Post written by iMAGECLOUD Member Craig Newman, Entendre Productions.

The first question is, what is a microsite?

As the name suggests, a microsite is a small, usually one page, website that acts as a landing page for your property marketing campaigns. Microsites, otherwise known as landing pages, have been used in online marketing campaigns for years but surprisingly, microsites are only now taking off in Australia.

Here are a few of the reasons you should employ the use of landing pages in your property marketing campaigns.

1) Landing pages are an essential part of a successful marketing campaign.

Landing pages have been tried and tested in almost every type of marketing campaign. Why? Essentially because it increases conversion rates!

The main reason for this is that a microsite focuses on a single objective that matches the ad or specific product. If you consider the example of sending traffic to your homepage vs. a standalone landing page, you can understand that your homepage is designed with a more general purpose in mind. It speaks more to your overall brand and corporate values and is typically loaded with links and navigation to other areas of your site.

In real estate this means that you are able to showcase and sell that one property without worrying that you will lose the interest of that particular potential customer. It’s about selling that home, not you as an agent.

2) Get the best ROI on your Photography, Video and Floor-plans.

Often you have already sold the vendor on basic marketing like professional copywriting and real estate photography. A microsite is a great way to maximise the return on investment on this marketing spend by telling a vendor that they can have their own dedicated website to sell their property.

Furthermore, a microsite is a great way to convince people to invest in other VPA like a slideshow video, cinematic property video, interactive floor-plans, etc. If they can see their microsite as the collection of the marketing materials for their website, they can easily see what they pay for and thus feel better about their investment.

3) Keep the potential customer focused on your property.

Quite often when someone searches for a property online they may land on RealEstate.com.au or Domain.com.au and it is easy to loose that lead to another property. By linking your marketing activities to a microsite, people are more likely to follow the short link and view this portal which, due to it’s lack out outbound links, keeps them focused on that property, rather then clicking one of those dreaded “suggested links.”

4) Improved customer insights with analytics

At the moment, the majority of real estate agents do one of three things:

• On their print marketing they put a link or QR code to the RealEstate.com.au listing,
• On their print marketing they put a link or QR code to an agency website,
• They don’t put any links and let people just Google for the property.

All three of these strategies have one fatal flaw, you have no idea how many of the visitors to these pages were from your direct marketing and how many were simply online search results. As a marketer, do we spend more on premium listings on RealEstate.com.au or do we spend time investing on print or social media for individual properties?

This is where the analytics of a microsite become invaluable. With a microsite, you know how many hits that page had specifically and where they came from. You can also see where geographically your potential customers are.

5) All things considered… very low price point.

Microsite range from $50-$200 per property which is nothing when you consider all the above benefits.

For more information on how you can get a microsite for your property, contact me, Craig Newman, and I will get you in contact with a microsite developer that fits your needs.