Brand links are powerful marketing assets. Companies of all sizes in various industries use them to advance their social media, digital marketing, and customer service efforts.
At BioURL, we have seen many different ways for customers to apply brand links and benefit from them. In fact, as of the publication date of this blog article, our customers are using nearly 100,000 of them, so we have quite a bit of data to process. Considering starting using branded links? This is what you need to know.
What is a Branded Link?
Let us first discuss what makes a brand link a brand link.
Every link, whether branded or not, has a protocol, domain name, and path.
For example, the general BioURL link may be similar to: https://biourl.link/uI1G9
Here, "biourl.link" is the domain, and the following alphanumerics are considered the path. Brand links follow the same structure, but they have a unique domain name instead of "biourl.link". Companies that use brand links can include their name in the link, or another word that best represents their entire content.
Businesses that Use Branded Links
Even if you haven't heard of the terms "custom link" or "brand link", you may have seen them in the wild. Companies use these links in a variety of ways, including social media, SMS messages, on-site events, and printed materials. Here are just a few brands that use them.
- ESPN uses es.pn
- New York Times uses nyti.ms
- BuzzFeed uses bzfd.it
Why Brand Your Links?
So we have introduced what brand links are, now let's talk about why they should be used. For companies and influential people, there are many reasons. Here are some.
1 – People trust them
Because the brand link replaces "biourl.link" with the name of your choice, your customers can identify the source. This helps build trust between your audience and your business.
2 – They get more clicks
When your audience knows they can trust your links, they are more likely to click on them. In fact, they are 34% more likely to click on branded links than general links, which will increase the exposure of your content.
3 – They show your audience where you’re sending them
Remember the example of the analysis link above? When you edit the path of the brand link (which we like to call the "second half" of the link), you can let people preview the location you sent them to further build trust and increase click-through rates.
4 – They increase awareness of your brand
With BioURL Pro, you can take advantage of the power of automatic branding. Even if other users shorten it using BioURL, auto-branding will keep your unique domain name in the link. This ensures that no matter who shares your link, your brand is always in a leading position.
Are Generic Links Bad?
Generic BioURL links are powerful in their own right. Thousands of our free and paid users use universal links every day to connect with customers and analyze their cross-channel performance. Universal BioURL links are as safe and reliable as branded BioURL links.
With so many universal links on the Internet, brand links stand out. And, as we mentioned above, their performance is better than universal links. Therefore, although universal links are not bad, from a performance and brand building perspective, custom brand links are even better.
