Want to justify your marketing to your boss? Tag your links!
David Somerville
Independent Digital Marketing Consultant | Charity and Non Profits Specialist | CharityComms Mentor | Trainer
I would imagine, if our client list is anything to go by, that most of you are using Google Analytics to measure your website's traffic, conversions and more. And if you are then I'm sure you're also tagging all of your marketing activity so you can report back on it?
You're not?! OK then maybe it's about time you started to...
Google isn't always seen as the most friendly organisation towards businesses (despite the "Don't be evil" strapline), however Google Analytics is a really useful tool for businesses, as are their UTM tags.
UTM tags (also known as UTM parameters) are snippets of text you can add to the end of a URL to help you track the activity for it (using Google Analytics).
Using the Google URL builder you simply enter the URL of the page you are promoting; a 'source' (such as 'twitter'); a 'medium' (such as 'social'); and then a 'campaign name' (such as 'campaign+tagging+cheatsheet).
You're then given a new tagged URL that you would (in this case) use on Twitter - the highlighted section is new UTM parameter:
You would add a UTM tag to each of the different URLs you are going to be promoting for a specific page or piece of content, then change the source and medium accordingly.
When someone clicks on the tagged link this is then recorded within Google Analytics and you can view the results in the 'Campaigns' report in 'Acquisition'.
The example below shows referral traffic in Google Analytics from Facebook and Twitter - the highlighted figures show traffic we know came from links we promoted:
So why should you tag everything? Well if you ever have to justify your marketing activity then it's a must! By tagging your links you can claim that traffic as being a direct result of your work, as opposed to traffic via that source or medium that happens organically.
This applies to not just your social media activity, but email, banner ads, PPC campaigns and more.
There's a lot more you can learn about Google UTM tags and we have created a handy cheat sheet you can download here.
Head of Apollo Labs | Building the AI-Influenced Pipeline of Tomorrow
10 年Curious... Because I didn't see it (and I think I know the answer why), but there's no UTM tag on this Pulse article. Have you investigated LinkedIn policy here (i.e. Do they allow UTMs)? Thanks in advance for any knowledge you can share.
SEO, digital and adventure travel
10 年Excellent tip - I'll look into it today. 1question: How could we unite this information with 'Sessions via Social Referral' without the two clashing?