bigger fish in a smaller pond, by having a relevant message for a relevant audience. Not so much traffic perhaps, but a very engaged visitor when they find you.