Marketing forms the backbone of a successful business. With that said, marketing isn’t “straightforward” – it involves multiple aspects that work in tandem to create an overall boost in the image of a brand.
Index
- Introduction
- What is a Branded Link?
- Why do You Need a Short/Branded Link?
- 4 Simple Steps to Create Branded Links
- Benefits of Using Branded URLs
- Wrapping Up
Introduction
If Edelman’s Trust studies are to be believed, 81% of consumers agree that they need to trust a brand before making a purchase. One way of ensuring that a brand wins consumer trust is by keeping all the marketing efforts cohesive across channels. Thus, consistent branding comes into the picture. By setting the tone, voice, brand colors and fonts, vocabulary, and other elements to default, you can build consistent branding for your business.
But how does that help?
When your consumers see consistency in how your brand presents itself, it helps them trust you more.
That said, creating consistency in branding isn’t limited to the elements your audience can see. Aspects like website URLs also need to be modified to achieve wholesome branding. Customizing your branded short URLs has tangible benefits for your business, like helping your customers remember your website easily. A normal URL would be too long for any customer to bother with, and it could become a potential reason for losing leads.
Let’s learn more about branded links and their impact on your business.
What is a Branded Link?
A branded link, as opposed to a traditional URL, is a shortened version of a URL created using the brand’s name or an aspect associated with it to help consumers relate to it better. It helps your consumers remember the link, eliminating the need to type it down or save it for later somewhere.
Take the following custom short URL domain, for example:
The world-famous eCommerce brand, Amazon, has successfully provided its consumers with a shortened, branded URL to navigate directly to their app’s sales page. Longer URLs are intimidating and overwhelming to see, and attaching them to your marketing messages may be counterproductive. Shortened URLs work much better to encourage your consumers to keep viewing the message.
Reuters demonstrated a great example of a branded link in one of its tweets:
Notice how the consonants in the URL read “Reuters.” Isn’t that easier to remember as compared to something long, like this link:
Branded short links are, therefore, a much better marketing choice.
Why Do You Need a Short/Branded Link?
There are multiple reasons your business needs branded short URLs. Here are a few key reasons to convince you:
Credibility
Your brand appears more credible and approachable than those not using branded links. Including the name of your brand in the link sends the following messages to your consumers:
- The link spells out your brand’s name; therefore, it must lead to your website (that it isn’t redirecting to a dubious source). It also makes it easier for your consumers to navigate the internet with these links.
- Since bigger brands use branded URLs, consumers associate them with trustworthiness. The more trust, the more leads your brand generates.
Improve Authority
When talking about specific content that belongs to specialist niches, branded short links can help your consumers associate the link with authoritativeness on the subject. For example, if you are a doctor publishing a medical article, getting a branded URL can help bring more readers.
They Help Improve SEO
Moz explains in one of its blogs how branded short URLs can help a brand improve its rankings. This happens because Google doesn’t index branded links (vanity links). It allows businesses to showcase pages with vanity links as separate entities. If you have a USP service or product that differentiates your business, use a branded link to draw traffic.
4 Simple Steps to Create Branded Links
Creating branded links in Socxly is extremely easy. Just follow the steps detailed below:
Step 1: Sign up On Socxly
Socxly is more than just a link-shortening and branding tool. It helps your business measure the consumer activity a branded link triggers and drives better user engagement. It is, perhaps, the only link branding tool on the market that gives you total control of how you share your content through branded links.
To sign up, you can navigate to this page. Socxly offers three plans for branded links; you can select one that suits your business best. You can also sign up for free.
Step 2: Login and Create Short Links
The Socxly app lets you create short links using two distinct methods:
The One-Step Method
You can use this method to generate a branded link and proceed with your marketing campaign promptly. Follow the steps below:
- Login to your Socxly account on the app.
- Navigate to the “Create Short Link” option.
- You will see a text field. Here, you need to paste the long URL you are trying to shorten.
- You will see a “More+” option. If you do not wish to add more marketing attributes to the link and proceed with the shortening, you can press the “Create Short Link” button.
The Method with More+ Options
In case you wish to create a branded link with more customizations, you can proceed with the following steps:
- Login to your Socxly app and open the Create Short Links tab.
- Click on the “More Options+” button to open a full menu of link customizations.
- Paste your long URL in the text field, and specify the customizations for the link.
- Socxly allows you to customize the branded links’ slug, title, tags, and URI/UTM.
Step 3: Adding Smart Features to Branded Links
With Socxly, you can add smart features to your branded links, making monitoring the performance and returns of your URL shortening simpler. The tool allows you to add special features like CTA banners to your branded links or even a pixel retarget code for your short URL.
All you need to do is follow the instructions on the app and customize the CTA banner fields with messages, colors, and even images. You can customize the button text as well. Socxly allows you to see a preview of your CTA banner instantly.
This makes the Socxly tool one of the best on the market today- the capability to retarget and monitor the performance of your branded links from end to end.
Step 4: Download and Share the Branded Link!
With every attribute appended to your shortened URL, you can now proceed with downloading the QR code or the short link that Socxly generates using the parameters you specified.
This link is shareable on social media, instant messaging, and emails.
Benefits of Using Branded URLs
Branded links do more than just improve the trustworthiness of your brand. There are countless benefits that follow from getting a branded short URL for your business. Five of the major advantages are discussed below.
Easier to Commit to Memory
Branded links are extremely easy to remember. Instead of using longer URLs, your consumers can directly navigate to a specific page or content on your website by remembering the shortened link. It is also easier to type in, so there is no need to keep hyperlinks saved or bookmarked. It also helps your audience understand the kind of content a link leads them to.
Increased Trust
The internet is fraught with spam and dubious websites that expose visitors to the risks of phishing and other cyberattacks. When you provide your visitors with a branded link, they receive it with a sense of security, already knowing the website where they would be redirected upon clicking it. It helps foster a sense of trustworthiness with your brand. You can generate more leads and improve the footfall on your website with branded links.
Better Click-through Rates
Consumers are difficult to please and quickly leave your brand at the slightest inconvenience. Longer URLs could become a potential inconvenience that drives your consumers away.
You can significantly improve the click-through rate of your links simply by shortening them.
With a branded short domain, you take away the consumer’s chance to navigate away from your web pages. They keep seeing shorter links, trust the source, and continue visiting your website.
Better SEO
You can optimize your web pages for search engines better by using branded links. You can create custom slugs that carry important keywords and turn them into branded links. These become their entity for the search algorithms, and your web pages rank for that keyword. It also helps prevent the self-cannibalization of keywords on your website, which is detrimental to SEO.
Conclusion
Branded links are all the rage today because they provide businesses with multiple benefits and ease of SEO and website management. They are easier to copy and paste for sharing, and they are easier to remember and type into the address bar of a browser.
Overall, branded links make life easier for everyone. It would be best to consider getting branded short links for your business today. Your customers trust you better when they see a branded link, which tells them exactly where they are headed and what to expect from the particular webpage.
