TinyURL was created over 20 years ago to solve a very simple problem involving unicycles and early 2000’s internet forums.
Back in the day, URLs were long and unwieldy by default. Forums and message boards, on the other hand, were pretty simplistic in terms of their design—meaning default links looked terrible and took away from character limits when shared.
The solution was TinyURL, a service that took long URLs and trimmed them down to a reasonable size.
20 years later, our service is still solving problems. We’ve dreamed up all sorts of use cases from establishing consumer trust to tracking the performance of different marketing campaigns.
Since we haven’t given a proper rundown of our service’s value in a while, we’ve written this article to walk you through all the different things that keep people coming back to TinyURL.
What is URL Shortening?
Before we dive in, we want to make sure that we’re all on the same page when we talk about link shortening. At its heart, it really is as simple as taking a long URL and making it tinier—but some of the cooler applications come from knowing how the process works.
When you submit a link for shortening, our app generates a unique, shorter link and notes both the original and shortened URLs in our database.
Whenever a user follows your shortened link, it sends a command to our service to send them to the paired, original URL. In technical terms, this is called URL redirection.
Whenever a user follows your shortened link, it sends a command to our service to send them to the paired, original URL. There are a lot of different things that can happen on top of those basic steps. We can create custom links, set you up with your very own domains, and even track basic demographic information about the people who follow your links.
There are a lot of ways this can help your marketing:
1. Shorten URLs for a Better Customer Journey
From the moment we learned just how many of our users rely on our service to run their physical and digital marketing campaigns, we’ve been hard at work figuring out the best ways to help them help their current and would-be customers.
One thing we figured out early on was that users appreciate it when you keep things short and simple.
Shortening links with TinyURL allows marketers to offer links that look cleaner and take up less space. Customization takes this a step further, making links viable for print media.
Just think of how much better www.tinyurl.com/dougscookies would look in a magazine or print ad than something like www.tinyurl.com/sd8f9w3.
2. Shorten URLs for Easier Recall
While your ideal outcome would be for someone to click on your links, sometimes it can be just as useful to be remembered.
Brand recall is valuable currency. Being memorable means that your marketing efforts aren’t wasted on people who aren’t in the market for your solutions right now.
If they can remember your brand name or value propositions when they do find themselves needing you, then your marketing materials can stay effective weeks or even months after they’re seen.
With custom links and branded domains, your calls-to-action can serve as yet another reminder of who you are and what you do.
3. Shorten URLs to Earn More Trust
Consumer cynicism has been a problem for years now. Social media and review platforms like Yelp have led to customers becoming more critical of where they spend their money.
Moreover, we’re sure everyone’s had regrets clicking on links they shouldn’t have by now. If you’re lucky, the worst you get is rickrolled—but phishing scams, malware and other perils can keep people from clicking through.
Earning trust is more important than ever for marketers and business owners, which is why your links have to be as transparent and direct as possible.
Long, branded URLs with confusing UTM codes won’t cut it either: users need to have a clear idea of what kind of content they’re in for by clicking your links.
4. Shorten Links for Better Analytics
We understand that not everyone reading this has easy access to analytics. Some of you might use TinyURL to send people over to your Instagram stores or Amazon listings, while others might not have the time or resources to study Google Analytics.
As a company that believes in simplicity as much as we hate anything complicated, we’ve made it easy to track who visits your links, when, and from where.
This is incredibly useful for people who do business online but lack their own websites. We can tell you a lot about your users and traffic patterns that your platforms can’t (or won’t) without sacrificing your users’ digital anonymity.
In turn, this means that our customers get to run smarter campaigns based on real performance—no need for any guesswork here.
5. Shorten Links to Modernize Traditional Marketing
Many marketers believe that you can’t track the performance of traditional forms of marketing like fliers, billboards and even television ads as well as you could digital ones.
While analytics are a core part of digital marketing, there are ways to take more modern approaches to traditional marketing.
Say you wanted to experiment with two different color schemes for your brochures. Using two shortened URLs that link back to your desired landing pages will let you track which of your two designs generates more clicks—without having to set up UTM codes or even own your own website.
TinyURL also offers QR code generation, blending your physical marketing with digital space more seamlessly.
This is a great use case for entrepreneurs, marketing freelancers and just about anyone who could benefit from running more advanced ads and promotional materials.
Conclusion
Thousands of our customers trust TinyURL to make a big difference in their marketing. It turns out that our vision of making the Internet an easier, more intuitive place to spend time and do business lines up with their goals pretty nicely.
If you’ve never tried using shortened URLs in your marketing, we invite you to give our app a try. You can shorten links for free, and customize them to your heart’s content.
And if you’re already a free account holder, we highly recommend giving our paid plans a try. You can unlock features like analytics and custom domain management, opening up a whole new level of control and intelligent decision-making.
