by The UTM tag is a short piece of code that is added to the URL and helps to find out the source of the traffic, i.e., which advertising campaign or channel brought the user to the website. Apply the UTM tag in Google Analytics and you will see detailed information about the traffic source. This is an extremely convenient tool for evaluating the effectiveness of an advertising campaign.
When are UTM tags needed?
UTM tags are required when you are setting up contextual advertising, guest posting, or creating a social media ad. Thanks to this tool, you can analyze conversions and get a clear indicator by which you can evaluate the profitability of each advertising campaign and optimize your budget based on this.
UTM tags varieties
UTM contains the name of the traffic source and additional parameters. Specify the parameters in lowercase letters and without hyphens so that the data is collected correctly. Label parameters can be mandatory or optional. Experts at https://techreport.ngo explain the difference between them.
Mandatory parameters:
- utm_source=(source name). This way, you will know where the user came to your website from.
- utm_medium=(ad type). Advertising can be contextual (cpc), banner (display), as well as those served in social networks or e-mails.
- utm_campaign=(advertising campaign name). You can specify different names of advertising campaigns for the convenience of further analysis.
Optional label parameters:
- utm_term is a convenient way to track keywords for which users see ads.
- utm_content is a great way to track performance with advanced settings.
The above parameters are static. They work flawlessly when you’re dealing with a limited number of active ad campaigns and tracking their performance manually. When the project is large, and many ad creatives are launched at the same time, it is quite difficult to work with these analytics. Dynamic UTM labels help simplify analytical work and correctly assess the effectiveness of numerous advertising campaigns. It is simpler to assign a unique identifier to each campaign and specify exactly {campaign_id} in the parameters. It allows you to work with a large amount of analytical information and concentrate on creating a quality advertising offer.
What else should you know about UTM tags?
The label is written at the end of the link after the question mark (?). If you want to use more than one label at once, use the sign “&’’ to separate them.
There are handy automatic generators if you don’t know how to do them manually. Generators follow all syntax rules and speed up the work of an internet marketer. The necessary parameters are written in special fields, and then you only need to copy the URL with automatically generated labels. If the link turns out to be too long, it can be shortened thanks to services like cutt.ly or bit.ly. The need to shorten the link is only if the user sees the open URL. In other cases, this step is optional.
How the use of UTM tags facilitates the work of a marketer?
Experts from the https://elsitech.com team explain that UTM tags are primarily a working tool for Internet marketers. The data obtained in this way helps analyze the effectiveness of promotional campaigns with high precision by sorting traffic sources and informing how successful each of them was. For example, when running simultaneous email marketing, setting up PPC advertising, and conducting social media advertising, a marketer can see each ad’s Click-Through Rate (CTR) and determine which advertising brought more visitors, conversions, and so on to the website. Without UTM tags, it’s challenging for a marketer to adjust subsequent advertising campaigns and optimize spending on them. Instead, the use of tags enables tracking all necessary data, including:
- Traffic sources;
- Campaigns and promotions;
- The popularity of specific content on the website;
- Conversion tracking for each marketing channel;
- User behavior dynamics during specific periods.
By analyzing the collected data, marketers can smartly allocate advertising budgets to the most profitable channels, focusing on what delivers the best results and avoiding expenses and efforts on low-performing campaigns. In this way, professionals enhance their strategies, relying not only on hypotheses but also on detailed and accurate analysis. Operating with precise data, they can work more efficiently, providing clients with informative reports regarding their activities and spent resources and even making forecasts about the profitability of future promotional campaigns.
In simple terms, marketers can see where customers are coming from and which content and ads they prefer the most, while website owners can rely on targeted and informed budget allocation and better profits.
