What Is a UTM and Why Is It Important for Digital Marketing?

If you’ve done any work in the field of digital marketing, you’ve probably heard the term UTM before. However, chances are you probably clicked this article because you do not know what UTM stands for and what it does. So, let’s fix that right now.

UTM stands for Urchin Tracking Module and it is a type of code that, you guessed it, tracks and measures digital marketing campaigns across a multitude of platforms.

The next couple of minutes will paint the picture of why you need UTM codes for your business and all of your digital campaigns.

The History of UTM’s

Before Google purchased the product in 2005 from Urchin Software Corporation, Google Analytics was nonexistent.

Now, Google Analytics 4 launched in October of 2020, running alongside its previous version, Universal Analytics. Although the two have existed side-by-side since the introduction of GA4, Google plans to soon phase out Univerisal Analytics to encourage users to opt for the more advanced updated.

GA4 allows tracking codes to change the way we do business, market our products and build our brands through multiple channels.

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Here are some tips on how to get started building your analytics strategy in order to track everything under the bright sun that is, The Internet.

Creating UTM’s for your Business

You’ll need a developer for this and if you don’t have one, I would suggest contacting a Solutions Manager at Techwyse, but the process is relatively simple for someone who knows what they are doing.

Simply place the code and whatever has a chance to lead to your website, to a form or a phone number on your mobile device. There are many resources to help you out with this including Google’s URL Campaign Builder.

Where to place UTM tracking Codes

All of your digital assets, in theory, should have a UTM Code. The goal of any digital marketing campaign is to get as many eyeballs, clicks (human – not bots!) and leads, purchases, form fill-outs etc. as humanly possible.

TechWyse places UTM’s on their Google My Business listing, Landing Pages, Email Links in Signatures, Website Forms and basically anywhere that we deem necessary to be tracked. This allows us to see user conversion paths and market our products better. Take a look at some of the conversion paths over just one day:

Source: Google Analytics Screenshot

UTMs are especially important for all of your Google products. Let’s breakdown this URL here:

This shows how I accessed TechWyse’s home page. The source was “gmb,” also known as Google My Business and the medium I used to find the website link was an organic website search for “TechWyse.”

Simple right? The next example will dive a little deeper.

Take a look at the image below:

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See that TechWyse Logo? You guessed it, that has a UTM tracking code on it! This is important because it allows companies to see collaboration and can guide roaming users to stumble on your page and potentially fill out a form like the lead we generated below.

UTM’s are also great for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions. This is an example of our UTMs populate data in our CRM AdLuge and how detailed the tracking can get with UTMs:

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That logo determined the conversion path and led to a lead for an SEO proposal. This is just one of many tools TechWyse uses as part of our measurement and tracking solutions.

If you aren’t tracking where your users are coming from and measuring your successes and failures, then what’s the point? You’ll just be throwing money at certain issues and hoping that you’ll get the results you want.

Why Are UTM’s Important for Digital Marketing?

If you’re a business owner you always want to know how your customers are finding you. UTM codes will tell you the direction in which the user came from. Take TechWyse’s Google My Business listing for example:

The URL is TechWyse, the source is “gmb” or Google My Business, and the medium in which I found the listing was through an organic search via Google.

Now, if UTM’s weren’t in place the traffic would still be recorded, but the travel path wouldn’t be. This shows the importance of measurement and figuring out how the traffic is coming to you. This way you can determine which channels are providing you with the most traffic and why.

If you’re spending tons of time, energy and money on your social media accounts, but aren’t getting any significant traffic from them, you’ll know you need to rethink your approach or maybe focus more on another medium.

On the flip side, if you’re not focusing much on a platform or channel that is providing you with a lot of traffic, you may want to refocus your attention to building your strategy for that channel.

Without Google analytics to track the travel path of your traffic, you won’t have the data you need to properly plan and implement your marketing strategies, which will likely lead to a whole lot of wasted time (and money).

How to Use UTM’s in Analytics

If you’re not looking at your Analytics and quantifying your buyer’s persona, target demographics etc., then I suggest taking the Google Analytics course to get started. It’s a free course provided by Google that takes you through all the basics of settings up a Google Analytics account and getting started.

It’s simple and easy to follow, and even if you have no previous experience tracking analytics, this course will allow you to learn the basics.

And, as always, if you want the pros to do all the heavy lifting and install supercharged analytics contact a Solutions Manager at 416-410-7090 or email [email protected]

Post By Brett Innis (8 Posts)

Brett is a Digital Strategist at TechWyse and plays hockey and tennis whenever he can. His guilty pleasures are birding and Scrabble.