Why creating a dedicated microsite is the key to segmentation success?

You’ve identified your customer segment. You’ve developed an accurate product positioning for the target segment. You’ve got your marketing plan ready. Next up, you create a landing page to gather leads and contact information. Does it work? Not effectively!

Convincing your target consumers to try your product or service is rarely a simple obstacle to overcome. Consumers are skeptical or hesitant about trying something new or making a switch.

If you want to encourage consumers to try and keep coming back to your product, it is imperative to start with an educational outlook. And this is where adopting a content-led approach and creating a dedicated website can make a difference.

A long-scrolling landing page with the requisite call-to-actions supported by an online ad campaign may get you leads within a short period. But if you want to build a strong customer base over the long-term, you will need — a content-led digital asset — that is focused on educating your target audience.

At Rite KnowledgeLabs, we recently developed a dedicated microsite targeting millennial parents to invest in Mutual Funds for their children’s education. The client, a leading Fund House, had been running several targeted campaigns — both online and offline — supported by lead generation focused landing pages. But they were not getting the desired results.

Here’s why a dedicated educational website worked better:

1. A platform to share knowledge and build trust

Consumers won’t buy from brands they don’t trust. And, when consumers learn from a brand, they inherently trust the brand. By offering information, advice and tangible content resources such as articles, blogs, shareable infographics and snackable quick tips to a potential customer, the client was able to establish itself as a trusted authority in the Mutual Fund space.

What data suggests:

As Mark Quinn puts it,

“The smart consumer will opt to buy from the company that’s educated him on the issue and presented him with multiple solutions. That company’s selflessness has built trust — and its ability to teach him has bought his loyalty in the future.”

2. A repository that covers the core and more

The microsite created a wide-ranging and comprehensive repository of content around investing for a child’s education. It included articles on the impact of parenthood on a family’s finances, the need for financial planning and investing as one becomes a parent. It also went beyond the core investment education goal to helping parents with tips on raising money-smart and career-smart kids.

What data suggests:

3. Endorsement from influencers and bloggers

Consumers trust their peers and bloggers and the recommendations they provide from their experiences more than brands. The microsite leveraged the voice of peers, those who were talking about their personal experiences of financing their children’s education with Mutual Fund investments. This way, passionate, authentic content from real people helped build consumer trust and drive the client’s peer-to-peer marketing online. With organic SEO, the microsite’s blogs and infographics saw several shares and pins on social media platforms.

What data suggests:

4. An education-centric UX

At Rite KnowledgeLabs, we thought about all the common questions that a millennial parent might have when it comes to planning for their children’s education. The website was the place to answer them. While the content architecture became broad and extensive to cover all the topics, the important aspect was to organize the content in an education-centric way.

Often, the problem with creating a comprehensive website is that too much content becomes nested in deep navigation. The key to address this was ensuring that every page on the website is accessible in maximum 3-clicks.

5. A brand-neutral name for the microsite

The choice of a domain name might seem like an insignificant detail in the success of segmentation-focused marketing. But a brand-neutral domain name helped the client establish the legitimacy of the educational intent of the microsite. End consumers were able to relate to the domain name purely from the purpose of fulfilling their motive of learning how to go about investing for their children’s future.

Primarily, building a genuine, education-focused, comprehensive repository of information works well to attract long-term consumer interest. Once consumers rely on the website and look at it as a source of genuine knowledge and learning, it translates into long-term trust, and customers become your brand ambassadors.

E.g.

https://www.nokidhungry.org/ | Kellogg’s

https://www.starthealthystayhealthy.in/ | Nestle

https://www.itcanwait.com/ | AT&T

6. Using consumer education for engagement

You may have a product or service that solves a problem. Or, you have a product or service that solves a problem that your target segment is not even aware of. In either case, you have to get your product in front of your audience and educate them about the problem they have so that you can solve it.

The key is to highlight the pain point that consumers are actively seeking to solve, work it out for them, and in doing so, acquaint them to the value that you bring to the table.

Priming a customer segment often happens in small increments over time. Rather than spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising campaigns and trying to secure customers right off the bat, it might benefit you to start with a genuine educational approach and grow from there.

Have a customer segment you’re looking to target? Connect with us to leverage the power of content to make your efforts successful.

*The client name and details have been masked to maintain confidentiality.