UTM parameters are custom tags that can be added to a URL. Adding these parameters won’t change the function of the link, but they will give you a lot of useful data that can be used to analyze where your customers are coming from. All of this information can then be easily used in Google Analytics.
If we don’t use UTM parameters, visits from different sources – paid and unpaid – can easily be mixed, because we can find them in Google Analytics with the same source/medium identifier. Did the customer come from a paid Facebook ad or from an unpaid article on our page? If we don’t use UTM parameters, both of these visits get the same label.
Individual parameters
- Source – the source where the visitor came from. It can be Facebook, Google, Twitter, email…
- Campaign medium – determines what type of media the visitor came from. It can be an organic entry, a paid ad, a click-through from an email, a visit from a Facebook page…
- Campaign name – for proper measurement it is necessary to know not only where the user came from, but also for what campaign.
- Content – using this parameter you can measure, for example, individual posts in one campaign.
What can such a link look like overall?
www.archetix.com/#utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=mereni&utm_content=utmparametry
Use in various advertising systems Google Ads, Facebook Ads
Each advertising system treats UTM parameters differently. Google Ads campaigns do not require UTM parameters, but since both Google Ads and Google Analytics are from Google and can communicate with each other, it is possible to link them and all the necessary information will be sent by itself.
Facebook Ads provide the ability to add UTM parameters directly when creating an ad.
Other uses of UTM parameters
UTM parameters can be created for every link you can think of. You don’t have to use UTM parameters only for paid ads – you can measure clicks from other sites via affiliates, link clicks in your email signature, non-paid social media posts, newsletter posts, etc.
The difference between automatic UTM tagging and manual tagging
In case of a large number of campaigns, you can use automatic tagging. Some advertising systems provide better automatic tagging than others. For Facebook, it’s more complicated – you need to manually fill in the UTM parameters for each ad. However, dynamic fields can be used, and Facebook then fills in the actual values.
Campaign evaluation by UTM
All tagged campaigns can then be found in Google Analytics, where you can evaluate their performance based on the results. Alternatively, you can simply move this data into Google Data Studio, where you can then evaluate individual campaigns against each other.
Tools for UTM tagging
There are various tools for UTM tagging, for example from Google, or a Czech tool How to measure the web. For our clients, we use our own UTM marking tool tailored to each client.
