What Is the Difference Between a Microsite and Landing Page? A Practical Decision Guide

Say your conference is six weeks out. It has four session tracks, a sponsor list, a speaker lineup, and one registration form, and someone on the kickoff call asks whether this should be "a microsite or just a landing page." Here is the answer: a landing page is a focused destination that moves one audience toward one primary action, and a microsite is a small, campaign-specific site that supports several related paths, audiences, or stages of consideration. That is the real difference between a microsite and landing page.

What is the difference between a microsite and landing page?

A landing page asks one audience to take one action. A microsite lets several audiences explore several related paths before they act, and it usually has its own navigation and identity.

What is a landing page?

A landing page is usually a single page built around one conversion goal or call to action, such as signing up, buying, downloading, registering, or booking a meeting. It uses minimal or no navigation, so the visitor's real choice is to act or to leave. Landing pages are the standard destination for paid ads, email, social promotions, PPC, and lead generation, because they emphasize immediate conversion.

What is a microsite?

A microsite is a small, standalone website with multiple connected pages, sections, or content paths, built for one campaign, product, event, or audience. It usually includes navigation. It often sits on a subdomain or separate domain, with branding that stands apart from the main website. Microsites emphasize storytelling, exploration, information, and engagement. They are common for brand campaigns, product launches, events, conferences, resource hubs, and educational initiatives.

The trade-off in one paragraph

Landing pages are faster and cheaper to build, and easier to test, track, measure, and optimize. Microsites need more content, design, development, maintenance, time, and budget. Start with a landing page when the campaign has one objective, limited content, a tight budget, or a short launch window. Choose a microsite when the campaign serves several audiences, goals, or journeys, or needs substantial content. The distinction is focus versus exploration, not one page versus many.

Landing page vs microsite at a glance

	Landing page	Microsite
Main job	Move one audience to one action	Let several audiences explore related paths
Structure	One page, sometimes long with sections	Several pages, or one page with separate paths
Navigation	None, or in-page anchor links	A menu that moves between destinations
Visitor readiness	Already interested, ready to act	Curious, still learning
Typical traffic	Paid search, paid social, email, partner links	PR, brand social, events, organic, direct
URL	Subfolder or campaign path on your domain	Subfolder, subdomain, or separate domain
Identity	Your main brand	Often a campaign or event sub-brand
Build effort	Lower	Higher: structure, content, design, QA
Testing	Straightforward	Harder, because traffic splits across paths
Main metric	Conversion rate on the primary action	Path completion and assisted conversions
Lifespan	Campaign length, or evergreen	Campaign length, then archive, fold in, or redirect

Is it just one page versus many pages?

No. Microsites tend to have more pages, but page count doesn't decide the format. What decides it is how many actions, paths, and identities the experience carries.

Some definitions say a microsite has "several" pages. Others set a fixed page range. Those rules break fast. A single scrolling page can work as a microsite, and a page with many sections can still be a landing page. Use this test instead.

The five-question boundary test

1. Primary action: Does every section point to the same single action?
2. Navigation: Does the menu move people down one argument, or between destinations?
3. Content paths: Do different visitors need different routes to their answer?
4. Identity: Does it carry its own name, look, or domain?
5. Operational independence: Does it have its own owner, analytics, and release schedule?

If question 1 is a yes and most of the others are a no, you have a landing page, however long it runs. If questions 2 through 5 are mostly yes, you have a microsite, even if it lives on one URL. A mixed result usually means you need both: a hub plus focused landing pages.

Can a one-page website be a microsite?

Yes. A one-page site is a microsite when it has its own identity and serves several audiences with separate actions. Say you run a partner program page. One section speaks to resellers and ends in an application. Another speaks to integration partners and ends in API docs. A third speaks to press and ends in a media kit. That is one URL with three paths. It behaves like a microsite, so measure it like one.

Does a long landing page become a microsite?

No, not by length alone. A long page with an anchor menu, a sticky header, and many sections is still a landing page if every section argues for the same form. Anchor links let a visitor jump to the part of the argument they care about, such as pricing or security, without leaving the argument. Global navigation that sends people to other URLs with other goals is the microsite pattern. Length changes how much you can say. It doesn't change what the page is for.

Conversion or exploration: what is the visitor ready for?

If the visitor arrives ready to act, give them a landing page, and if they arrive still exploring, give them a microsite. Someone who clicked a search ad for a compliance checklist wants the checklist. Give them one page, one form, and nothing to wander into.

Someone arriving at a product launch from a keynote clip or a press article is still asking basic questions. What is this? Is it for me? How does it compare? They need room to explore before any ask makes sense. Force that visitor onto a single form, and you get low conversion and a pile of misread bounce data.

Here is a simple way to hold it: landing pages serve intent that already exists, and microsites help create or shape it. Many campaigns have both kinds of visitors. That is why the combined structure later in this guide shows up so often.

How navigation differs between the two

Landing pages remove the main site header, so every click either goes deeper into the offer or into the form. The footer keeps only what you must keep, like privacy terms and contact details. Microsites need a global menu, because the whole point is to let visitors move between paths: agenda, speakers, sponsors, and travel, for example.

Navigation also carries accessibility duties, and they differ by format.

On a microsite, the same menu repeats on every page. W3C's WCAG technique G1 describes a skip link as the first interactive item on the page, so keyboard users can bypass repeated blocks and reach the main content. Add it to every microsite template.

On a long landing page, the anchor menu is the navigation. W3C technique H101 explains how semantic elements such as nav, main, and footer identify regions, so assistive technology can jump between sections. Wrap your anchor menu and each major section in the right landmark, and the long page stays usable for everyone.

How Much Content and Storytelling Each Format Can Hold

The format you choose decides how much you can say and how many different stories you can tell. A landing page is built to make one case. A microsite is built to hold several. Interactive content sits on top of either and adds extra work. Knowing the difference helps you pick the right format before you start building.

Landing page: One argument, however long

A landing page makes a single argument to a single audience. The usual order is the problem the visitor has, your offer, proof that it works, and the action you want them to take. Along the way, you answer the doubts a visitor is likely to have, such as price, setup effort or trust.

You can make that argument short or long. A page with detailed sections, several testimonials and a full FAQ is still one argument, because every section moves the visitor toward the same action. This is why landing pages suit paid campaigns. The visitor arrived with one expectation, and the page stays focused on meeting it.

Microsite: Several stories in one place

A microsite is a small, separate website built for a campaign, a product or an audience. Instead of one argument, it can hold several stories at the same time. It might include product walkthrough videos, an interactive calculator, a data explorer, customer stories sorted by industry and a library of resources.

Each of these gives a visitor a different reason to visit, and each has its own depth. A finance director might come for the calculator, while an operations manager comes for the customer stories from their industry. This makes a microsite a good fit when your audience is broad or when buyers need different kinds of evidence. It also means more to plan, build and keep up to date, so it is worth choosing only when one focused page cannot carry everything you need to say.

Interactive and multimedia content: A higher bar for building and measuring

Videos, calculators, quizzes and data tools can make a campaign more engaging, but they raise the standard for how you build and measure them. Each one needs four things before it goes live.

Event tracking: Measure what people do inside the content.

Track when someone starts, when they finish and what result they get. Without this, you only know that the page was visited. You cannot tell whether anyone used the calculator, how many watched the video to the end, or which quiz result led to a sign-up. These events show you where interest drops and which content earns its place.

A text alternative or transcript: Make it usable for everyone.

Provide a transcript for video and audio, and a written equivalent for interactive tools. This helps visitors who cannot watch or listen, such as people using screen readers, people in a quiet office, or people on a slow connection. It also gives search engines readable content to understand, and it lets visitors scan for the answer instead of sitting through the whole piece.

A performance check on mobile connections: Make sure it loads and runs on a phone.

Interactive content is often heavy. Test it on a real phone using a typical mobile connection, not just on a fast office network. If a video stalls or a calculator lags, visitors leave before they see the point. For paid campaigns, this also wastes the click you paid for.

A clear next step after the interaction ends: Tell people what to do next.

When someone finishes a video, a quiz or a calculator, show them what to do next, such as booking a demo, downloading the results or starting a trial. This is the most important of the four. Content with no next step may entertain visitors, but it does not help the campaign. Every interactive piece should lead to an action you can measure.Microsite vs full website: where is the line?

A microsite covers one campaign, product, event, or audience. It has a defined scope and usually an end date. Your full website covers the whole company: every product, pricing, support, careers, investors, and legal. It has no end date and many owners.

The line matters for search as much as for staffing. Google treats a domain or subdomain as a site, and its site names documentation says Google Search supports one site name per site and none at the subdirectory level. So a microsite on its own subdomain or domain can appear in search under its own name. A microsite in a subfolder appears under your main brand. That helps if the campaign needs its own identity. It costs you if it doesn't.

The failure mode is a microsite that keeps growing. Once it has its own blog, pricing, and support pages, you are running a second website with half the maintenance attention.

When is a landing page the right choice?

Use a landing page when the visitor already knows what they want and your job is to clear the path to the action. Three cases cover most of it.

Lead generation

This covers a gated report, a demo request, a free trial, or a webinar registration. One offer, one form, and enough proof that the offer is worth the fields. Here is a hypothetical example. Say you're running a demo campaign aimed at finance teams. The page states the problem in their words and shows the product doing the job. It places a few proof points beside the form and asks only for the fields sales needs. Nothing else on the page competes with that form.

Paid ads

Episode recommendation: for paid search and paid social, build for message match. Message match means the headline, offer, and proof on the page repeat the promise the ad made. Say you run ten ad groups for ten keywords: you want ten landing page variants, not one hub. For help deciding between a dedicated page and an existing page on your site, see how to choose between a campaign landing page and a website page.

Short promotions

Think of a seasonal offer, a limited-time discount, or an early-bird ticket window. These pages live for weeks, then switch off. A whole site for a short offer adds work the offer never pays back.

Social proof and trust elements

Proof lets a visitor say yes without talking to anyone. On a landing page, put it next to the ask, not in a section they must scroll past. The elements that do the most work:

• customer logos from the visitor's industry
• a short, attributed testimonial about a specific outcome
• review ratings from a named third party
• security, compliance, or privacy notes beside the form
• a plain statement of what happens after they submit

Episode recommendation: use only proof you can attribute by name, role, and company. An unattributed quote gives the visitor nothing to check.

When is a microsite the right choice?

Use a microsite when visitors need to explore before they act, or when different visitors need different things from the same campaign.

Product launches with different audiences

A launch aimed at one buyer with one waitlist is a landing page. A launch that must explain the product to buyers, developers, partners, and press needs a path for each. The size of the launch isn't the deciding factor. The number of different questions visitors bring is.

Events and conferences

Multi-track events need an agenda, speaker pages, sponsor information, venue and travel details, and registration. Those are separate destinations. A registered attendee also has reasons to return: a changed session time, a new speaker, the venue map. That makes events one of the clearest microsite cases.

Brand campaigns and data stories

Spotify's Wrapped for Advertisers is a clean example of the format. It turns streaming trends into data stories, with distinct content paths for marketers and agencies. Visitors browse by what interests them, and no single form is the point.

B2B and ABM microsites

Account-based marketing (ABM) is a B2B approach where you target a defined list of companies instead of a broad audience. Say three people weigh in on a purchase, and each has a different question. The finance lead wants cost and risk. IT wants security and integration. The daily user wants to know it won't slow them down.

A microsite for an ABM tier or an industry can give each stakeholder a path: a security page, an ROI page, a use-case page, and one shared meeting request. For a handful of named accounts with the same stakeholders, personalized landing pages are enough. Move to a microsite when the stakeholder paths truly split apart.

Still asking: what is the difference between a microsite and landing page?

In borderline cases, count the paths: one path to one action is a landing page, and paths that split by audience make a microsite. Product launches, events, and ABM show up on both sides of most comparisons. Here is how the difference between a microsite and landing page plays out in the cases that cause the most debate.

Campaign condition	Build	Why
Paid search, several ad groups, one demo offer	One landing page variant per ad group	Message match per ad group, one action
Gated research report	Landing page	One offer, one form
Long page with anchor menu and one call to action	Landing page	Length adds argument, not paths
Single webinar	Landing page	One date, one registration
Multi-track conference with speakers and sponsors	Microsite plus a registration landing page	Several destinations, repeat visits
Product launch, one audience, one waitlist	Landing page	One question, one action
Product launch for buyers, developers, and press	Microsite feeding landing pages	Different questions per audience
ABM for a few named accounts, same stakeholders	Personalized landing pages	Same path, different proof
ABM for an industry tier with distinct stakeholders	Microsite with stakeholder paths	Each role needs its own route
Brand campaign with film and interactive content	Microsite	Exploration is the goal
Annual research report with chapters	Hub plus a download landing page	Chapters explore, the page converts

Should a microsite use a subdomain, subfolder, or separate domain?

Episode recommendation: use a subfolder on your main domain by default. Move to a subdomain when the campaign needs its own search identity, its own tech stack, or its own owner. Use a separate domain only when the campaign must stand apart from your brand.

Google draws its lines at the domain and the subdomain. Its preferred sources guide says only domain-level and subdomain-level sites are eligible for the source preferences tool, while a subdirectory such as example.com/blog is not. Together with the site names rule above, that tells you how Google groups your pages. A subfolder is part of your main site. A subdomain is a site of its own.

Option	Example	Search identity	Tracking	Retirement
Subfolder	yourbrand.com/summit	Shares the main site's name, links, and history	Same property and tags	Redirects inside your own site
Subdomain	summit.yourbrand.com	Its own site name	Check that tags and consent carry across	A DNS record plus redirects
Separate domain	yourbrandsummit.com	Starts from scratch	Needs cross-domain measurement	Renew and redirect for as long as links exist

Keep paths short and readable. A path like yourbrand.com/summit/agenda is easier to share, track, and redirect later than one with years, team names, and campaign codes baked in.

Which format is better for SEO?

For pages you want to rank, a landing page or section inside your main domain is the stronger bet. It builds on the links, history, and internal links your site already has. A microsite on a separate domain starts from nothing, and it loses what it earned when you retire it unless you redirect.

That doesn't make microsites bad for search. A campaign with real editorial content, such as original research, can earn its own links and coverage. The question is where you want that value to sit once the campaign is over. When your SEO lead asks, "What is the difference between a microsite and landing page?", the useful answer is mostly about where earned value ends up.

Paid landing pages and duplicate content

Near-identical variants for many ad groups shouldn't all be in the index. Mark paid variants noindex, or point them at a canonical version. Then they don't compete with each other or with your organic pages.

Orphaned microsites

A microsite nothing links to is hard for search engines to find and hard for visitors to discover. Link to it from relevant pages on your main site while it's live.

Split link value

Links earned by a separate domain help that domain, not your main one. If the campaign will end, write the redirect map before launch. Then earned links still point somewhere useful afterward.

Build time and operational cost

A landing page is a small, bounded job. You need copy, one layout, a form mapped to your CRM, tracking, a mobile check, and an approval. One marketer can own it if the tooling lets them publish.

A microsite adds a layer of work at every step:

• deciding the site structure and paths
• designing several templates, not one
• writing content for each audience
• building and testing navigation
• setting titles, descriptions, and indexing per page
• legal and brand review across more pages
• DNS and hosting if it sits off your main domain
• updates while live, and retirement afterward

That usually means a designer, a developer or site owner, writers for each path, and someone on analytics and SEO.

The cost people miss is maintenance. Every page is one more place to update when the date, offer, pricing, or legal text changes. Say your microsite has eight pages: that's eight places for stale information, against one on a landing page.

Tools and approaches, compared

You have five broad ways to build either format. Each fits a different team and a different job.

Approach	Fits best	Watch for
Your site's own CMS	Evergreen pages in a subfolder, SEO pages	Dev queue, templates that carry full site navigation, slow variants
Dedicated landing page builder	Fast single pages and A/B tests	Separate design system, builder subdomains, thin microsite support
General website builder	Small standalone sites	Built to run a whole site; forms, CRM, and testing are extras
Custom code	Complex interactive microsites	Developer time for every change and for retirement
AI code and design generators	Prototypes and front-end drafts	Output still needs publishing, forms, analytics, and approval

A sixth option is a campaign page platform. Episode builds on-brand landing pages and microsites and handles publishing, lead capture, CRM integrations, analytics, and experiments in one workflow.

If you're new to this, choose by the job. Use your CMS for evergreen pages when your web team has room. Use a page tool when you need many variants fast and can't wait on a sprint. Save custom code for a microsite whose interactive piece nothing else can build. For a longer look at the trade-offs, read whether an AI website builder can replace your current page tools.

Which format is easier to measure and optimize?

A landing page. One page with one goal gives you a clean count of visitors and a clean count of actions. A microsite spreads visitors across paths, and its value often shows up later, on other pages, in other sessions.

Put "What is the difference between a microsite and landing page?" to whoever owns your reporting, and the honest reply is one number versus a chain of them.

Set up tracking for each format

Tag every inbound link with campaign parameters. Google's URL builder guidance spells out the format. Separate the parameters from the URL with a question mark. Write each parameter and value as a pair joined by an equals sign. Separate the pairs with an ampersand. Agree on naming before launch, so LinkedIn and linkedin don't split one channel into two rows.

On a landing page, track a few events: form start, form submit, and the thank-you view. On a microsite, add path entry, clicks from a path into a conversion page, video progress, and tool completion. Use the same event names on every page.

Watch your property limits. Google's GA4 migration reference notes a limit of 50 custom dimensions and 50 custom metrics per property mapped from custom event parameters. A microsite with a one-off parameter for every page burns through that. Reuse one small set, such as path name, content type, and audience.

Run both formats through one tag management container and one data layer. Then an event means the same thing everywhere.

Metrics that fit each format

Format	Main metric	Supporting metrics	Don't judge it by
Landing page	Conversion rate on the primary action	Cost per lead, form start-to-submit rate, qualified lead rate, pipeline	Time on page
Microsite	Path completion and assisted conversions	Engaged sessions, return visits, hub-to-landing-page clicks, influenced pipeline	Overall site conversion rate
Combined	Landing page conversions from hub traffic	Share of conversions the hub touched	Either piece alone

Why one conversion rate misleads

One conversion rate misleads because a landing page and a microsite do different jobs for visitors who arrive at different stages. Here is a hypothetical example with illustrative numbers. Say your demo landing page gets 2,000 visits from paid search and 120 of them request a demo. That's 6%. Your launch microsite gets 10,000 sessions from press, social, and the keynote, and 150 of them register for the webinar. That's 1.5%.

The landing page looks four times better. It isn't doing the same job. In this example, paid visitors arrived ready. Microsite visitors arrived curious, and some came back weeks later through branded search to book a demo. Judge the microsite on 1.5% and you'll cut the thing that fed your best leads.

Landing pages convert better on the one action they're built for, with visitors who arrived ready. That is not the same as converting better in general.

How to read bounce rate and engagement depth

On a single landing page, a visitor who reads, submits, and leaves had a perfect visit. Mark the form submit as a key event in GA4, so your reports count that visit as a success instead of a bounce.

On a microsite, a high bounce rate on the hub is a warning sign. The hub exists to send people deeper. Watch pages per session and clicks from the hub into each path. Don't reward time on page by itself. A confused visitor also stays a long time.

Why microsite ROI is hard to prove

• Value arrives later, in other sessions.
• B2B visitors share links, so the reader isn't always the buyer.
• The conversion happens on a different page.
• Sales meetings and calls never touch your analytics.

The fix is to follow the lead, not the session. Save the campaign source on the lead record in your CRM, then report the opportunities and pipeline the campaign touched. The guide on how to run a successful marketing campaign covers funnel forecasts and attribution for exactly this.

Which format is easier to A/B test and experiment with?

A landing page is easier to A/B test because all of its traffic, its one audience, and its one goal sit on a single page, so every visitor counts toward the same result. A microsite can be tested too, but only when each test isolates one journey or one component.

An A/B test shows two versions of a page to comparable visitors at the same time and compares one outcome. The comparison only holds when each version collects enough conversions to separate a real difference from noise. That is why traffic concentration matters more than page design. If your experiment backlog stalls on "What is the difference between a microsite and landing page?", this is the practical answer: one concentrates traffic on a single decision, and the other spreads it across many.

What you can test on each format

On a landing page, the variables are few and all serve one goal. Change one thing at a time:

• the headline or offer
• form length
• where proof sits relative to the form
• the call-to-action wording

On a microsite, the variables multiply. You can change the hub entry copy, the order of paths, a path's content, the shared call to action, or the handoff into a landing page. Each of those affects a different slice of visitors. Change two at once, and you can't say which one moved the result.

Why traffic concentration decides it

Microsites are harder to test because traffic is divided. Here is a hypothetical example with illustrative numbers. Say your hub gets 10,000 sessions in a month and splits them evenly across eight paths. Each path sees about 1,250 sessions. Split one path into two versions, and each version gets about 625. If 2% of those click through to the landing page, that's roughly 12 or 13 clicks per version. Nobody can call a winner on that.

The numbers are made up, but the mechanism holds at any size. Every path you add divides the traffic a single test can use. A landing page never has that problem, because every visitor lands on the thing you're testing.

How to run a microsite experiment you can read

Isolate one journey or one component, and hold everything else still.

1. Choose the test target: one path, such as the buyer path, or one shared component.
2. Prefer components that appear on every page, like the registration button, because they pool traffic.
3. Write the one metric that decides the test, such as hub-to-landing-page clicks.
4. Change one thing in that journey or component.
5. Freeze the other paths and their calls to action until the test ends.
6. Assign versions per visitor, so a returning visitor sees the same one.
7. Decide the sample you need before you start, and don't stop early on a good day.

The entry page, the shared call to action, and the handoff from hub to landing page are where traffic gathers. Test there first. Then test the landing pages the hub feeds, where the conversion itself happens.

What not to test on a microsite

Don't redesign the whole microsite and compare this month to last month. A launch week, a press hit, or an event date moves traffic quality on its own. A before-and-after comparison can't separate your change from the calendar.

How can landing pages and microsites work together in one campaign?

They work together in a hub-and-spoke model: the microsite is the hub where visitors explore, and focused landing pages are the spokes where each specific conversion happens. Paid traffic skips the hub and lands straight on the spoke that matches the ad.

When someone on the kickoff call asks, "What is the difference between a microsite and landing page?", the honest answer for a multi-audience campaign is often that you need both, wired together. The hub answers the questions curious visitors bring. The spokes ask for one action each, from visitors who are now ready.

How the hub and spokes divide the work

Think of it as four layers, each with one job:

• Hub entry: states the story and names each path
• Paths: one page or section per audience or question
• Handoff: one clear call to action at the end of each path
• Spokes: a focused landing page per offer, without the hub menu

Each landing page ends on a thank-you page with one next step. Keep the hub's global menu off the landing pages. A visitor who reached the form should see the form, not a way back into every path. For the conference in the opening, the hub carries the agenda, speakers, sponsors, and travel, and the spokes are the registration page and the sponsor inquiry page.

Route each visitor by readiness

• Hub: the story, the paths, and links into each landing page
• Landing pages: one per offer, audience, or ad group
• Paid and email traffic: straight to landing pages
• PR, organic, social, and direct traffic: to the hub
• Tracking: one naming scheme across both

Track the handoff between hub and spoke

Episode recommendation: record hub-to-landing-page clicks as an event, and don't add campaign parameters to internal links. Tagging an internal link restarts the source, so the original channel drops out of your reports. With the handoff tracked, you can report how many spoke conversions the hub fed, which is the number that justifies the hub.

Real examples of the pattern

BetterUp's resource library works as a broad hub for its research and Science Series content. Engaged readers get routed into focused demo request and report download pages, so the library builds interest and the landing pages collect it.

DOOR3's services hub explains the broad value of enterprise design systems before sending prospects into specific consulting and audit flows. It shows the pattern for B2B services, where buyers want education before they book a call.

Nike's Jordan hub hosts athlete stories and campaign films, then sends visitors to focused product launch pages. The story lives in one place. The purchase happens in another.

When is the combined build justified?

When at least two visitor groups arrive at different stages of readiness, and someone owns both pieces after launch. Check these conditions:

• You buy paid traffic and also expect press, social, or organic visits.
• Visitors bring questions one argument can't answer.
• Each path ends in an offer worth its own page.
• One person owns the hub, the landing pages, and retirement.

If only paid traffic is coming, skip the hub. If the paths all end in the same form, collapse them into one long landing page. This is where most multi-audience campaigns end up, and it's the most practical answer to the difference between a microsite and landing page: often you don't pick one.

How do you keep a microsite consistent with your brand?

Keep the parts that ask for trust identical to your main brand, vary the storytelling layer on purpose, always give visitors a way back to the main site, and put one approver in charge. That lets the campaign look distinct while visitors still know who is asking for their details.

Without those rules, microsites drift. The room fills with new fonts, one-off colors, odd form styles, and a footer missing your privacy terms. A form that looks unfamiliar asks for trust it hasn't earned.

Keep a shared identity

Episode recommendation: treat these as fixed on every microsite page.

• your logo or a clear endorsement, such as "from yourbrand"
• the base type, color, and spacing system
• form components, error messages, and consent language
• legal, privacy, and cookie notices

Vary the campaign layer on purpose

Variation should be a decision, not an accident. Choose in advance which of these the campaign changes:

• the campaign or event name and logo lockup
• hero art, photography, and film
• an accent color layered on your core palette
• tone of voice for a specific audience
• layout of story pages and interactive pieces

Write that choice down in the campaign brief. Then the designer knows where the room is, and the reviewer knows what to reject.

Give visitors a way back to the main brand

Put a link to the main site in the header or footer of every microsite page. It tells visitors who runs the campaign. It also gives an interested visitor somewhere to go once the campaign story ends. Keep it off the spoke landing pages' main area, though: a footer link is enough there.

Protect trust at the form

The form is where visitors decide whether to believe you. You've gone too far when a visitor can't tell who runs the page. A separate domain, no parent logo, and a restyled form together make a legitimate campaign look like a phishing page.

Landing pages face a smaller version of this. Ad group variants should differ in headline and proof, not in form style or footer.

When to go further from the parent brand

Go more distinct when the campaign is a sub-brand people search for by name, like a flagship event or a co-branded partner program. Google's site names documentation, linked above, is the reason the URL matters here: a subdomain or separate domain can carry its own site name in search, while a subfolder shows your main brand. Nike's Jordan hub shows the other route. It has its own sub-brand look but lives on a nike.com path, so the parent stays visible.

Put governance in place before launch

Before launch, check that you:

1. Use your core type, color, and spacing rules as the base.
2. Reuse the same form components and consent language.
3. Keep legal, privacy, and cookie notices identical to the main site.
4. Link back to the main site in the header or footer.
5. Have one approver sign off on brand, legal, and data handling.

Repeat the same check whenever someone adds a page while the microsite is live.

How long should a microsite live?

As long as its campaign, plus a planned tail for the recap, archive, or redirect, and you set both dates before launch. A landing page for a short promotion switches off with the offer. An evergreen hub, like a resource library, never ends, so treat it as part of your main site with a permanent owner.

Campaign temporality means the microsite's content is tied to dates: a launch, an event, a report season. Once those dates pass, the pages start saying things that are no longer true.

At launch

1. Name an owner and an end date.
2. Choose the URL and write the redirect plan.
3. Set the campaign parameter naming rules.
4. Add tags through your shared container.
5. Decide which pages get indexed.

While it's live

Maintenance is the stage teams skip. Say your keynote speaker drops out shortly before the event. The speaker page, the agenda, the hub hero, the social cards, and the registration confirmation email all need the change. Episode recommendation: put one person on a recurring review, and have them check:

1. Dates, prices, and offers on every page.
2. That each form still reaches the CRM with the campaign source.
3. Links from your main site into the microsite.
4. Accessibility on any new page or template.

Campaign microsites vs evergreen hubs

A campaign microsite has an end date and a retirement plan. An evergreen hub has neither, so it needs the same ownership, review cycle, and SEO care as the rest of your site. If a campaign microsite keeps earning traffic after its end date, that's a signal to fold it into the main site rather than extend it forever.

What happens to a microsite when the campaign ends?

You archive it, fold it into the main site, or redirect it, and you decide which before launch. Campaigns that end without a plan leave broken forms, stale dates, and expired domains behind.

Here is a hypothetical example. Say your summit site lived at summit.yourbrand.com and the event ended in October. By January, the form still accepts submissions nobody reads. The agenda still lists last year's speakers. A partner's blog still links to a page that says register now. Each of those is fixable, but only if someone owns it.

Choose the end state

End state	Choose it when	What you do
Archive	The content has lasting value or earned links	Keep pages up, add a dated banner, turn off forms
Fold in	The topic will recur or keeps drawing traffic	Move the best pages into a subfolder, redirect the rest
Redirect	The content is dated, and nothing earned links	Point each page at its closest equivalent
Delete	Nothing links to it, and nothing ranks	Remove it, and still redirect the root

An archived page tells the visitor what it is. A line such as "This event took place in October" above the content stops anyone from trying to register.

When the campaign ends

1. Turn off or repoint every form.
2. Swap time-bound calls to action for a recap or waitlist.
3. Redirect retired pages to the closest equivalent (Episode recommendation: use permanent redirects).
4. Update links from your main site.
5. Export form and analytics data for reporting.
6. Keep the domain renewed while anything links to it.

Redirect to the closest match, not the homepage. A visitor who clicked an old agenda link wants next year's agenda or a recap, not your product tour.

If you move the microsite to new hosting, Google's guide to changing web hosting recommends lowering your DNS TTL to a low value, such as a few hours, at least a week before the move. And never let a campaign domain lapse. Someone else can register it, and every link you earned then points at them.

How do you choose the smallest useful format?

Start from the action and the paths, not the format. Pick the lightest structure that gets each visitor group to its action, then add only what a real visitor needs. Run this list the next time a colleague asks, "What is the difference between a microsite and landing page?" It turns the question into a build decision.

1. Write the one outcome the campaign must produce.
2. List the visitor groups who will arrive.
3. Note where each group comes from.
4. Map each group's path to the action.
5. Run the five-question boundary test.
6. One path and one action: build a landing page.
7. One action, lots to explain: build a long landing page with anchors.
8. Paths that split: build a microsite with landing pages at the ends.
9. Default to a subfolder URL.
10. Set metrics and an end date before you build.

When in doubt, launch the landing page first. If visitors keep asking questions the page can't answer, that is your evidence for a microsite. More campaign playbooks live on the Episode blog.

Common mistakes

Building a microsite for one form

If every page ends in the same registration form, the extra pages are just distance between the visitor and the form. Collapse them into one landing page.

Sending paid traffic to a hub

You pay for each click. Landing someone on a menu of options wastes the intent the ad created. Send paid traffic to the matching landing page.

Keeping the main nav on a paid landing page

Your full site header gives visitors many ways out. Strip it on campaign pages and keep only what legal and trust require.

Judging a microsite by one conversion rate

A hub's job is to send people deeper. Measure path completion and assisted conversions, and track the leads it touched in your CRM.

Testing everything on the microsite at once

Changing several paths in one test leaves you with results you can't explain. Test one journey or one shared component at a time.

Launching a separate domain with no retirement plan

The domain keeps earning links after the campaign ends. Without redirects and renewals, that value leaks away or lands with someone else.

Letting the microsite grow into a second website

Every new section is one more page to update. When the microsite starts needing a blog and a support area, fold it into your main site.

How to build, measure, and improve without waiting on dev

The hard part of this choice isn't the definition. It's the work each answer creates. A landing page can go live quickly. A microsite has traditionally meant a designer, a developer, and a sprint slot. So teams pick the format their queue allows, not the one the campaign needs.

Episode is built to close that gap for marketing teams and agencies. It follows the same order this guide recommends.

Start with the campaign decision

Begin with the demand you're chasing: the keyword, ad group, account list, event, or launch. The format comes second.

Pick the smallest useful change

Sometimes the answer is a new landing page. Sometimes it's a set of message-matched variants, one per ad group. Sometimes it's a microsite with focused pages at the end of each path. The platform uses campaign and page data to recommend the lightest option that fits.

Build and publish on brand

You create landing pages and microsites on your own brand system and publish them without routine design or development support. Forms, consent, and footers stay consistent across every page.

Capture and route leads

Lead capture and CRM integrations send submissions where sales works, with the campaign source attached. Visitor identification shows which accounts engage, which matters most on ABM pages.

Measure conversion and qualified outcomes

Analytics sit in the same workflow, so landing pages report conversion on their primary action and microsites report paths and downstream conversions. Where your CRM has them, qualified leads and pipeline sit next to the page numbers.

Use the evidence for the next decision

Experiments run on the pages that get the traffic. The results feed recommendations for the next change, whether that's a new variant, a shorter form, or a new path on the hub.

Pick one live campaign this week and run the five-question test on it. If the page fails, rebuild it as the smallest format that passes, and try Episode for the build.