#MarketingTipMonday No. 24

Picture this. You’re driving down the road jammin’ to the radio when an ad comes on for your town’s restaurant week. By the end, your mouth is watering and you’re ready to take on the challenge of visiting all 37 restaurants in the 5 day period.

Then the announcer says, “Visit us as https: //www.yourtown .com/events/2021/restaurant+week/September-October for more deals, menus, hours, and more.”

Wait, what?

You’ll never remember all those backslashes and hyphens. The city needed to use a vanity URL (like yourtown. com/restaurantweek), a handy redirect to make your web address memorable and findable.

You do not need a vanity URL for all marketing campaigns, but you do need one for any campaign that includes print, mail, radio, or TV. In most cases, using a vanity URL for multichannel campaigns will create a better user experience.

Note: if your campaign is truly digital only, a vanity URL isn’t necessary, since hyperlinks will hide the actual URL anyway.