Microsite

[Elizabeth_Bonin]

Does Marketo have the ability to host a micro-site?

[Chris_Wilcox]

Hi Elizabeth,

It's definitely not designed to develop a microsite, but that doesn't mean it's not possible. For example, you could build a landing page template with the header/footer you want to be common across the 'microsite,' as well as the navigation that would have a link to each of the individual pages on the microsite. Then you'd build the individual pages, and update those links in the placeholder nav to point to each of those landing pages. Basically, you're just making a network of landing pages that interlink to one another.

Is there something prohibiting you from using a proper CMS rollout? I feel like anything more than just a few pages would be a nightmare to maintain if you built it using Marketo.

Thanks! Good luck!

[Elizabeth_Bonin]

Thank you Chris. What do you mean by a proper CMS rollout? What would this entail? Would you recommend this over your suggestion above it?

Thank you!

[Chris_Wilcox]

This is usually something you'd build using a content management system, like Wordpress, Drupal, etc, and then you could use Marketo forms and the Munchkin javascript code to track users and collect leads on your microsite. Content management systems are generally a lot more flexible and designed to build web pages and microsites.  

Marketo was designed to build standalone landing pages to support specific marketing campaigns as opposed to multi-page web experiences. What's the purpose of the microsite, lead generation?

[Amit_Jain]

Hi Chris,

We are also trying to have micro-site in Makreto but I would like to understand what are the pros and cons of the same and why it's not recommended to have micro-site in marketo? We are planing to do SEO on this page as well as we are going to use Adobe target to personalize the user experience.

Regards,
Amit

[Chris_Wilcox]

Marketo is not a CMS. If the plan for your microsite is to have multiple pages with different content and purposes, and then link them all together using navigation, that's what content management systems are built for. If you build that using Marketo, it's not actually a microsite, it's a series of individual landing pages all tied together with URLs linking to one another, whereas a CMS would actually have a sitemap and content hierarchy that cascades through the site and content.

If you're concerned about SEO, using Marketo is a bad choice. Because there isn't a single host domain (www.example.com) at the root of the microsite and instead would just be a landing page, it would be hard for a bot / spider to read and understand how the 'microsite' content is related to one another besides just inter-linking. If you build the microsite within a CMS, you could have a dedicated domain, sub-pages, a proper sitemap, etc., which is critical from an SEO perspective.

Bottom line - Marketo can build 1-off landing pages for specific content or events. A CMS should be used to build anything more complex than that, then embed Marketo forms and the munchkin code to enable lead capture, scoring, lead management, etc.

[Amit_Jain]

Thank you so very much Chris. This is really helpful.