One of the biggest questions, that is constantly on the minds of digital marketers, “If I drive activity to a landing page, what are users doing on site and where did they come from?”

One of the primary ways to solve this question is through UTM parameters.

What is a UTM parameter?

So what exactly is a UTM parameter?

A UTM is a snippet of code, that can be placed at the end of the URL to track the performance, of what users are doing once visiting the intended destination. You have the ability to apply 5 different variants of parameters, to measure the performance.

FACT: “UTM” stands for Urchin Tracking Module – which comes from Urchin Software Corporation, which was acquired by Google in 2005, and laid the foundation for Google Analytics.

Here’s an example of a UTM parameter:

If you click this link, I will be able to see:

• which platform you arrived from
• what you did when you arrived on the landing page
• if you signed up, how you arrived at that point.

The five UTM parameters

Let’s take a quick look at how each one of these five possible UTM tags can be used.

• Source: Used to show which site the visitors are coming from.
• Medium: Used to show which marketing channels are bringing the visitor to your site. Examples include, but aren’t limited to, email, social, or cost-per-click.
• Campaign: Used to identify which campaign the promotion is associated with.
• Term: Used to manually identify paid keywords you’re targeting with your campaign.
• Content: Used to identify the exact element on your ad or promotion that was clicked. This is often used for optimization purposes.

Why are UTMs important?

By using a combination of the five parameters, you can develop valuable insights about how specific promotional efforts are performing in bringing traffic to site and then converting. If you’ve ever struggled with marketing attribution, UTM codes will become extremely handy.

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How to track performance?

You now should have an understanding of how UTM codes work, but the most important question still remains, how do you actually track the performance?

In Google Analytics, you can navigate to > Acquisition > All Traffic > Source/Medium and locate your specific UTM naming conventions.

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As an example, if my UTM code had “Partners” as the Source and “Affiliate” as the Medium, I can now see:

• the total volume of users that clicked on my link
• how long they were on site for
• how many pages they viewed
• if they purchased

So moving forward, best practice is to ALWAYS use UTM codes when directing traffic to a landing page to effectively measure digital marketing performance.

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NEXT STEP: Ensure you name campaigns in your advertising platform so you can easily identify important campaign details in your paid analytics tool.

The Digivizer Platform

Digivizer recently launched its new platform for Digital Marketers and small-to-medium businesses that allows brands to compare the performance of their digital campaigns across all their paid, owned and earned media accounts including social media and search advertising.

We’re working to ensure the best of our technology is made available for the lowest per month price so it can be available to all businesses.

You’ll have all your owned, earned and paid social and search media data and insights at your fingertips.

Digivizer wants businesses to achieve a better return on investment from their digital marketing spend and our platform allows business to do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.

You deserve to get the best out of your digital spend and we have the tools that remove the stress and pain from the process!

We remain committed to serving all businesses. Allow us to serve you!

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Author: Jordan Schofield / Paid Media Specialist