Learning how to properly use UTM tracking in your company’s digital marketing strategy is critical to understanding your target market.
In this post, I’ll give you an overview of UTM tracking and how it works, and show you how to use it effectively in your digital marketing strategy.
What You’ll Learn:
- What Is UTM Tracking?
- What Can You Track?
- Why Use it in your Digital Marketing
- How to Set Up a UTM Code
- How to set goals in Google Analytics based on your tracking campaigns
- How to use tracking codes for off-site campaigns
- UTM codes and apps
- Best practices
If you can’t explain to your clients or your boss how your web marketing efforts are impacting traffic, you’ll have difficulty justifying your work. More importantly, the folks who are paying you might not see any evidence that they’re getting a positive return on their investment.
That could cost you an income stream. Luckily, that’s where UTM codes come in.
What Is UTM Tracking?
UTM tracking is a URL-encoded method of informing Google Analytics about the path that visitors followed to get to your website.
UTM stands for “Urchin Traffic Monitor.” The name comes from Urchin Tracker, a web analytics tool Google acquired back in 2005.
That tool eventually became Google Analytics. All these years later, the same software framework is still being used to track web traffic.
What Can You Track?
Digital marketers use UTM codes for a variety of reasons. You’ll need to know what you want to track before selecting from one of the UTM codes available.
The five UTM tracking codes include:
- utm_source – This code will track the source of the traffic. Usually, it’s the name of the app or website that sent the traffic to your site. Most often, you’ll see utm_source=google. This means that the source of this particular traffic was Google. If you send out email newsletters, you can also use a UTM source code to track that traffic. In those instances, it would look like this: utm_source=newsletter.
- utm_medium – This code tracks which online channel brought the traffic to your site. For this code, you’ll see things like “utm_medium=social” for social media, “utm_medium=email” for email campaigns, or “utm_medium=paidad” for paid ads on social platforms or search engines.
- utm_campaign – This code will track which campaign your visitors came from. A huge part of digital marketing is proving that your work is worthwhile and this code will help you prove that. It is important for keyword analysis when identifying a strategy or specific product. For example, utm_campaign=digitalmarketing will show you the number of visitors the keyword “digital marketing” sent your way.
- utm_content – This code is used to track visitors from content-targeted ads or a/b tests. If you have multiple calls to action (CTAs) on one page, assign a different utm_content value to the URL associated with each CTA. That way, you’ll know which CTA brought you the most traffic.
- utm_term – Usually reserved for PPC campaigns, this code will tell you the keyword that brought the visitor to your site. This code is often used in Google Ad campaigns.
In addition, you can use utm_id, which is an advanced option that involves using an ID key instead of the previously mentioned tags. This would entail uploading CSV files that include the mapping list of specific key values. It’s important to eliminate any errors in this process, as mistakes could lead to the permanent corruption of data.
Why Use UTM Tags?
If you’re sold on the idea of using UTM codes to find your best traffic patterns, then you’ll need to add UTM tags to your URLs. Otherwise, Google Analytics won’t give you an accurate report on your traffic sources.
Here’s how the entire process works:
- Click on a link to get to your web page
- That link will include one or more UTM tags
- Google Analytics will evaluate that link for those tags
- If GA finds UTM tags, it will update traffic source metrics accordingly
So, if you don’t use UTM tracking tags, Google has limited info to work with to determine how people arrived at your site. That will restrict your ability to make informed decisions about online marketing.
With 55.49% of all websites using Google Analytics, it’s important to set everything up properly in order to get the most up-to-date and accurate information. So, if you don’t use UTM tracking tags, Google has limited info to work with to determine how people arrived at your site. That will restrict your ability to make informed decisions about online marketing.
How to Set Up a UTM Tracking Code
The good news is, it’s easy to add a tracking code to a URL. It’s a simple request parameter.
Tracking codes are made up of two key elements:
- UTM parameter – begins with utm_
- Tracking variable – identifier to track preceded by the “=“ symbol
If you’re not familiar with URL request parameters, they’re name/value pairs you can add to any URL. They follow a question mark that separates them from the address of the page itself.
Breaking Down an Example
https://mysite.com/my-blog-post?name1=value1&name2=value2
That URL will take people to a blog post on mysite.com. As you can see, there are also some request parameters at the end.
Let’s break that URL down into manageable chunks.
First, “https://mysite.com/my-blog-post” is the most important part of the URL. It’s the address of the blog post.
After that part, there’s a question mark (“?”). That question mark separates the address of the page from the request parameters.
There are two request parameters included in the URL: name1 and name2. They’re separated by an ampersand (“&”). That’s how request parameters are always separated in a URL.
Each parameter is assigned a value. That part is easy to read because an equals sign is used to assign the value. So name1 equals value1 and name2 equals value2.
What would happen if you removed the request parameters from the URL? From the perspective of the person who clicks the link, absolutely nothing. That link would still take the person to the same page.
Request parameters are processed by software on the server side.
Other URL Examples with UTM Codes:
Below is an example of a URL that uses a few of the UTM tracking codes mentioned above:
https://mysite.com/my-blog-post?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=brand
As you can see, the source of the traffic is Twitter (“twitter”), the medium is social media (“social”) and the campaign’s name is “brand” (for brand awareness).
You’ll include that link in your tweets so that when people click on it, Google Analytics can parse the UTM tags and update your metrics.
If you wanted to include a link to the same page on Facebook, you’d update the URL to this:
https://mysite.com/my-blog-post?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=brand
As you can see, the utm_source parameter is set to test (“facebook”) instead of (“twitter.”) Now it’s a link you can put on Facebook to use for digital marketing tracking.
TikTok
If you want to track the traffic coming from TikTok, look for this type of link: https://mysite.com/my-blog-post?utm_source=tiktok&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=brand
Now, every time you upload a link to TikTok, you would use this one because of the UTM source code in the middle that says TikTok. When you go to review your Google Analytics data, you’ll be able to see how many clicks came from TikTok using this link.
If you’re sharing a lot of content on LinkedIn, be sure to pay attention to whether it’s gaining you clicks or not. To do so, use a link such as this: https://mysite.com/my-blog-post?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=brand
When you embed links labeled with the utm_source=linkedin code, it’ll be easy to know what’s exciting your LinkedIn audience and what isn’t driving them to click on your links.
Build Your Own URL
The safest way to create a URL with tracking codes is to use the Google URL builder. That way, you won’t have to worry about typos in the parameter names.
Here is a quick rundown on how to use this tool to your advantage:
- Once Google Analytics is installed on your website, go to Google’s free URL Builder.
- Fill out your website and campaign information.
- Next, create a campaign URL for each campaign you want to track. In Google’s URL builder, you’ll be able to break it down by referrer (ex. Search engine, social platform, email, etc.), marketing medium (ppc, banner, email etc.), product, promo code, slogan, paid keywords, or content (a/b testing, different ads leading to the same URL). Type in whatever you want to track in the appropriate box.
- Once you have your new URL, install it in your campaigns. For example, if you’re tracking from your email newsletter, use the link with the unique UTM identifier.
- Start collecting and analyzing your data!
Let’s look in more detail at tracking goals with UTM tags for UTM digital marketing.
Setting up Analytics Goals Based on Your UTM Tracking Campaigns
Google Analytics gives you the ability to track conversions on your website. One way you can do that is with goals.
Goals are URL targets or actions that people take on your site. An example of a goal is somebody making a purchase or visiting a specific page.
Although it’s great to know the overall number of people who visited your site and completed a goal, it’s even better to know where those people came from when they completed that goal.
Enter UTM tracking tags.
The UTM tags you plug into your URLs will tell Google Analytics where people came from.
Remember: you must include utm_source, utm_medium, and utm_campaign to track goals with UTM tags.
You’ll also need to set up goals in Google Analytics. Fortunately, that’s easy to do.
Once you’ve created at least one goal and let it run for a while, head back into Google Analytics. Click on “Acquisition” on the left-hand sidebar. Then, select “Campaigns” from the menu that appears below. Finally, click “All Campaigns” in the context menu.
The table in the middle of the screen shows the traffic according to campaign. You’ll see important data such as the number of sessions, the percentage of new sessions, and the number of new users that campaign brought to your site. This is a complete rundown of your UTM strategy using full UTM analysis.
More importantly, though, you’ll see how that campaign contributed to your goals. On the right-hand side of the table, you’ll see three columns:
- Goal Conversion Rate–the sum of all your goal conversion rates for that UTM marketing campaign
- Goal Completions—the total number of conversions
- Goal Value–the monetary value of the completions
Those columns, by default, will aggregate data from all your goals. It displays UTM full form in digital marketing. If you want to see stats for just one goal, you can do that too.
Look at the dropdown labeled “Conversions” that appears just above those last three columns. Click on it.
You’ll see a list of all the goals you created. Choose the one you want to view and the table will update to reflect your selection. You will see the UTM analysis of a singular goal.
How to Use UTM Tracking Codes for Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
Once you’ve set up your goals and let them run for a while, use the reports from Google Analytics to improve your conversion rate and UTM strategy.
Let’s look at an example.
Suppose you’re running two campaigns to get people to buy your hot new product. One campaign focuses on social media and the other is using PPC.
So here are the steps you take:
- You create a goal in Google Analytics to track the purchase of the hot new product
- Next. create a URL for your social media campaign that sets the utm_medium parameter to “social” and the utm_campaign parameter to “campaign1”.
- Then, create a second URL for your PPC campaign that sets the utm_medium parameter to “ppc” and the utm_campaign parameter to “campaign2”.
- Finally, you launch the social media and the PPC campaigns, using the correct URL for each one
After you’ve let both campaigns run for a while, you head back into GA and check your data. Surprisingly, you find that the social media campaign (“campaign1”) is getting twice the conversion rate as the PPC campaign!
So you do the sensible thing. You cut back on resources for the PPC campaign and scale up the social media campaign.
Of course, you have plenty of other information that you can work with as well. You can use Analytics reporting to show you which social media channels were giving you the best conversion rates. Armed with that info, you can optimize your UTM marketing campaign even further.
How to Use UTM Codes for Off-Site Campaigns
For whatever reason, some people think they can only use UTM tags when creating URLs on their own websites. Nothing could be further from the truth.
You can use UTM tags in any URL. Even one that isn’t on your site. UTM in digital marketing enables endless campaign opportunities.
For example, if you’re posting a link to your website on Twitter, you can encode it with UTM tracking tags. If you’re guest-blogging, you can point a link to your site that also includes UTM tags.
However, it’s a great idea to shorten your URL so that it’s a little more user-friendly. Really long URLs tend to annoy people.
Fortunately, Google has a URL shortener that you can use. Just head over there and plug in your UTM-stuffed URL and Google will return a much shorter version.
Don’t worry. That shortened URL will have all the request parameters that you loaded into it. You’ll still be able to track traffic sources, even with a shortened hyperlink.
UTM Tracking and Apps
You aren’t just limited to adding tracking tags to URLs that you put on websites. You can add them to URLs included in mobile apps as well.
That can come in handy if you want to measure the amount of traffic you receive from apps. It’s especially helpful if you’re running ads on multiple apps and want to know which one is giving you the best return. This type of UTM full form in digital marketing helps to simplify the process of data analysis.
All you have to do is update the utm_source parameter to the name of the app. Also, set the utm_medium parameter to something like “apps” or the name of the ad network that you’re using to run app ads.
Best Practices for Seamless UTM Tracking
When developing a tracking strategy, it’s important to keep the following practices in mind.
1. Choose a UTM tracking naming convention
Consistency is key when coming up with UTM tags and codes. You want your entire marketing team to be on the same page. You do not need some people tracking under “facebook” and others tracking under “facebook.com”.
While this might not seem like a major distinction to the untrained eye, it can wreak havoc on your data analysis. Your marketing team will be swimming in skewed results.
Set rules to avoid any potential confusion. For example:
- Use only lowercase letters in URLs
- Choose whether you will use underscores or dashes
2. Keep the UTM tracking names simple
All the elements of your UTM digital marketing campaign should be easy to understand.
For example, if you use a numerical system to track the website’s data, it can be confusing. Choosing sensible names for your parameters makes it easier for your team members to quickly read and understand the information without having to memorize a book of nonsensical number codes.
3. Consider shortening the URLs
As mentioned before, lengthy URLs are not visually appealing to anyone. Even digital marketers can find these extended lines of codes to be tedious. But, it is a necessary evil. The more complex your tracking is, the longer the URL will become.
Luckily, there is an easy way to shorten the URLs. You can make these URLs shareable by enlisting the help of goo.gl or bit.ly.
4. Avoid Vagueness
To get the most from your UTM tags, make sure your tags are specific. If they’re too vague and include tags such as “social-media” as the source, this won’t help you in your tracking efforts. With social media sourcing, be sure to include a specific channel, such as LinkedIn or Facebook.
5. Don’t Be Redundant
If you label all of your campaigns and UTM codes similar things, it’s going to make your job a whole lot harder. Instead of naming campaigns things like “email 1”, “email 2”, and “email 3”, be super specific so you know which traffic came from which email. For example, “email_best_practices”, “email_ignite_tips”, and “email_tracking_faqs” will help keep your data organized and easy to read.
Reasons to Use UTM Tracking Codes
Knowing how to create and label UTM tracking codes is one thing but let’s review why we’re doing all of this work in the first place. Here are the top five reasons why you should be using UTM codes in your digital marketing efforts:
- Find out where your traffic is coming from.
- Find out who is clicking on links in a campaign.
- Group your incoming traffic.
- Track traffic from different campaigns.
- Track the same piece of content across multiple marketing channels.
The entire point of digital marketing is to give your audience what they want so that they will become loyal customers or supporters of your work. You can’t do that if you aren’t keeping track of which efforts are drawing the most attention and creating the most traffic.
UTM Tracking FAQs
If you still want to learn more about UTM tracking and how it works, the following are some frequently asked questions about UTM tracking.
1. What is a UTM Tracking Code?
A UTM tracking code is a piece of code that tracks the performance of your digital marketing efforts. It will tell you which platform and which marketing campaigns are driving clicks to your specified URL.
2. How do you get a UTM code? What is an example?
UTM codes can be generated in a variety of ways. The most common way is through Google’s URL creator. In this app, you’ll type in all of the information you have, along with which platforms, mediums, or keywords you want to track. Once the URL is created, it will contain the code Google Analytics needs to track the information you’re interested in.
An example would be: https://mysite.com/my-blog-post?utm_source=tiktok&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=brand. This link will tell you how much traffic to this site was from TikTok.
3. Should internal links feature UTM parameters?
Some may consider including UTM tags in internal links on a website, but this is something to avoid. If you use these parameters in internal links, they will prevent you from being able to effectively track the original source of traffic.
For instance, you might share one of your blog posts on Facebook, in which case a Facebook user might click on the link that takes them to the blog post. From there, the user may come across a link that takes them to a related service page on your website. If you include UTM tags in your internal link, such as “https://mysite.com/?utm_source=blog,” this will hinder tracking abilities. Instead of Google Analytics tracking traffic to your service page from Facebook, it will perceive the traffic as coming from the previous blog post.
4. Does UTM tracking impact SEO?
If you’re wondering whether tracking URLs with UTM parameters will affect your search engine optimization efforts, the fact is that no, it won’t.
UTM parameters are solely used for tracking, which is something search engines understand. Search engines ignore UTM tags when indexing pages.
While UTM tags don’t play a role in search engine rankings, they may still appear in search engine results along with URLs. To avoid this, you can use the code “<link rel=”canonical” href=”https://mysite.com/designated-subpage” />”. This will tell Google it should only display this URL in search results.
5. Do UTM tags have a specific character limit?
UTM tags don’t have a set character limit in place for them, but it’s still in your best interest to shorten links as much as possible.
One reason for this is that URLs with 2,000 characters or fewer will be more compatible with web servers and browsers. This means that you’re better off keeping URLs shorter than 2,000 characters if you want them to perform their best.
Additionally, it’s best to keep your UTM tags short and to the point, which will help increase their clarity and make them easier to understand when tracking them in reports.
Wrapping Up UTM Tracking
Now that you understand UTM tracking, it’s time to get busy. Think about the backlink strategy and ad campaign that you’re planning on launching soon. Update your hyperlinks with valid UTM tags for optimized UTM digital marketing.
After a while, check Google Analytics to see which sources are giving you the most traffic. Also, find out which channels are giving you the best conversion rates.
Then, maximize your use of UTM in digital marketing by adjusting your strategy accordingly.
