Branding matters. You may have heard the quote from Steve Forbes, “Your brand is the single most important investment you can make in your business,” and he couldn’t be more accurate. In addition, a NewsCred study revealed that 69% of millennials believe brand recognition is the most important driver of brand loyalty.

As a marketer, you would already know that a strong brand-driven marketing strategy is the key to turning prospects into customers. However, the branding process takes at least months, forcing you to turn to performance marketing for more immediate results. As a result, you just keep going back and forth between setting the longer-term direction and executing the shorter-term actions.

Thankfully, branded links can make your life easier. Read until the end to find out how you can benefit from them, from boosting your branding efforts to measuring performance.

How do branded links help your branding?

Why branding is important

Before moving on, let’s have a look at an excerpt from a Forbes article to see the value of branding one more time.

“A business’s branding is more important than you might think. On the outside, your brand may seem like it consists only of elements such as logos and colors, but your brand is actually the entire identity of your business. Your brand gives you personality.

Branding has always been a vital part of business, but it may be more important now than ever before. With social media, consumers get exposed to new brands every day. This can be great for consumers who have plenty of options and are able to do research to find the best one, but it makes it harder for businesses.”

Published on March 24, 2021
by Kristopher Jones, Forbes Councils Member

In fact, we can often see many marketing campaigns that have already incorporated various brand elements these days. However, the importance of branding links which users directly interact with may have been overlooked. Branding your links might seem like a small change, but it could make a big difference.

What is a branded link?

A link is, ad litteram, something that connects and provides access to various web pages and apps. It plays an essential role in bridging one part of the digital world to another, allowing web and app pages to be discovered. This is why marketers shorten links or use Open Graph meta tags and customize the title, description, and preview image of their content - to get clicks and increase engagement.

The more fundamental approach, however, is using branded links to tailor the look and feel of your links. In the simplest terms, a branded link is a short custom domain. It helps you stand out from competition and familiarize users with your brand.

The all-in-one Airbridge branded link

Creating branded links is made easy with Airbridge. You just need to define your domain, redirection path, and Open Graph meta tag for each of your brands when generating tracking links for your Custom Channels.

👉 Find out how to create tracking links with Airbridge

Airbridge’s branded links help redirect users whilst simultaneously measuring performance. In other words, it is an all-in-one link that strengthens your brand-building efforts, attributes your marketing performance, and creates a seamless user experience with deep linking.

📌 A Custom Channel refers to an owned media or earned media channel which is not officially integrated with Airbridge, such as the product or service’s website, e-mail, blog, and social media. You can type in the name of the channel of your choice when you create a link for your Custom Channel.
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📌 An Integrated Channel refers to a channel officially integrated with Airbridge, such as Moloco, Appier and Remerge. Check out the full list here.

Five ways to use branded links

Here are some practical tips for you to make the most out of Airbridge’s branded links.

1. Create branded links with Custom Domain feature

Airbridge offers a Custom Domain feature with which you can create a tracking link for your Custom Channel using a branded domain instead of a default domain provided by Airbridge (abr.ge). Rather than working with URL shorteners like bit.ly and abit.ly, you can use Airbridge to build URLs around your brand name and make them simple and catchy.

To add custom domains to Airbridge, you can either create a subdomain of your existing domain or purchase a new domain you like. Keep in mind that the subdomain should not be in use at the moment. The first example in the table above is a subdomain whereas the second and third examples are additional domains.

With the brand name in the domain, sharing your links means sharing your brand, which could lead to wider exposure and higher brand awareness. Moreover, users are more likely to click on branded links as they seem to provide quality content in the brand’s name. Furthermore, if the users actually find the content helpful, they will know that your brand is one they can rely on.

2. Further your branding efforts with Link Short ID

Once you have registered a custom domain, you can customize the Link Short ID of your Custom Channel tracking link. If you leave it blank, a random, unmodifiable address will be generated.

A Link Short ID, also known as a URL slug, is the last part of a full URL unique to a web or app page. With Airbridge, you may create an ID that matches your campaign or content.

A well-designed Link Short ID improves user experience as it allows users to expect what they are about to see before clicking on the link. It also helps with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) because the keywords in your URL signal Google that your content should be included on the results page. In other words, your content gets to be considered more trustworthy and more likely to be discovered by the right users.

Here are some cases where branded links with Link Short IDs come in handy:

• eLearning companies can use branded links to promote specific courses or instructors. In order to stand out and build a reputation, they can put the company name in the domain and the course or instructor name in the Link Short ID.
• eCommerce companies can use branded links to increase sales of specific products, putting the company name in the domain and the product name in the Link Short ID.

3. Use deep linking for consistent user experience

As mentioned earlier, Airbridge’s branded links serve both as a tracking link and a deep link. You can set the final destination to one of following:

• An app store, if you wish to increase app installs
• An in-app content, if you wish to show specific app page
• A web page, if you wish to set different URLs for Android, iOS and desktop.

Whichever destination you choose, you can be in full control of your users’ redirection path, thus creating a seamless and consistent user experience. This ultimately adds to your branding efforts.

4. Customize Open Graph meta tags for social media branding

Open Graph meta tags are snippets of code that decide how links are displayed when shared on social media. With this metadata, you can provide details including title, description, and preview image of the page.

In the Social Media Thumbnail settings page, you can preview and modify how each Airbridge tracking link would appear when shared on social media. Use the Open Graph Editor feature to quickly modify the meta tag, without involving a developer.

Open Graph meta tags are vital because they make it easier for users to learn more about your brand and to check the details of the linked content, therefore increasing click-through rate (CTR). The key content details included in the meta tags also help with SEO and brand trust.

5. Measure and improve marketing performance

After launching the campaign using branded links, you want to measure and analyze the results.

The good news is that Airbridge’s branded link is a tracking link that allows you to monitor behavior of the users who clicked on the link and the effectiveness of your campaign. Airbridge collects click and impression data as well as other relevant data to process them and prepare various types of reports. You can always track data via Actuals Report and Trend Report.

The next step to success

As you have seen, branding your links has many advantages. Beyond the obvious aesthetic appeal, you can build a consistent brand identity, win users’ trust, and improve SEO rankings.

If that’s not enough, it’s time for you to check out Airbridge’s all-in-one branded link - a branded link but a tracking link and a deep link as well. You can add branded elements to your links, measure your performance and redirect users to appropriate web or app pages.

Got any questions? Request a demo to have an in-depth conversation with our team of experts and find your way to success.