In recent years, the role of content marketing within the (digital) marketing strategy has become increasingly important. This also makes it increasingly important to measure the results of efforts in this area. Which messages generate the most traffic? Which campaigns are the most effective? Via which social media platform do you generate the most leads? These are all interesting questions to which you can find the answers by adding a piece of code to the link to your website. That piece of code is called a UTM code. With the additional information from this UTM code, you gain in-depth insights into your Google Analytics dashboard and get started with your analytics.
In this article, we'll explain more about how to create a UTM code, where to find the data in your Google Analytics dashboard, and how to use UTM codes in Soworker.
Five parameters
A UTM code consists of five different parameters. These parameters clearly tell Google Analytics from which source, medium, campaign, (search) term and/or content the visitor traffic comes to your page.
Source (utm_source)
The source is a mandatory element in a UTM code and tells you the origin of visitors to your website. This can be, for example, a search engine such as Google or a social media platform such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn.
Medium (utm_medium)
This is the code by which the marketing medium is meant. This can be, for example, an advertisement or the messages you share via Soworker.
Campaign (utm_campaign)
Here you enter the name of the campaign. Of course if this applies. You could use this when launching a new product or a specific promotion.
Term (utm_term)
The term in a UTM code is originally the search term that makes visitors click on your link. This code is often used to process specific information in the code that you want to recognize later. Consider, for example, a term such as discount or winback.
Content (utm_content)
This code identifies the content of, for example, an advertisement. For example if you work with multiple variants of an advertisement. This way you can use this parameter well for A / B testing.
If you fill in all parameters, the following link:
https://www.soworker.com/en/employee-advocacy-insights/new-share-on-linkedin-showcase-pages
leads to the following UTM code:
https://www.soworker.com/en/employee-advocacy-insights/new-share-on-linkedin-showcase-pages?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=soworker&utm_campaign=it&utm_term=new&utm_content=blue
utm_source: linkedin
utm_medium: soworker
utm_campaign: it
utm_term: new
utm_content: blue
Create UTM code
There are several websites where you can create a URL with UTM code. We use this link; https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/
Tips for creating UTM codes
- Always use lower case letters in UTM codes. Google Analytics distinguishes between a lower case url and the same url with one uppercase letter.
- Do not use spaces in UTM parameters. You can use a hyphen instead of a space.
- Use short, practical descriptions.
Where can you find the statistics of the UTM codes?
The use of UTM codes provides a lot of data and you can view this in Google Analytics, among other things. You can find the codes as follows;
1. Log in to Google Analytics
2. Choose Acquisition> All Traffic -> Source / Medium
3 Here you can find the traffic from all sources. So you also see the source and the medium that you entered yourself with your UTM codes.
4. You can also find the information via Acquisition -> Campaigns -> All campaigns.
You can now analyze the data for all sources, such as the number of visitors, the visit duration and any set conversions.
UTM code and Soworker
Via the aforementioned UTM generator you can provide the URL with the UTM code. You can then add this complete URL in its entirety in the message you create in Soworker. If you have enabled the "Follow shared link" option (Organization -> Settings), the contacts will not see the UTM codes when they click on the message.