Using Short Links - Branded Links, Redirects, and Click Tracking

Bingo. Here we go. Welcome. Welcome, everybody. Funnel hackers, rock stars. Nice. Here we go. Room is finally open. Great to see you guys here today. Welcome to another wonderful training Tuesday. I'm super excited about this one. I'm excited about everyone, R and I, but this one I'm really excited for. We have a super powerful and in my opinion, underutilized feature in ClickFunnels, something that everybody should be using every single day. But specifically if you're an affiliate, if you're using Click Funnels as your powerhouse for your affiliate marketing, holy cow, do we have a doozy for you today. Today we're going to go over short links, how to take URLs and make them your own links, branded and personalized for your business and your customer. As always, gang, it's not a training Tuesday if I'm not joined by my great friend Aaron to walk us through all the tech and and remove the confusion. Aaron, what's cracking, dude?

Not much, Dante. How you doing?

I am living the dream. I'm excited to get into this today.

Yeah, me too. I'm really excited too, because this, this entire initial idea of short links came because before I joined ClickFunnels, I actually didn't know how short links were utilized. Like, I admittedly thought a short link is just purely to reduce the size of a link. Right? Right. So if you've, if you guys have ever been out there and you're going through different links on the Internet, you're clicking on this, you're clicking on that, and then you tap on your URL and it is like a million characters long. I literally thought like bitly and those short link things were just to reduce the sizing of them and that's it. And man, was I wrong. There is so much to short links. And so that's really what I want to talk about today is just the power of short links and the capabilities of them. So let's go ahead.

And I think that's awesome. Before we get too deep into it, Aaron, you just brought into mind of me when I first found this world, when I first found this world, I had never even heard of a short link or anything. Forever. This has been called UTM tracking. It allows us to make specific URLs that we can put specific places and then I can track my data based on that. So. So UTM stands for Urchin Tracking Machine. At the end of the day, who cares what that stands for? All we need to know is UTMs and short links, which is the click funnels version of utms. It allows us to put specific tracking out there on our marketing efforts. And if you're a real hardcore funnel hacker, you know we're not making any decisions that are not data driven decisions. So this is an amazing tool, a simple but amazing tool that we get to use every single day to collect our data properly so we can actually make some data driven decisions. Aaron, I'm going to pass it over to you, brother.

Absolutely. So I want to go ahead and jump straight into my clickfunnels workspace here. All right, here we go. And I am in the Workout with me space. Now the first thing to get to short links is over on your left hand navigation bar. Go ahead and just scroll through here until you find short links. Now if you don't have it installed, just tap this add apps button right here at the top. It's going to redirect me over to my apps and then I'll just find the short links app. If you tap on it, if you do not have it in here, it'll say install short links here. So just go ahead and do that and then it's going to redirect you over to the short links app. So you can see we have several short links that have already been created previously. I can see the different campaigns that we were running as examples here. But there's also some extra information. So I can see the amount of clicks on this specific short link. I can see the target URL and we have some additional information over here like redirect type and I can go in and edit it from here. Now in this example, I just want to go ahead and build a new short link from completely scratch. So let me tap this button up here in the top, right? All right, here we go. New short link for Workout with me. So starting from right from the top, let's give our short link a name. Now this is for internal reference only. Users are never going to see this, so just be descriptive. So that way you always know what your short link is referencing. So let's go and name this Training Tuesday short link example. I think that's pretty specific to what we're doing here. Now the next box is domain. So from this dropdown I can select multiple domains. If I have multiple domains connected to my workspace. If I have one domain, it's just going to auto select that. I'm going to go ahead and select our Workout with Me xyz. So that is going to be the base of this short link. Now right below that I can see the original path here this is whatever you want your short link to be. So in our example, I have workout with me xyz, the extension of this short link. Go ahead and do two training Tuesday short link example. So ttsle. Now, that admittedly doesn't really roll off the tongue, but this is just for example purposes. Now, a good rule of thumb is that your short link should be one short that makes sense, right? But two, easy to say, right? Because word of mouth, it's important and there's nothing easier than saying yes, you got to go check out this offer Workout with me XYZ slash go or something very simple. That way it's easy, it rolls off the tongue, and word of mouth will work in that regard. All right, and then the next box here is my target URL. So this is just wherever you want to be redirecting users to. Now, because this is training Tuesday and we're talking about short links, I'm just going to go ahead and redirect a URL from our help center discussing short links. So let me grab that and I'll paste it right into the box. All right? And then the very last box here in the top box we'll say is the redirect type. Now we have two different types. From this dropdown, you can see temporary 302 and permanent 301. Now 302s, they're really just used for things that are not intended to stay forever. So think of things like social media links. Maybe you're running a campaign with a hard end time or just something that you want to update later. So this is just used for. This is the most commonly used one and that's why it's selected as the default. Now from the dropdown, we also have the permanent 301s. You may have heard of the term 301 redirect. This is going to be for permanent things. Maybe you just changed your domain and you want to redirect everyone over to that if they're going to the old one. So a permanent redirect Direct is a 301. And you would select that if this is a permanent short link for this example, that Aaron.

I'm sorry, in that you mean like you own two domains? You own Aaron oberdick.com and aaron.com but I want to redirect Aaron Obradick to aaron.com forever. That's a permanent redirect, correct?

Yes.

Gotcha.

Yep. Absolutely. Yeah. And that, that's very frequent. Right. When someone wants to change their domain, especially if they've created, you know, a Footprint out there and people understand and know them as a brand and then they go to that website. The last thing they want to do is get 404 or have an error or not able to actually get to their destination. So Creating a permanent 301 redirect is the best way to go when you're. You're migrating your domain there.

But if we're still in the building stages, we're still getting started building our brand. A 302 is perfectly fine.

Absolutely temporary. Yes, absolutely. All right, so at this point, technically everything's finished, but there are some really important optional details. Like Dante was talking about UTM tracking at the top there. So I'm going to go over that in just a second. But right below here we have a split test. So we have a second URL box here and then a split percentage box here. If you don't fully understand split testing, basically it's just a way to stop guessing. So you're sending part of your traffic to one destination and then part of it to another destination. The best example of this, maybe you have different formats of medium. So you have a video on one page and then you have exactly the same page, but for people that are more interested in reading text, you have a PDF download. Maybe you don't know exactly which form of media is going to work better. So you can do a split test and determine, okay, I'm seeing a longer stay on page with the video results, so let me go ahead and just set that permanently. But again, split testing is just a way to track your results of different things in the same way. That way you can determine which one was most effective.

Another just really quick example on that. Maybe you're trying to find the kind of page path that gets the best click. So you're gonna make one page path be slash go, but another page path be start now. And then you can see theoretically which page path gets the most clicks. Maybe from sending it in the email.

Exactly, yes. All right. And then right below that. Now I'm just. For this example, I'm not going to do any split testing, but I wanted to talk about that. And then also retargeting pixel, I do want to discuss. This is really just more of an. Yeah, it's a little bit more of an advanced option, but it lets you fire a tracking pixel as soon as someone clicks the short link. So before they even land on the page, they're already a track. This really just allows you to build retargeting audiences from link clicks. Instead of relying on only page Views. Dante, I know you're kind of the expert of that stuff. Do you have anything to add on retargeting pixel?

Well, it's just so important and it's really, really simple to add this pixel just right here to these specific links. In case anybody doesn't know the two major types of ads that you're going to run is a simple targeting ad like your main ad. And we always want to run retargeting. There's so many times we hear all the reports and all the people on stage tell us you need nine touch points before somebody makes a conversion with you. Nowadays you hear you need 12, 15 touch points before someone makes a conversion with you. And although the number may not actually be that true in real life, especially when you're following proper marketing principles, we can do it much quicker. But still, still typically you do need multiple touch points. Somebody might not be ready to take action with you right then that moment. But you put retargeting on your links like this. So now somebody clicks a link and engages with you. You can now have retargeting ads that are targeting back to them saying hey, you didn't do the thing. But check out all the success my previous students have had. Simple retargeting ads to get people to see you and look at you as a brand that they can know like and trust. And I just think it's really, really powerful that it's built into each link itself. If you should so happen to be getting really granular with your ads and you want to have some pixels on some URLs, but a different pixel, maybe on a different URL, you just do it right here. No code, no developer degree, nothing.

Yeah, that's really well said. Thanks for explaining that even thoroughly. Now the last thing that we're going to talk about is UTM tracking here. Now these fields let you tag a short link with info where you where you plan to share, like YouTube, right? If I want to go in here and say YouTube, email, social, these are all labels that get passed along to your analytics tool so that way you can measure where your traffic came from at a later time. Really this is just helping you organize your data if you're keeping true measure of all your analytics. Now there are several boxes here, right? So you can fill these out. And again I really want you to think of them as tags because they are just labeling everything and just really filtering them so you can really get micro analytical and read everything. Dante, is that you want to add anything to UTM tracking. I know this is kind of your bread and butter.

I. I think that was pretty much it. I think the best way. Let's build it really quick. Let. Let's put some parameters in there. Let's say, Aaron, that we're going to run a new Facebook campaign.

Let's do it.

Awesome.

All right, so let's go ahead and do Facebook as the source. Now, medium is this is discussing video, text, the whole nine yards. Exactly.

So let's say in this case, it's going to be a carousel. How about that?

That sounds good. Oh, man, you put me on the spot. How do I sell? How do I spell that?

Oh, no, let me see. There we go. Can you still hear me, Aaron?

Yeah, I can hear you.

Great. I finally figured out the view. Okay. Yeah. Carousel. Who cares how you spell it, Aaron?

All right, you know what?

For us.

There we go. All right. Perfect. All right, and then campaign.

Let's say this. And this would be like the campaign of what's my funnel? What's my product? What's the actual campaign that I'm running? Let's say it's for. I sell Pokeballs.

All right, that's. That's a good one. I like that.

And then the UTM term and content are not technically required, so we can leave those blank for now.

Perfect. All right, so in this scenario, if we were doing this specific campaign to Facebook, and it's going to be a carousel about Pokeballs. Now we know exactly when all of the results come back to our analytics, they are going to measure that, and we know the exact campaign this is producing from.

Yep.

All right, so I tap create short link, and boom. Now we have it. Here it is at the bottom. I was going to say. Wait a second. It's not at the top there, but here you go. We have it. I have it. I can share this. Now it's ready. It's ready to be tracked. And that is essentially what you need to do to create a short link now.

So now to tie it all together, Aaron, I'll just go here. Yeah, you created. Sorry, gang. I'm going to flop views really quick. I hope I don't give you a headache. Hop back into that short link for me, Aaron. Yeah, you created this short link itself, and now this is the short link that you would share on Facebook because to the right hand side. Oops, sorry. The UTM name, we're going to discard that. Yes, the UTM name is Facebook. So for this link, I would just share it on Facebook if I wanted to say. Let's say Run a Tik Tok campaign. I would make another short link and I would make these UTM parameters for that new platform. I share that new short link with TikTok. My Facebook traffic comes in on one link. My TikTok traffic comes in on another link. From here I can go to my funnel and I can filter. When you go to your funnel in the top, your funnel analytics specifically. Nice. Aaron's gonna show us. Let's do a quick walkthrough because this, this ties it all together, gang. This is how we actually make the data driven decision that I hope you guys are seeking out every single day, the clear true data from what your customer is actually doing and telling you. Because we let our customers vote with their wallets and actions, right? That's all that we care about and this lets us do it. So now Aaron, in the top right, there's a kind of funnel looking icon. Yes sir. This is now my UTM filtering where I can filter my traffic based on specific UTM parameters. I can filter on their first or last visit. In this case, let's choose the first visit. And now you see UTM source, UTM medium, UTM campaign, the exact same things that we just filled out in our short links. So here I would put my UTM source as Facebook, my UTM medium as carousel, my UTM campaign as pokeballs, and now when I hit apply, I am filled. Let's say a thousand people went to my funnel today I hit apply. I am now filtering my data to only people who came in through that specific short link that I shared on whatever platform I shared it on. Facebook, to TikTok, to Reddit, to Pinterest, to your own personal bible study group chat, I don't know, wherever you shared the link. Right? That is how we actually track what data, what traffic sources are truly sending out the best. So if just a quick little traffic lesson now, if you're picking up what we're putting down, yes, you should be sharing specific URLs with all of your specific ad platforms so you can actually acquire data the right way to make a decision based on it. So good. Aaron, do you have any questions or did I miss anything there?

No, that was an excellent explanation of the analytical side of things. So I really appreciate you laying through that. Now what I'd love to go through next is some use cases of short links.

Right?

So it's great and dandy to know how to do them, but what, what do I need them for? Right? And I know you're going to have additional things Here, But I'll go ahead and just go through the list that I've created. And first, first and foremost is just social media bio links, right? One of the highest traffic but lowest flexibility places to put any information. So a short link just lets you create one consistent bio link and you can change that behind the scenes, right? You can update that to your latest medium. You can always up that to your latest funnel, whatever it may be, that can be changed, but the link will always stay the same to viewers.

Hold on, let me make sure I understand that correctly. So you're saying I can make Aaron Obradick.com bio as a short link and then that goes to my link in Bio funnel and I can just share that link. I can just tell anybody anywhere, anytime, just go to aaron obradick.com bio and it's always going to send them right there.

Exactly. Yeah. Super useful. Yeah, it really just keeps everything organized under the social front of things. Now another consistent point is email campaigns, right? Instead of long, messy tracking links, you can just have clean URLs. That way it just doesn't look spammy. It doesn't, you know, it doesn't reduce the trust overall. And this is really especially important on mobile as well. It just gives you a clean branded URL overall to use. There's now another use case, YouTube descriptions, right? How many times, how many times have you gone to YouTube and you see a mass amount of links in the description. That is a perfect use case for it. Another one, QR codes, right? You create a QR code, once it's hard printed, it's locked in. You can change that though, behind the scenes with a short link. So you say, hey, I made this QR code. I don't want to just toss it in the trash and get rid of it. I'm going to repurpose this and update it to my latest campaign and repurpose that. And then a last thing that I thought of was limited time promotions, right? So if you're running a sale or you're doing a launch campaign or you have a flash offer to give, run a short link. That way again, you're tracking everything through the UTMs and you're just really keeping everything in an analytical standpoint. So those are the examples I came up with there. Dante, do you have anything additional you'd like to add to that?

I do. I'm gonna share my screen. Who knows what's gonna happen. But are you seeing some funnel settings right now, Aaron?

No. I believe we have to probably put.

You live there oh, there we go.

There we go.

Okay, now you're seeing some funnel stats. Oh, yeah, Funnel settings.

Yes.

Okay, great. I talked early on about affiliates. You should be using this every single day. Absolutely. You should, you should be using this for your click Funnels, promotional offers, but any other offers that may be in your ecosystem. You know, if you're, if you're a, if you're an affiliate doing things the right way, you're not ever just promoting one thing. You're promoting many things. So you have many grapple hooks in the wall. You have many hooks into what is your customer. If one of the revenue chains ever stops or they cancel you, you have more ways to promote. So you can use short links across the entire ecosystem of your affiliate business. So if you're an affiliate, many times you're given a link or a URL to promote or share with your customers and you don't get to control that URL. The URL is the URL. Well, you can take that URL and you can put it into a short link and now have it be branded to yourself like Aaron was saying. Aaron Obradick.com join go. Start here. Easy. URL's a great use. Case of that is. Let's say I'm in the Buy More machine in this case, right? I'm. It's part of a, E a, a Trey Loellen E Commerce training and I have an amazing funnel. But let's say you want to go to any funnel of yours and I want to share this funnel with my community. I want to share this funnel with my tribe. I want to, I want to make a YouTube video talking about this funnel and I want to give it away so I can start generating trials and commissions. You want to share a funnel? If you go to the funnel settings slide down here. Amazing. Click Funnels gives me a share funnel link. Wow. I can share this funnel. People can download this funnel and if they start paying for their account, I'm generating 30% commissions on every payment. I can now give this funnel away and use it as a, as a literal revenue chain for my business. Amazing. But I can't change the URL. So now, like Aaron said, across my socials, in the link of my YouTube, I would have to put this in my emails, I would have to put this URL. Not anymore. I can take this URL, copy it, go over to short links, and now I can take this URL and brand it to myself, pretty much put my brand wrapper over it. So now I'm branding everything that I'M doing another example. Frameworks. ClickFunnels has frameworks where you can build everything somebody might need and give it to them. The funnels, the email sequencing, the courses, the communities. You can build somebody's entire business or the entire funnel, the entire process and give it to. Amazing. That's revolutionary. It is, but we give you a specific URL that you have to share with them. Unless you take that URL to short links. You put your own domain as a wrapper on it, you put your own branding on it, and you just share a simple, clean URL with your customers.

That's awesome. I love the Frameworks example. I didn't even think about that. So that is a brilliant touch point there. All right, so with that being said, I think now, correct me if I'm wrong here, I think that wraps up the presentation for today, but I just throw a quick recap of what we talked about. Right. So what are short links, how you can utilize them, how to get them set up, and some use cases. Right. So it's kind of four different touch points there. Now, with that being said, we are live every training Tuesday and we want to know what you guys want to learn. So if you're here live, let us know in the comments section. Drop us a subject, drop a topic, whatever you're just looking to learn more information on. And we're happy to cater next week's or the additional weeks into that content. So, Dante, you have anything before we wrap up the presentation here on short links?

Excuse me, I would just echo everything Aaron said. You know, for over a decade, Click Funnels has had a point of pride that we are clickfunnels and we use clickfunnels to sell click funnels. And that's very true. If you look at other softwares that say, use our software to build your business, they don't use their own software to build their own business. Right? So we've had a point of pride on that forever. And it's still something that we hold dear even in the AI revolution that we're currently in today. This show, Training Tuesdays is, is literally built and made by Funnel hackers for Funnel hackers. I guarantee you, gang, I have asked every silly question under the sun. It is impossible for you to leave a stone unturned, and it is impossible for you to ask a question that is sillier than some of the ones that I have asked. So please, I just want to echo Aaron, if you have anything that you're struggling in, anything that you want to learn more about and maybe you're like, oh, I found this thing, and I really want to start carving out any expertise in this area. We are by funnel hackers for funnel hackers. You leave your comments, let us know what you would like to see more about or learn more about, and we will create training Tuesdays for those. Exactly.

Absolutely.

As always, it's an absolute blast to be with you guys. Till next Tuesday. We'll catch you then.

All right, take care, everyone. Thanks so much.