5 Strategies to Drive Traffic with Certificates

Let me start with one of the greatest myths associated with certificates. Lots of people think that the biggest value of the certification process is to award a person with their certificate by delivering it either virtually or physically. This is perceived as the culmination of your certificate's journey. In fact, certificates are much more than that.

Why are certificates so beneficial to boost traffic?

Certificates continue to deliver value to you as an issuer even weeks or months after they were issued. They work as a marketing tool that promotes your brand and generates potential clients. Here is how:

• You issue certificates 
• Your recipients add them on LinkedIn profiles or share them on social media 
• The certificates are exposed to your recipients’ network
• Any certificate viewer can get to know about you
• You get free traffic to your website or social media profile

As you can see, at some moment, certificates might be compared to ad banners. They literally generate new leads at no additional cost. All you need to do then is consider using a small business CRM to manage your sales leads. This is just an unexpected bonus that you get. 

One of the ways to measure the marketing effectiveness of certificates is to look at the clicks they generate. At Certifier, you can see how many clicks your certificates brought you and evaluate your marketing gain.

The question here is: How to get more clicks? How do encourage certificate visitors to be more engaged? Although it might sound like a challenging task, there are several proven strategies that do work. Read on to find out what they are.

Top strategies to drive traffic with certificates

#1 Encourage your recipients to share

The thing that you should start with is to encourage your recipients to share their certificates and add them to their LinkedIn profiles. By exposing your certificates to a bigger audience, you make your learning events and your company’s brand more recognizable. It also goes without saying that, the more shares you have, the better certificate visibility you get. 

Some ideas to help you motivate your recipients to share their certificates:

• make your certificates visually appealing. The better a certificate looks, the more likely someone will be to post it on their feed.

• emphasize certificates' value. Make sure your recipients are proud of the document they get. 

• talk about the significance of sharing a certificate before and during your event. Do not just ask your recipients to share their certificates at the end of your event, but look for opportunities to communicate this during or even before your event takes place.

• make your certificate page look aligned to your branding. When everything on the certificate page looks familiar to the recipient, they are more likely to share it with their network.

💡PRO TIP: It is a well-known fact, that the less effort we invest into something, the less value we see in it. Thus, one of the ways to boost your certificates' value is to create a small "obstacle" on the way to getting them. For example, there might be a pre-condition for getting a certificate – passing an easy interactive quiz. You can also use it cold outreach upon finding email addresses of your target group.

💡PRO TIP: You can integrate Certifier with your quiz tool and your recipients will automatically get their certificates once they successfully pass a quiz!

#2 Work on a catchy issuer's description

Don’t forget to add your company’s name and a catchy description of your organization. Make sure that your description is compelling, short, and clearly describes what you specialize in. This information will be displayed on each certificate you issue and act as a way to tell your viewers about your company in a few sentences.

At Certifier, the issuer's name and description are placed next to the certificate:

💡PRO TIP: If you are not sure how to write a catchy issuer’s description, check the hero section of your company’s website. Usually, this section contains a powerful message that clearly describes the company’s specialization in one paragraph.

#3 Provide links to your website and learning events

At Certifier, we give you the possibility to place your website and learning event links that will clearly be visible on each certificate you issue. A link to your website will be also embedded in your company’s logo in the navbar. In addition to this, you should add a link to all your company’s events. This can be either a page dedicated to all your courses/webinars/etc., a link with your curriculum, or anything similar. 

Here is how we display the issuer's website and learning events link at Certifier:

💡 PRO TIP: If there is no dedicated page where people can get acquainted with the learning events you conduct, consider creating it. Such pages are extremely useful, especially if you have several events dedicated to different topics. They showcase your specialization and display all the courses, webinars, or other events you have in one place. 

#4 Include the links to your organization's social media profiles

Do not hesitate to enrich the issuer's section with your company's social media profiles. Add a link to your LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.  

At Certifier, we place the social media profiles of your company under the issuer name:

💡 PRO TIP: If some of your social media profiles are not updated regularly, consider not adding them. You should add only those links that have relevant up-to-date information about your company. 

#5 When creating a group, place a link redirecting users to its learning event

Digital certificates are mostly used for online events, so when creating a group, do not hesitate to add your learning event’s link to its description. By doing this, you transform the group name depicted on the certificate page into a link. Thus, if your certificate visitor is interested in this particular event/membership/etc., they will be able to learn more about it by clicking on this link.  

Here is how it will look:

💡 PRO TIP: If you have already issued some certificates without a group link, go and update those groups. The changes will be visible on the already issued certificates.

Summary

Clicks are among the most accurate ways to measure the marketing effectiveness of your certificates. Pay per click platforms can really improve the percentage of engagement with your business. Increasing the number of clicks results in turning your certificates into ad tools that can generate more event attendees or learning event participants. Several proven strategies can help you boost your clicks:

• Encourage your recipients to share

• Work on a catchy organization description

• Provide links to your website and learning events.

• Include the links to your organization’s social media profiles

• Add a link to the event for which you issue certificates