With the ever-changing landscape of social media marketing, brands are constantly thinking of new ways to stand out and stay ahead of the game. Image-based marketing was all the rage last year, but video-based marketing has been licking at its heels for quite some time. Instagram continues to skyrocket, with over 800 million active users. YouTube dominates the market with 1.57 billion active users. More brands are investing in video ads to get their message out and in front of consumers. Some brands will run successful video campaigns, while others will fail and struggle to make sense of it all.
Thanks to the new GDPR regulations, transparency will also factor in how well a campaign does. An easy and important way to do this is to use branded links. Branded links could help you package your content with a clear message, to help consumers make a decision about your brand. It adds a unique level of transparency that many marketing tools are unable to do.
According to Hubspot’s infographic, social media reference is important to 71% of consumers. However, 75% don’t consider ads truthful. So, how can a brand gain a consumer’s trust? It starts with understanding what a consumer needs and want. From there, you craft a message that is authentic, honest, and transparent. A branded link is on the front line of communication. It provides transparency and accountability. Consumers know what they’re clicking on.
I had the wonderful opportunity to chat with Rebrandly.com. They offer brands an opportunity to use branded links. Check the interview out below.
Who is Rebrandly and what do you do?
Rebrandly is a custom link shortener that empowers users to put their name or their brand’s name on all the links they share. It allows you to customize every aspect of a link to best represent your brand’s identity.
When setting up your custom link shortener, you choose a domain which will be the base for your short links. Then, every time you create a new short link, you can pick the keyword that will appear after the slash. In the keyword, you can indicate what kind of content you’re sharing to feature a strong call-to-action or add an emoji.
The Rebrandly dashboard also acts as a link management tool, which helps you organize and search all your links in one place so they are easy to monitor and update.
Why is it important to have a branded link and how can brands benefit from having one?
Branded links are a great way to promote your brand’s identity and boost its visibility online. When sharing an interview or a positive review of your film, even if it’s on a third-party website, you can make sure your name is associated with it by using a branded custom link.
Additionally, branded links are also attention-grabbing and look professional. They’re more attractive than long URL links or anonymous short links. But, most important, they are trustworthy and inspire confidence in your audience, unlike generic short links that spammers could use to misdirect consumers who click on the link. When a consumer sees a branded link with a special keyword after the slash, they know it won’t lead to spam or malicious content. This increases trust in your brand and can boost the click-through rates of your links up to 39%.
In addition to building trust and engagement with your audience, branded links are also memorable and easy to pronounce. They’re even perfect to add to an Instagram Story.
Many of our readers are filmmakers, actors, and music artists. How could they benefit from using a branded link?
Rebrandly is ideal for social media posts, where character counts are often limited and everyone is vying for attention in busy newsfeeds and timelines. Because branded links are easy to remember and type into a browser, they are excellent to use in offline marketing materials, like flyers, comp cards, and business cards. Further, this makes them ideal for reciting during media events, red carpet premieres, and press junkets.
Actors can use branded links to help them land an audition by using a snappy and memorable link to drive people to their online CV (resume). They can also print the branded link onto a business card or simply share it with a casting director. It could be the difference between someone delving further into their work or moving on to the nest person.
For filmmakers, branded links are a great way to drive traffic to trailers when promoting a film release or premiere. If a filmmaker shares coverage and reviews of their film using a branded link, they’ll be able to track and retarget anyone who clicks on it by using specific promotional campaigns for their film. If they’re running paid ads on social media or Google, it is a great way to boost a campaign’s ROI.
Normally, retargeting ads are presented to someone who has been to their website. If they have an email subscriber list, the branded link would be an awesome tool to use. The best part about having a branded link is it’s cost-effective and an excellent way to target an audience. It also encourages retweeting and reposting positive reviews of their film, too.
How easy is it to track a branded link campaign?
It very easy to monitor the success of your links in Rebrandly. You can add tags to keep track of what campaign each link is part of. And, at a glance, you can also see click data, as well as which countries, browsers, languages, devices and platforms visitors are coming from.
If you want to kick your tracking up another notch, it takes just a couple of clicks to add UTM tracking parameters to website links, which will transfer data to Google Analytics and show precisely how much traffic each campaign is driving to your website.
Name some of the awesome people who used Rebrandly successfully.
There are lots of great brand-focused businesses customizing their links with our tool, from Land Rover and Jaguar to Harvard University and Heineken. The below example from Panda Express is great because it showcases its name and features a clear and concise call to action as the keyword, too.
Branded links can be used for special contests, like below.
The guys running the TRY Channel over on YouTube recently filmed a video to promote their new merchandise and even though the store hadn’t been set up during filming and editing, they were able to finish and schedule the video knowing the branded link they would use. Once the t-shirts went up on Teespring, they just created the branded link and if they ever decide to sell their merchandise using a different site, they’ll be able to edit the link to lead there instead of Teespring. The links in their videos will always be up-to-date.
Filmmakers could even use branded links to create and prep great promos during shoots, even if their official website or social media accounts aren’t live, yet. A perfect example of this is using a branded link for exclusive content for a crowdfunding campaign. A branded link could be JohnDoe.press/SupportMyFilm to point people towards a Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, or Patreon campaign.
Why should Rebrandly be your choice for branded links?
Rebrandly specifically specializes in branded links making it the best choice for using them. Directly within our interface, you can easily search, select and purchase domains to use for your short links. The possibility to emojify links in Rebrandly is also one of our most quirky and unique features!
Beyond that, we’re constantly improving our tool, launching new features and improving the user experience. We’d love to see more filmmakers try branded links and experience their benefits, so we’ve partnered with Occhi Magazine to give readers a free custom domain.
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READY TO WIN? PLEASE READ! Contact https://occhimagazine.com/contact. Add PICK ME subject line and tell us the following:
1. How would you use a branded link (Ex. http://JohnDoe.Press , http://MyTeaser.Press )?
2. Why do you believe branding is important?
We have 25 branded links to giveaway! Hurry and submit!
Editor’s Note: Huge thanks to Rebrandly for sponsoring our giveaway! Follow us on Twitter at @occhimagazine.
Check out some awesome content published to the Rebrandly blog!
10 Amazing Personal Branding Examples
Crafting the Perfect Twitter Bio and Profile
How to Build Brand Trust on Social Media
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