What are UTM links?
UTM links are a custom URL (Address) that you can use when advertising to track the success of certain campaigns in driving traffic to your website.
“UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) codes are snippets of text added to the end of a URL to help you track where website traffic comes from if users click a link to this URL.”
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing
When you use a different UTM link for you facebook links or newsletter links or even an entire ad campaign for your summer sale, you can then measure the visits and conversions on your website.
This is crucial to understand which sources of traffic are working well for you so you can invest your time and money smartly for future marketing efforts.
1. Generate your UTM link
Enter your link and the UTM parameters to generate a UTM link. Google has a great tool to do this:
https://ga-dev-tools.google/ga4/campaign-url-builder/
Here’s some tips:
- Use separate links for each different thing you want to track e.g. facebook vs newsletter or “summer sale” vs “winter sale
- Explore setting both a “campaign” and a “medium” or “source” parameter so you can track both the overall campaign as well as the individual traffic sources in the campaign
2. Shorten your link for easy of use with Bitly
Bitly is a great service to shorten links for ease of use. Long URLs can be cumbersome to input and manage sometimes.
The google link above will let you shorten the link your generate using the Bitly service.
3. Keep track of your shortened links
If you are only using one or two this might not be so essential but when using lots of links they all start to look the same. It’s easy to make up a simple spreadsheet noting the shortened link and the various parameters.
Once you’ve done this always copy the link from there so you make sure you are sending people to the right place.
4. Look for the parameters in your website analytics
Your website analytics package should track these UTM parameters by default. Once you have visits coming in form your marketing campaign, you’ll be able to see these in your analytics and dive into the details.
