What is UTM Code and How to Use It for Marketing Campaign Analytics

Digital marketing is all the rage right now, with many businesses prioritizing it over their mainstream marketing efforts. To succeed at digital marketing, you need a killer digital marketing strategy. If that sounds simple enough, we’re here to tell you that it isn’t. We’ll talk about what is UTM code and how you can benefit from it.

So many things go into creating an effective digital marketing strategy. You have to consider everything from the details of your website to your social media presence to an SEO strategy that will bring traffic and leads to your website and social media.

Having a website for your business is especially important these days. Studies show that up to 81% of consumers look up a brand or product online before making a purchase. Your website design and user interface needs to focus on user experience and user-friendliness.

In the age of the internet, it is vital for brands to have and maintain an online presence. While social media is a great way to reach your consumers, it’s essential to have a website to direct your audience to.

An appealing website for your brand gives off the impression that you’ve covered all the bases, and your business has well-rounded marketing and business strategy. It also helps with your company’s legitimacy and authenticity. Your website will also help you stand out if it’s well-designed and looks good.

Content marketing is huge right now, and blogging is one of the most popular forms of content marketing. Through blogging, brands can put out quality, creative content that helps them establish their site as a resource hub. If that’s not your cup of tea, you can always take the Buzzfeed route of regularly putting out entertaining content that keeps their consumers engaged.

Analytics play a huge role in enabling you to assess how well your website is performing. Markers of your website’s performance include many things. For example, your site’s bounce rate indicates how much time customers spend on your site before clicking off; a high bounce rate means your site isn’t performing well.

If you have a blog, analytical tools like Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) are especially useful. UTM codes can be instrumental in you perfecting your marketing strategy. If this is the first time you hear of this, don’t worry, we’ve got all the information you need right here. Let’s break down what UTM code is and how you can use it as a highly useful marketing campaign analytic. A lot of questions are probably going through your head right now; what are UTM coordinates? Also, what is the UTM code? What is the UTM zone? And what is UTM security? For, let’s stick to the basics to give you a general idea of UTM codes.

What is UTM Code?

Urchin Software made UTM codes in the early 2000s. The codes were originally created to be used in Urchin Software’s web statistics analytics program. In 2005, Google acquired Urchin Software and merged it with its new Google Analytics program. UTM codes enable web developers and designers to dig deep into their website performance and pinpoint the content that is succeeding at generating leads.

Even though Google Analytics provides a similar function; telling you where your web traffic is coming from, UTM code tells you exactly which content on your site is attracting visitors. If you’re wondering, “how does it work?”

Well, let’s discuss!

How Does UTM work?

Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) codes – pieces of code appended to a URL. UTM codes are employed to gauge how well a digital marketing strategy is performing and thus, what it is lacking.

Also, UTM Codes are used to indicate specifically, the traffic coming to your website. They include medium, campaign name, and traffic source.

When utilized effectively, UTM tracking is quite possibly the most useful asset in your corner when it comes to analytics. UTM codes assist you with recognizing content that is performing well from content that isn’t. They thus help you understand how you can improve your website design and website strategy.

UTM is a great marketing analytics tool. Let’s talk about how you can use it on your website!

How You Can Use UTM Code for Marketing Campaign Analytics

First things first, you need to create a website! As we’ve already discussed, creating a website is highly beneficial for your brand. In addition to a website, you need to have Google Analytics for your site. Just to reiterate how important it is, here are some of the key benefits of having a website for your business!

1. Having an online presence lets you keep up with the latest online trends and become a part of the global community, not simply local markets.
2. A website enables you to be available for your customers round the clock. A brick-and-mortar shop has open, and closing hours, a website works 24/7. This lets customers reach you even when you’re offline.
3. A website is a one-stop-shop for all the information your customers need about your brand. You don’t have to spend time explaining the basics to them; they can read it all on your website!
4. Digital marketing is highly cost-effective, cutting costs that you would have to pay for mainstream advertising.
5. Analytics help you identify what you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong. This is where UTM codes come into play! Let’s get into the five parameters of UTM.

5 Parameters of UTM codes and How to Use Them

Five primary parameters categorize different aspects of your marketing strategy and track their performance. These parameters are also called UTM tags or UTM codes. Each of these codes targets a particular data point in a website’s URL.

You can add these parameters to the end of your website’s URL; they don’t have to be in a particular order, but they’re typically separated by ampersands (&) or a question mark (?). In

Google Analytics UTM builder has added campaign source, campaign name, and campaign medium as necessary entries. However, campaign content and campaign terms are optional, and you don’t absolutely need to add these parameters to Google Analytics’ UTM builder.

Here are the five parameters and their various uses.

1. Campaign Source (utm_source)

This parameter is used to identify where your website traffic is coming from. These sources of traffic can be anything from a search engine, a social media platform, a website, or even a newsletter.

For example, if your website traffic is primarily coming from Google, this is what it would look like; utm_source=google.

2. Campaign Medium (utm_medium)

This parameter can be used to see what medium is being used to access your website as well as what consumers are using to access your website. These mediums can include emails, pay-per-click advertisements, or promotional digital ads.

For example, if your link were accessed through your cost-per-click ad, it would look like this: utm_medium=cpc

3. Campaign Name (utm_campaign)

This parameter is used to identify the name of the promotion or campaign connected to your website’s URL. Campaign names can include things like particular products, sales, or promotional content like contests.

For example, if your URL were getting engagement from a summer sale, your UTM code would look like this; utm_campaign=summer-sale.

4. Campaign Term (utm_term)

This parameter is used for paid search campaigns. This will help you track ad-based keywords that are relevant to your niche and play into your brand’s SEO strategy. Campaign term parameters of UTM will help you see which keyword performed the best at directing traffic and leads to your website.

For example, if you run a women’s sweaters business and you’ve paid for the ad-based keyword “women’s knit sweaters,”. If that keyword successfully drives engagement with your website, the UTM will look like this; utm_term=womens-knit-sweaters

5. Campaign Content (utm_content)

This parameter can be used to identify what content on your website is performing well and driving engagement on it. Campaign content parameters of UTM will help you see what your consumer clicked on to go to your website. If a piece of content, such as an email, blog, CTA, or landing page, is doing well, you’ll see the pattern.

This parameter is also an excellent analytical tool for A/B testing of a landing page or website. For example, you create two separate ads that link to the same landing page. This parameter will help you see which ad performed better at directing traffic to your site and which ad did not perform as well.

Your tracking URL for this kind of identification will look like this;

www.example.com/page?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=summer-sale&utm_term=womens-sweaters

For the CTA ad that is doing well at increasing your website traffic, the UTM will look like this; utm_content=cta-top

At this point, you’re probably asking yourself; what if I don’t use Google Analytics UTM builder to create my codes, can I do it myself? And the short answer is yes! Building your own UTM code is pretty simple for experienced web developers and tech-savvy individuals. However, for a beginner, it can be quite complicated.

Google has a built-in tool for building a UTM code that will save you a lot of time and effort. This builder tool basically gives you step-by-step instructions on how to create and use tracking URLs.

One very helpful tip is to shorten your URL before running it through Google’s UTM builder. Longer URLs do not look appealing, and consumers are likely not to click on them. Shorter URLs give off a more professional, put-together feel and are easier to remember as well! Google’s UTM builder lets you shorten your URLs through Google’s Bitly integration.

Viewing UTM Code Data

After you’ve created your tracking URLs and submitted them, you obviously will want to see the data that Google pulled up. To see your UTM data in Google Analytics, you first have to log in to the platform.

You will then have to click on the “Reports” section of the home page, which will take you to another page where you can click on the “Acquisition” section. In the drop-down menu under Acquisition, click on Campaigns, and voila! See “All Campaigns” for all the data related to your tracking URLs and relevant campaigns.

Google allows you to view specific parameters as well as an overview of your campaigns. You can click on various categories such as “source” or “terms” or just view the general data.

How is UTM Code Helpful for Digital Marketers?

Creating a website for your brand can be daunting; sometimes, it can feel like you’ve done everything right and are still unsure about your website’s performance. Research is essential to help you understand your website better and polish your digital marketing skills.

This research includes UTM codes because they help you see what is working for you and what isn’t working for you. UTM codes are especially handy because they are particular and pinpoint exactly what is directing traffic to your website and where you’re getting the most engagement. UTM codes can help digital marketers up their game by constantly being on top of their campaigns’ performances, what consumers respond to, and what they aren’t.

The Bottom Line

There is a lot of competition in the digital marketing arena currently. This can make creating a perfected marketing strategy especially difficult but equally important. Analytics play a huge part in helping you perfect your marketing strategy. Analytics such as click-through rates (CTR), bounce rates, dwell time, and UTM are highly instrumental in giving you essential information about your website.

UTM codes are incredibly useful tools to have in your website analytics tool belt. Thus, UTM tracking shows you where your website traffic is coming from and also what mediums are being used to access your website. UTM tracking also indicates the different keywords and ads that are directing engagement to your website.

All this information will help you improve upon your digital marketing strategy and make it as perfect as possible for your website to thrive!

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