Short branded links enhance branding and increase brand trust. The primary purpose of using short URLs lies in sharing content to drive more website visitors. Short URLs shape any marketing material; they are more pleasing and easy to remember as they exclude chances of considering the link as spam.
How Marketers Use Short Links
In addition to drawing visitors' attention, short links are easy-to-use for marketers, who can manage short URLs in full swing by themselves, without developers.
Social Media
Social networks are a source of a steady flow of information. Almost every brand considers social networks as an additional tool to engage customers, but how can you use social media profitably?
When adding a short link to each social media post and advertisement, to identify users' behavior and streamline a marketing campaign is possible. Posts with short links increase CTR by up to 40%, thanks to the URL's clarity.
Link shorteners provide detailed statistics, like time, place, device used, and UTM of a click, which can all be used to track a user's behavior. Such statistics give an opportunity to find out the frequently visited social networks as well as the most popular social media posts.
When it comes to tracking long URLs, the chances of obtaining detailed statistics in several clicks are low. Those can be analyzed only by engaging third-party services.
Below are some examples of applying short links on social media.
Tracking Email
Email marketing is a necessary tool for informing customers about an upcoming sale or simply notifying them about account changes. Using short links in email marketing acts in two possible ways:
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Adding a short URL to the text of the email: The purpose of this method is to engage recipients to click a link. Note that pasting a short branded URL, instead of a generic short link, eliminates the chances of ending up in a spam folder. In addition to redirecting users to a promotional source, detailed statistics come in handy when comparing the overall number of opened emails to clicks.
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Adding short URLs to CTA buttons: The purpose of this method is to track recipients' behaviors with advanced statistical data. When it comes to tracking various elements, UTM-tagged short links yield accurate results. The advantages are creating UTM-tagged links and implementing them to buttons without third-party services.
Offline Marketing
Offline advertisements, like online ones, are applied to promote a brand and track the success of an ad. In offline marketing, you don't have enough space to print all of the letters that are usually posted on social media. This is where short branded links come in handy.
Design a billboard that contains a printed vanity link to draw customers' attention. Thanks to a short URL, users will be redirected to a webpage. Redirecting customers can be achieved in two ways: with QR-codes or by manual typing in a browser.
The first example: URL is perfect
The second example: URL is too long
Because a short link is memorable, a user can easily type it into the browser's address bar and be taken to a web page. When a user is redirected to the webpage after using a short link, a new click will be displayed in the statistics.
Comments
One more way of increasing brand recognition is by answering the questions in comments using short URLs. Respond with a short link that carries more detailed information that customers want to know. This approach is particularly useful when you are monitoring competitors' social networks as you can respond with short branded links in competitors' comments. In this way, the branded domain that you use in a short URL supports the recognition of your brand among users.
Podcasts
People love a podcast: it's a comfortable form of content to digest. Listeners can do it while jogging, driving to work, or at any time they want. As an alternative to podcasts, speaking on the radio, a video, or a live stream are also effective. Customize short links so that users can easily remember a URL after you have spoken it out loud. It becomes much easier for them to type it into their browsers after an event.
Conclusion
If you still don't use a shortening service to promote your brand, it's time to get it off the ground! Sign on for free on Short.io and use the features to boost your CTR.
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