What the Heck is UTM & Why Should You Care?

I bet John Wanamaker wished he was using UTM

Photo Source – https://www.phillymag.com/news/2016/07/11/john-wanamaker-philadelphia-history/

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half”

John Wanamaker

Who was John Wanamaker?

“John Wanamaker (1838-1922) was an American merchant and religious, civic and political figure, considered by some to be a proponent of advertising and a “pioneer in marketing”…

“John Wanamaker Department Store was one of the first department stores in the United States. Founded by John Wanamaker, it is known for its substantial effects on the development of the retail industry, such as being the first store to use price tags. At its zenith in the early 20th century, Wanamaker’s also had a store in New York City at Broadway and Ninth Street. Both employed extremely large staffs. By the end of the 20th century, there were 16 Wanamaker’s outlets”… John Wanamaker – Wikapedia

Wanamaker was a Retail Innovator

I found this Interesting article 13 Things You Might Not Know About John Wanamaker, which highlights John Wanamaker’s Retail Innovations.

John Wanamaker was no dumb Schmuck & he could not work which of his advertising was working.

For most businesses advertising spend is wasted, this still holds true today…

If John Wanamaker had access to Google Analytics & UTM, he would know if his adverting was working

Let me explain.

So if your spending money on advertising.  Would it be helpful if you knew what was working? You bet.

If you’re getting traffic to your website, then it would be useful, to know what’s working & where it’s coming from.

Your web traffics does not just come from advertising.  It could come from Social Media, Your email campaigns or Paid Ads.

If you have no idea where or how your traffic is coming to you, then you are running blind like John Wanamaker.  More than likely, you’re wasting money.

We live in the digital world & we expect to be able to track everything.

The trouble is most businesses don’t track their Advertising because they don’t know how to do this. 

Tracking your Advertising has not always been easy any task to do, until now…

Photo by Clint Adair on Unsplash

But thanks to UTMs we can track where  & what campaign your visitors came from.

“UTM” stands for “Urchin tracking module.” which initially came from Urchin Software Corp, Google acquired them in 2005. Urchin Software laid the foundation for Google Analytics.

A UTM is a little bit of code you can attach to the end of a URL or link, so you can track where searchers came from, medium, and campaign name in Google Analytics.

After your URL you’ll see a question mark (?) succeeding a question mark (?) within a URL is a parameter,

The UTM code needs 2 components

Before we get swept up in the excitement of being able to start tracking. So we need to make sure  Google Analytics installed on the website which you want to track.

The first thing you need to make this tracking work is to have Google Analytics installed on the website which you want to track.

So how do you do make UTM code?

Google makes it easy with the Campaign URL Builder…

Campaign URL Builder is what I use. I’m sure there are other fancy tools, but this does the job, it’s free & easy to use.

You need to know your values you want to track. Go to Google’s URL Builder, enter these values into the parameters, click “generate URL,” and good to go.

I use a google sheet to keep track of all my UTM links I have set up. So I always know which Tracking variable I’m Tracking.

If you like a copy of this Google Sheet? Let me know.

Now  we added our UTM’s you be able to discover:

This works by using 3 elements (the other 2 are optional) called “UTM parameters.”

Campaign Source utm_source	Required. Where your traffic comes from. ex. facebook, google, newsletter… Use utm_source to identify a search engine, newsletter name, or other sources. Example: google
Campaign Medium utm_medium	Required. Type (medium) of traffic Use utm_medium to identify a medium such as email or cost-per- click.cpc, display, email, social… Example: cpc
Campaign Name utm_campaign	Required. Name of the specific campaign. ex: “Spring Sale”, “10%off_sale” Used for keyword analysis. Use utm_campaign to identify a specific product promotion or strategic campaign. Example: utm_campaign=spring_sale
Campaign Term utm_term	Used for paid search. Use utm_term to note the keywords for this ad. Example: running+shoes Always use the exact term in search generating the click
Campaign Content utm_content	Used for A/B testing and content-targeted ads. Use utm_content to differentiate ads or links that point to the same URL. Examples: logolink or textlink

So you’ve set up your tracking UTM, now it’s time look at the data.

With Google Analytics you can view your tracking UTM

Ok, lets jump over to Google Analytics.

I took these screenshot from Google Analytics for Power Users Course. So as not to breach my client’s trust, by showing what they are working on.

On the left-hand side, you will see  Acquisitions > All Traffic > Sources > Campaigns.

You will be able to see all the campaigns you’ve been tracking.

You can drill down on each campaign to view more information on the medium and source.

Source of your Traffic in Google Analytics

Medium of your Traffic in Google Analytics

Now you’ll know which, ad, post, tweet, page or link the user clicked on to finds your site.

So now you can post a link to your site on Facebook, and using UTM’s, you’ll be able to track all the people clicking on your post and how they interacted with your website!

You are no longer running blind because UTM parameters let you find the most effective  URLs attracting visitors to your content.

UTM is not just for Online Tracking. You can track offline Promotions as well.

Now you can Track Web Visitors from a Billboard or Even a Flyers From A Tradeshow

Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash

Say you wanted to track how effective your Billboard sends people to your website. Or even your printed Flyer for a tradeshow got traction. Not real easy to collect useful data, on if they went to your web page.

As you see from Billboard in the photo, most advertisers don’t even bother because they can’t track it.

So with UTM you could use a vanity URL & add UTM Tracking and then redirect to your landing page.

So now you see if your Billboard Campaign or Trade Show produces any web visitors.

You could also track newspaper ad (remember those) or article in a magazine, coupon, radio ad, or TV commercial anything you can think of. You’ll know what campaigns working & and if they’re worth investing time & money into them.

John Wanamaker Advertising Problem is solved with UTM’s

So you can see with Google Analytics & UTM’s you can solve John Wanamaker’s problem. 

Remember John Wanamaker quote…

You won’t be wasting your advertising spend because you will know what’s working.

John Wanamaker

You won’t be wasting your advertising spend because you will know what’s working.

 Where they came from, How they got there & som much more.

John Wanamaker couldn’t track his Advertising, so he was guessing what worked.

But the good news is you can take advantage of UTM tracking without a lot of hassles.

So what are you waiting for?

If you need help with UTM tracking, I’ll be glad to help.