I’ve started to create mini sites on subdomains to test my offers. I this post I’ll explain why.
What Do I Mean By An Offer
What I mean by an offer is something I am selling, in my case it’s mostly a service. I’m testing targeted services at the moment which are productised WordPress offering of various descriptions.
Often I’m not sure if people need these services so I’m testing that offer.
What Is A Sub-Domain Mini Site?
It’s a very small website marketing a single offer on a subdomain e.g. offer.neilmatthews.com. It’s separate from your main site and acts as a website in it’s own right.
It sets out my offer in detail and has a single call to action to direct people to interact with me in some way (see controlling the CTA below).
A Targeted Message
It allows me to create a targeted message about the service I’m offering without all the baggage the rest of my site brings. If I’m talking about an AI service such as my customer support solution at wpaics.neilmatthews.com I don’t want to be talking about hiring me for a generic WordPress project or joining my ongoing maintenance plan. That additional content just causes confusion, and a confused client never buys.
Showing those other offers just causes confusion, so using a cut down mini-site with 2 or 3 pages allows me to give all the information needed.
Plus I can create highly targeted SEO content for a single set of keywords and drive traffic to my offers.
Monitor Traffic
Because I’m sending traffic to the mini site I can gauge how well it’s working by analysing the traffic to that mini site and not have the analytics diluted by the other traffic to my main site.
Some Offers Never Stick
Some of the offers I create neve take off, they never stick, creating them in isolation means I don’t need to make big changes to my main site and my main offer of WordPress development services.
If I find an offer does not resonate I can very easily take it down.
If it does work, I can bring it to my main site or leave it where it is, no need to disturb my main offer if I don’t need to.
Closing An Offer
When I no longer want to make an offer it’s very simple to close it. All I need to do is take down the sub-domain and all references to the offer are gone.
I recently has someone try to buy a hack recovery course I created in 2017 and that I no longer offer. I had to refund their payment and search around my site for the landing page that sold the course to take that down, it’s easier to close an offer if it is self contained.
Controlling The CTA (Call To Action)
Some of my offers are about taking a trial, some of my offers are lead magnets, some are to request a quote and some are to book a call.
Having mini-sites for different offers means I can direct a potential client to the correct call to action rather than a generic contact me page.
Different Sites For Different Audience Types
If I have two different type of audience, sending them to the same site will cause confusion.
By segmenting audience types and sending them to the correct mini sites mean better markeing.
For example, I offer an ongoing support plan for WordPress sites, I also offer a white label version of that plan I sell to agencies, WordPress freelancers and designers. Sending both groups to the same marketing will not work, I’ll send people with a single site to my maintenance page and the others to my white label support mini site maintenanceplan.neilmatthew.com.
Some Of My Offers & Planned Offers.
Here are some of the offers I’ve spun out to their own sub-domain mini-sites.
I’m thinking about spinning out a new type of asynchronous consulting offer and a WooCommerce optimization service but that’s for the future.
Why Not Use A Landing Page
A landing page is exactly that, a single page if I have a mini site solely focused on an offer I can create custom about pages, custom FAQs and custom call to actions.
It’s like a landing page on steroids.
Traffic To The Offers
Another benefit of mini sites is controlling which traffic I send to which offer.
I could send targeted traffic to a landing page but I can send targeted traffic to a mini site and get the same results and provide more information.
Wrap Up – Why I’m Using Sub-Domains To Test My Offers
As you can see creating mini sites is all about controlling confusion, give the right message to the right person to avoid confusion.
Say it with me kids “A confused client never buys!”.
If you need help building mini sites for your offers get in touch.
Photo by Marc-Antoine Déry on Unsplash