When Do I Use a Mini-Site?

Before starting any communications or marketing project you must understand your target audience. Ask yourself:

• Who is my primary audience?
• Who is my secondary audience?
• Who is this marketing piece trying to reach? My primary audience, my secondary audience, or maybe someone else?

Once you’ve answered these questions you’ll be in a much better position to determine what communications or marketing vehicle you’re going to use to reach your target audience.

Target audience is one of the main determining factors we use to decide if a client should invest in building a mini-site, rather than creating another page on their website.

A mini-site, also known as a micro-site or landing page, is an individual web page or cluster of web pages that are meant to function as a supplement to a primary website.  More importantly, a mini-site often has a different target audience than your primary website.

Mini-sites can be used to:

• Promote a new product that your company is launching that may be different that your other products OR may require more attention
• Promote an event OR provide event registration that is open only to your organization’s members, but not the general public

In addition to targeting a more specific audience, another benefit of building a mini-site is the ability to create a site that is topic-specific and  has keyword-rich content (for SEO purposes) that is very, very targeted. So, the next time you’re considering adding a page to your website, consider the option of a mini-site.