Is UTM Tracking The Secret To Boosting Your Marketing?

Let’s be honest, marketing isn’t easy. Even if you’re adopting a holistic strategy; harnessing the power of paid ads, regularly posting on social media and creating great content, you can sometimes find yourself wondering whether it’s all worth it. Many of us think that we need to be posting vast swathes of content, and while it’s important to be consistent, if you’re not targeting your content with laser focus, you’re effectively flying blind. If this is you, you may be unaware of the benefits of UTM tracking for your marketing campaigns. Fear not though, as we’re here to talk you through it.

What are UTM codes?

Urchin Tracking Module codes (UTM for short; let’s face it, it rolls off the tongue a little easier!) can be somewhat of a golden nugget in your marketing arsenal. These codes provide you with the ultimate breakdown of which campaigns are working, by tracking traffic and conversion. Attaching these codes to your links can act as virtual Airtags; revealing where your visitors come from and where they’re finding value on your site.

The benefits of UTM tracking

If you’ve ever noticed a spike in traffic, you might be too busy celebrating to wonder exactly where it comes from and how you can replicate it. This is where UTM tracking comes in. There are four main benefits to UTM tracking, which we’ll delve into below.

Measuring effectiveness

Want to know which campaigns are bringing the best return on your investment (ROI)? UTM tracking can help with this, giving you plenty of data on precisely which campaign or platform deserves any credit for a spike in your traffic, or even a sale.

Pinpointing where to spend

Once you have this data, you can use it to work out which channels are going to give you the best ROI. Marketing budgets can be tricky to manage at the best of times. Highlighting the best fountain to throw your coins in, if you’ll pardon the expression, may well make your marketing wishes come true.

Understanding your users

By tracking user behaviour on your site, you’re getting to know your target market better, without them having to put any work into answering questionnaires and completing feedback forms. You’re effectively tapping into a goldmine of how your customers think.

Tweaking your strategies

By taking the guesswork out of your marketing strategy, you can base any decisions you make on data, which will ultimately provide a greater ROI.

How to get started with UTM codes

Convinced that UTM tracking is your next success story? Let’s take a look at how to get started. We’ve created a step-by-step guide to how to harness these little pieces of code to their best effect.

1.   Know your parameters

There are 5 main parameters you need to know about, which include:

• utm_source, which effectively identifiesthe source of your traffic. Find out whether they’re coming from your carefully crafted newsletter, Facebook, or through the power of Google.
• utm_medium; a nugget that specifies which medium is bringing you traffic, such as email, or social media, for example.
• utm_campaign, where you can delve into the specific campaign that is proving popular.
• utm_term, which will delve deeper into your campaign, highlighting the specific keywords used in your paid campaigns (this one is, of course, optional).
• utm_content; another optional one, but this is quite useful for those of us who love an extra nugget. It differentiates between different links/content within a single campaign.

2.   Create your UTM URLs

If you’re not a master coder, (or, like me, not keen on wasting your time where it could be better spent!) don’t worry. While tagging URLs with UTM codes can be a long and tedious job, there are some great tools that will help you simplify this.

Take a look at Google’s own Campaign URL Builder, for example. Free to use and easy to get to grips with, it’ll help you create UTM-tagged URLs like a pro. Alternatively, UTM.io is a pretty good platform for managing these golden nuggets of code.

3.   Get tracking

Now you have your codes, it’s time to put them into play. Add them to email campaigns, making sure you do this for every link in your content so you know what your customers are responding to. Then, bring them into your socials, to give you a great idea of what platforms and content are driving engagement.

Next, it’s onto your paid ads. Implementing UTM tracking here is like a marketing comparison site; effectively showing you where to spend your money for best effect and saving you money in wasted campaigns.

You can even implement UTM tracking for offline campaigns! If you regularly advertise in magazines, newspapers or partake in a little leafleting, use QR codes linked to tagged URLs to track your conversions from offline to online.

4.   Dig into the data

Next, it’s time to look at all that data you’ve carefully collected. Login to your Google Analytics account, and navigate to Acquisition. From there, go to Traffic Acquisition. Then select Session Campaign from the dropdown in the first column of the table of data. You’ll be presented with a breakdown of your performance there and you can delve into metrics such as:

• Your traffic sources, to see which campaigns are driving traffic to your website, and which are underperforming
• Your engagement rate, to see if you’re attracting the right audience (or to see if your content may need tweaking)
• Your revenue, to identify which of your campaigns are giving you the most sales

Using the information you’ve gleaned from your UTM tracking, you’ll be able to pinpoint your strengths and weaknesses. This should supercharge your marketing efforts, and you might be surprised at how quickly you can see your metrics rise.

What not to do with UTM tracking

Like anything, getting to grips with a new method of tracking data can be tricky. However, if you avoid the common mistakes below, you should start reaching your target market relatively quickly.

• Don’t name change – It’s really important to be consistent with your UTM parameters. This way, you can avoid confusion.
• Don’t capitalise – Remember, UTM parameters need to be consistent. Adding capital letters can mean your tracking is inconsistent, so drop those caps and ensure everything is lowercase.
• Don’t limit yourself – Track everything. Using UTM code for offline marketing campaigns gives you a holistic view of your efforts.
• Don’t use long URLs – There’s nothing more unsightly than a long UTM tagged URL. There are plenty of URL shorteners you can use to make your links look neater.

To sum up

UTM tracking really can take the guesswork out of your marketing. With just a few parameters, you’re sure to be able to better analyse who is viewing your website and converting via each of your campaigns. Then you can use all your marketing know how to create targeted campaigns that are sure to have an impact.