Satellite Sites: Small, Fast & Rewarding
THE PERCEPTION OF THE ONLINE CHANNEL BEING A HUGE, EXPENSIVE AND TIME CONSUMING VENTURE STILL LURKS AMONG MANY MARKETING DEPARTMENTS.
These views are tainted by painful memories of large corporate website projects involving significant IT infrastructure, back office integration and endless over-crowded, over-involved meetings. Long lead times, ridiculously big budgets and an army of project participants would surely render the online channel as a monster that shouldn’t be revisited until the day the company website look and functionality has passed it used by date.
How times have changed. The new web, powered by broadband and Web 2.0 technologies, is a lean, quick and nimble medium no longer reserved for big IT based projects. It is emerging as an ideal platform for marketers and business developers to rapidly deliver smaller, more engaging customer experiences tied to specific campaigns, products or ideas.
These experiences can be brand centered, fully controlled by the marketing team (with the assistance of an agency) and are relatively quick and inexpensive to develop. Unlike a complex corporate website, these experiences are usually product, service or campaign specific, and thus offer uncluttered and focused communications. They are often referred to as satellite sites or mini-sites and are effective as either an add-on-to or even the central component of almost any campaign.
Trying the medium, measuring response rates, adjusting and re-measuring is the key to success. Because satellite sites are somewhat isolated, you can work directly with an agency to rapidly develop and deploy them without the constraints of internal IT, information architecture issues and expensive systems integration. Satellite sites generally have 3 objectives:
- Promote a specific message, product or offer
- Provide a space where customers can engage with your brand
- Collect customer data or refer a sale
Recent examples of these satellite sites include the Mercedes Benz C-Class promotion and the Pepsi Australia Rock Paper Scissors campaign. Both of these web experiences are engaging and simple. The sites are both built with Adobe Flash technology and are uncluttered and visually rich.
The barriers to entry for including online in the marcomm mix have been dramatically lowered. A great idea, engaging content and a digital savvy agency can get your campaign online with minimum fuss and lead time. Now I’m certainly not condoning last minute attempts to go online, (careful planning always reaps better results) but spreading the word that the new web allows you to achieve a lot more for a lot less – a perfect medium to enhance your smaller, targeted campaigns.
