Microsite.com

Microsites. Micro-sites. Mini-Websites. Weblets. Call them what you will, but you can be assured of one thing: They represent the future of marketing.

A bold statement to be sure. And certainly evolving technology will change how you view or interact with Microsites. You may someday, for example, view Microsites primarily on a mobile phone. You may visit a Microsite at Facebook.com.

But the basic concept won’t change.

And the concept is this: The key component of every marketing campaign will be a Microsite. Defined as an online destination, separate from an organization’s main website, that has a distinct URL and delivers focused, relevant content about a specific product or service.

The Microsite can have a stand-alone vanity or promotional web address (called a URL) like www.shaveeverywhere.com (for Philips’ Bodygroom razor). Or it can be a destination on someone else’s site like www.myspace.com/Honda.

In all cases, the Microsite is a focused marketing tool where people go to gather information, learn from and socialize with others, create, play, share, begin a dialog with a company, and even buy. It is not, typically, a company’s main website for reasons I’ll get into shortly.

As companies turn away from traditional advertising in droves (TV, print, radio, and newspaper are all experiencing declining ad revenues) and turn to the Internet, more and more businesses of all sizes are turning to Microsites and discovering marketing success.

In fact, of the top 50 advertisers in the U.S., more than 85% have built Microsites during the past two years to generate buzz and encourage customer engagements and referrals. Microsites have become a staple in the marketing plans of giants like Pepsi, Nike, American Express, Ford, and Procter and Gamble.

With Microsites, however, size does not matter. Because no media costs are involved, Microsites are a powerful marketing solution and great equalizer for mid-sized and smaller organizations otherwise drowned out by companies with larger ad budgets.

Household small appliance manufacturer Blendtec offers a perfect example. To promote its line of industrial-strength blenders, the company launched the www.willitblend.com Microsite on November 6, 2006. It spent zero dollars to promote the site. Within 5 days, 6 million visitors stopped by to watch random household items (including a Sony Handycam camcorder) be pulverized by the company’s powerful product.

According to George Wright, Marketing Director at Blendtec, the first round of videos cost $50 to produce and has “literally built a brand for our home products.”