Surely you’ve already seen more than one URL with a bit strange code at the end, what you see are the o links UTM parameters.
▶️ https://metriol.com/es/blog/?&utm_source=instagram_stories&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=2022_social_media_es
And if you belong to the world of digital marketing, this post will be great for you to understand what UTM links are and how they work.
What is UTM
UTM links are text snippets that appear at the end of a URL and are used to measure the traffic source of each visit through Google Analytics.
How these parameters work is simple: when a user arrives on our website with these parameters present in the URL, Google Analytics recognizes them and associates the visit (and all the actions and conversions that occur during it) with the value contained in those parameters . : source, medium and countryside as the most common.
Marketing teams use these parameters to manually label and according to their internal criteria, the visits and conversions that come to them through advertising campaigns, with influencers or with third parties.
This UTM allows you to know the origin of each click, learn more about your audience and then promote this content on your channels.
How to use UTM parameters
You can create these links manually or using a URL builder tool and you need to add five parameters, 3 of which are required and 2 are optional.
Which ones are they?
utm_source
It is the link parameter that indicates the source that sends traffic to the destination page.
This snippet is useful for finding out how much traffic a post on a social network brings to the landing page.
For example, if you want to measure the performance of a tweet with the URL https://metricol.com/es/ We will add at the end of this the parameter “utm_source=twitter”:
✅ https://metriol.com/es/?&utm_source=twitter
💡 You may have noticed that there is something between the URL and the parameter the question mark “?” and the “&” symbol: There are two symbols that you must always include.
He the question mark is inserted only once at the end of the URL, while the ampersand “&” must appear after the URL and after each parameter added to separate each of them.
utm_medium
It is the medium in which the link that we want to analyze later appears. It can be an advertising or marketing medium such as a banner or a CPC. In case you have more than one mount, you need to add each of them to the UTM.
If we follow the above example, we would add to https://metriol.com/es/?&utm_source=twitter the parameter “utm_medium=social”:
✅ https://meticool.com/es/?&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social
utm_campaign
Information about our campaign or the discount code we are promoting to know how the link worked.
For example, if you plan to make a sale on Black Friday, you can identify it with this term to know which campaign it refers to.
Continuing with the UTM link that we are testing step by step, to the link that already has ‘source’ and ‘medium’ you need to add the parameter “utm_campaign=blackfriday2022”:
These first three parameters are mandatory, but whenever you deem it appropriate, you can add the next two to have more control over the traffic you bring to your website.
utm_term
This parameter helps you identify the term or keyword you used in your campaign or ad that the user is searching for.
For example, you can add the UTM “utm_term=programareninstagram” to know that the traffic you get is from a campaign attacking this kw.
utm_content
If you have several ads on the same URL, the content parameter helps you distinguish between them.
For example, if you have multiple links on the same page, the UTM content allows you to identify which one brought the most traffic to the target site: link in a banner, in an image, in a video.
If you need a guide to create your UTM links for the first time, we have prepared a template with which you will have your links in less than a minute.
How to create UTM parameters in Google
You’ve already seen how to create a UTM link manually, but you can also create them from the same Google page
▶️ To create your own UTM link you need to go to Google’s ‘URL Creator’ page: https://ga-dev-tools.web.app/campaign-url-builder/.
▶️ You will find the UTM creator as you did before manually, but by filling in the fields with parameters.
▶️ Add the required source, medium and campaign fields with the term you want to have in your url, just the term and not the whole parameter.
▶️ The tool itself creates the UTM link with the necessary parameters and with the terms you entered.
▶️ Copy the UTM link that Google created and you already have it. Or, if you prefer, use the URL shortener.
Once created, tap on the analytics part and for this you need to set up Google Analytics on your website. To see the performances you can do it in the ‘Acquisition’ section and in ‘Campaigns’.
Within the campaign, tap each one to see the insights Google has for you.
Program in Metricool with UTM parameters
You already know that Metricool likes analytics, right?
To get more precision in measuring the traffic sources you get, from Metricool you will be able to add UTM parameters in the planner when planning your content on social networks.
To add it, click on the icon you have in the planner just to the right of the emojis. You can then add the UTM to your link: source, medium, campaign name, search term and content.
Now you can have the accuracy you need to know the traffic sources from your links.
You already know what they are links or UTM parameters and how they work. Use them to measure the performance of your links and learn about the source of your traffic to improve your content.
