I am not talking about personal vanity. I am talking about business vanity. More specific I am talking about and revisiting the topic and value of branded domains and vanity URL’s and how these domain names and short links play an important role in driving more traffic to your website and improving conversion rates (sales).

Lately, our primary focus, here at Released Solutions, has been placed on coaching small business owners and start-up companies on how to utilize funnel marketing strategies to increase brand awareness, improve bottom-line conversion rates, and develop a strong customer engagement optimization plan. In each private marketing coaching session, we consistently recommended to each client the much-overlooked strategy and opportunity of using branded domains and vanity URLs.

Okay, so what is a Vanity URL (or branded domain/link) by non-technical description:

A vanity URL is a unique web address that is used in branded marketing strategies. These URLs are typically easy to remember, short in length, and are used in various social channels, other websites, and even in email marketing.

Here is an example

Of the 5 URL's listed below which would appeal more to you, and encourage you to click?

1. https://releasedsolutions.net/online-presence-management/why-funnelling-needs-to-be-in-your-marketing-strategy
2. https://releasedsolutions.net/online-presence-management/why-funnelling-needs-to-be-in-your-marketing-strategy?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=blog_post&utm_campaign=Marketing_Marketing_Funnel_Blog&utm_term=marketing_funnels&utm_content=post_content
3. https://release.zone/Xj43Js1u
4. https://release.zone/funnelling
5. https://release.zone/the-rabbit-hole

Our vanity URL is release.zone. It is a play off the popular concept of the “loading zone”. I hope it is clear which URLs are more engaging and inviting.

Okay, so what are the benefits to having a vanity URL?

1. Super Easy to remember

   Oftentimes, most people don’t carefully consider their domain name. As a result, your domain name may not be easy to remember or hard to spell. A vanity URL allows your business to rebrand or push a branding slogan into the consumer market. Whatever you choose for your vanity URL choose a domain name that is easy to remember. Even better, now that there is an entirely new list of domain suffixes the possibilities are endless. Take a look here for a list of new domain suffixes: https://release.zone/new-domain-extensions

2. Builds Consumer Trust

   As shown in the examples above, I am guessing, you easily decided which URLs seemed trustworthy to you and which made you feel uneasy. It is not just the vanity URL that boosts consumer confidence but the words that follow the domain name. As seen in the example you are able to alter the complete URL by using a shortener service such as bitly.com. If you need assistance with making a short URL with a custom domain name let’s chat.

3. Stands out

   Because you can get real creative with the custom name and the string of text that follows the domain URL you stand a better chance of the link be recognized. In our study of this we have seen huge improvements on click-through rates when using vanity URLs, especially with new customers, seeing your content for the first time.

4. Super inexpensive to obtain and maintain

   An additional hidden benefit to vanity URLs is they are very simple to maintain once you get a process in place. Using tools like Google’s Campaign Builder you are able to construct URLs that contain UTM parameters. Doing this enables you to submit the same URL to the shortener services with a variation of UTM parameters giving you the ability to create an infinite number of vanity URLs for a single landing page or multiple pages on your website. And the best part of all the starting price, minus the cost of the domain name, is free. That’s right the first 10,000 vanity URL will cost you nothing, on bitly.com, plus the cost of the domain and setup fees from an agency like ours (should you need help) with deploying your vanity URL strategy.

I hope this information helps improve your customer engagement optimization efforts. I feel vanity URLs are a must have in every marketing strategy. Trust me you will see a huge difference in customer engagement when switching over to vanity URLs. And don’t worry about your SEO strategy being impacted by utilizing vanity URLs. Most shortener services out there are SEO friendly, therefore, the link credited will still be attributed to your top level domain.

We assist companies and nonprofit businesses with obtaining the custom domain, integration into bitly.com or another shortener service, training on how to setup URLs and use Google’s Campaign Builder for better analytic tracking. This marketing campaign service is only $125 (one-time expense).