URL shortening services have become an indispensable marketing tool for creating compact, shareable links to drive engagement. But basic shortened links simply redirect to a homepage. By harnessing advanced short link functionality, marketers can create targeted, trackable links that provide invaluable insights into campaigns and audiences.
This article will explore how short links can be leveraged for enhanced marketing, including creating deep links, customizing URLs, integrating analytics, and optimizing links for social media.
Craft Targeted Deep Links
Basic short links often just point back to a website’s homepage. Deep links allow marketers to create short URLs that send users directly to inner pages like product pages, category pages, or blog articles.
Marketing with deep links provides many benefits:
- Direct access to relevant content based on context
- Higher conversion rates when users land on key pages
- Ability to highlight specific products or content
- Insights into which pages resonate most
- Streamlined user experience bypassing homepages
- Mobile optimization due to direct page access
Deep links can be created using tools like Rebrandly, Bitly, Ow.ly and others. Focus on directing users to pages they will find most valuable.
Customize Links for Branding
Vanity short URLs with custom domains allow brands to use their own business name in links, like acme.com/sales instead of generic URLs.
Custom short domains aid marketing by:
- Increasing brand visibility and recognition
- Conveying trust and credibility
- Matching link styling to brand aesthetics
- Making links more memorable and sharable
- Allowing flexible management of links
Purchase a dedicated domain or use subdomains, subfolders, or redirects to implement vanity URLs. Branding short links makes them instantly more recognizable and impactful.
Optimize Links for Social Sharing
Shortened links enable easy sharing across social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest with limited space.
To optimize short links for social, brands should:
- Make URLs expressive using keywords
- Add UTM tracking codes to links to track social traffic
- Include anchor text and meta descriptions when sharing
- Use link preview tools to test how they will appear
- Monitor click-through rates of social links
- Adjust campaigns based on social link performance
- Cross-promote top-performing social content
- Shorten links used in social profiles and bios
Properly optimizing social short links and tracking performance can directly boost social engagement.
Integrate Detailed Analytics into Links
Advanced URL shorteners provide rich analytical dashboards tracking data like:
- Number of clicks
- Click rates over time
- Geographical data on users
- Traffic sources (social, websites, emails, etc)
- Popular/influential referrers
- Link redirects and errors
Analyzing short link metrics enables better understanding of both traffic patterns and audience behavior. Marketers can see which campaigns drive the most clicks, popular referring sites, conversions by geo-location, and more.
Refresh Links Frequently
To avoid broken links due to changing site content, marketers should:
- Audit short links regularly
- Quickly update or redirect any broken or outdated links
- Monitor redirect chains for issues
- Re-shorten links regularly, even if not broken
Keep links current and users will have seamless, positive experiences.
Short Links Provide Powerful Marketing Intelligence
In summary, URL shortening provides myriad benefits beyond just condensing long links. Advanced usage like deep links, custom URLs, social media optimization, built-in analytics, and constant auditing of links allows marketers to create targeted, trackable short links. The strategic application of short links provides profound insights into content consumption and audience behavior data that can directly inform marketing strategies and improve performance. Short links are an easy-to-implement tactic that deliver immense marketing impact.
