Do you know why digital marketing remains one of the best channels for marketers to fit into their budgets ideally? Learn how to effectively start measuring the success of your website with UTM codes and how to create Google Analytics tracking URLs.
The central part of digital marketing’s appeal to marketers is the data available through it. It is now easy to trace each dollar spent on digital marketing by weighing it against your uniquely set goals and objective. In this article, we’ll explain how UTM codes can measure campaign success.
When tracking digital marketing performance, some are much easier to track and interpret, like paid search, shopping, display campaigns, etc. Other common channels and activities, like paid social media campaigns or email marketing, may prove to be more challenging.
Often, we may hear people saying that they have tried social media marketing but struggled to measure the return on investment through it.
A study had shown that nearly 60% of marketing professionals find measuring the return on investment is the single biggest challenge in digital marketing.
So, suppose your primary objective is to identify which social posts contribute to most of your leads and which campaigns ensure optimum sales and revenue. In that case, knowing about the UTM code is essential.
Yes, the UTM code is a magic secret behind the success of many successful digital marketers and social media campaigners.
About UTM code
UTM code is expanded as an ‘urchin tracking module,’ which is used to make custom URLs to be used by marketers to track the effectiveness of their campaigns through various channels in terms of sourcing traffic to particular web pages.
Google Analytics then parses these codes you attach to the URLs, and reports are present to you. You can find it in the ‘Campaigns Report’ of Google Analytics to track your ROI.
It is the ‘urchin tracking modules’ as Urchin Software is primarily under development This analytics firm was then acquired by Google back in 2005 and later was present as Google Analytics.
Let’s look at an example of a UTM code builder URL
The portions of the above URL present in blue are the UTM parameters up to the URL of this blog. Running this will help Google Analytics to identify the traffic to this blog post, specifically from Facebook, separating it from the other channels through which traffic is coming in.
Usage of UTM codes
Quality UTM codes will help marketers in the following aspects:
- Value addition in the hard-to-measure channels to plan a proper budget.
- Help marketers to hone into things that are not working. Everything is available on a single, easy-to-interpret dashboard without creating many reports.
- Analyzing the A/B split tests in a better way.
- Expedite implementation and reporting of various campaigns from the testing phase to complete roll-out.
There are five UTM parameters: campaign medium, campaign source, campaign name, campaign content, campaign term, etc.
All this gathers information about various aspects of the performance of a specific URL, i.e., a web page. This information allows marketers better to plan their digital marketing and web page management strategies.
How can you utilize UTM codes to better your campaigns?
Five parameters of the UTM system are different. The first three are the most popular parameters (Source, Medium, Campaign), but for additional information, you may choose to track all five. This is exactly what you can monitor with each:
1. Traffic Source Effectively Measuring Website Success
The UTM parameter for traffic sources allows you to track the origin of traffic. The parameter that is added to your URL is utm_source. Sources you may follow include Facebook, Google, Bing, inbound.org, or the name of an email list.
Eg: &utm_source=Twitter
2. Medium: How Create UTM Tracking?
The medium UTM parameter identifies the traffic type the visitor originated from – CPC, email, social, referral, display, etc. The parameter is utm_medium.
Eg: &utm_medium=cpc
3. Campaign Title
The campaign’s name is included in the UTM parameter, this allows you to track the success of a campaign precisely. For example, you can utilize the campaign parameter to segregate traffic between different Facebook or email campaigns. (Learn more about the conventions used to name cities below.) The parameter is utm_campaign UTM Codes.
Eg: &utm_source=example-campaign
4. Content Google Analytics URLs UTM
If you have multiple links that point to the same URL (e.g., an email with two CTA buttons), this code will help you determine which link was clicked. The UTM parameter is called utm_content.
Eg: &utm_content=navlink
5. Keyword
The UTM parameter is a keyword-specific parameter that allows you to track which keyword term a website visitor used to come from. This parameter is dedicated to paid advertisements in search results. The parameter is utm_term.
Eg: &utm_source=growth+hacking+tactics
UTM Tracking Tips
Here are some suggestions on how to best incorporate and utilize UTM tracking URLs in your code:
- Ensure that your URLs and links are consistent, clear, and easy to read (you may create a standard for link tagging/UTM parameter guidance to ensure this).
- Keep a record of your UTM links so everyone on your team knows which linked posts exist.
- Link the UTM tracking code to your CRM (like HubSpot) to understand the impact on your bottom line.
- Be as specific with your URL UTM parameters as possible, this will ensure your tags are clear about what they’re tracking and to where.
- Follow all lower or upper case letters — UTM codes are case-sensitive.
- Keep names concise but evocative (e.g. The abbreviation “US” is often abbreviated as “United_States”).
Now that you learn how to effectively start measuring the success of your website with UTM codes and how to create Google Analytics tracking URLs, please share this post.