You share your product links on Pinterest, in your newsletter, in a Facebook group and in your bio. Sales come in. But which of those places actually sent the buyers? Without tracking, it’s guesswork.
UTM parameters are a simple, free fix. They’re short tags you add to the end of a link so Google Analytics can tell you where each visitor came from.
What a UTM link looks like
A tagged link is just your normal URL with extra parameters after a question mark, separated by ampersands. Google’s own example looks like this:
https://www.example.com/?utm_source=summer-mailer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=summer-sale
Google’s help page says to always include three parameters:
- utm_source: the referrer, such as a newsletter or a specific site.
- utm_medium: the marketing channel, such as email or social.
- utm_campaign: the product, promo or slogan, such as a spring sale.
There are optional extras too. The most useful one for small sellers is utm_content, which tells apart links in the same campaign, for example the top button versus the P.S. link in an email. Google also strongly recommends utm_id and utm_source_platform, and notes that missing parameters show up as “(not set)” in reports.
A simple naming system
One detail catches many people out: Google says UTM values are case sensitive, so “Pinterest” and “pinterest” are counted as different sources. Pick a convention and stick to it. For example:
- Always lowercase, with hyphens instead of spaces.
- Sources: newsletter, pinterest, facebook-group, youtube.
- Mediums: email, social, pin, video.
- Campaigns: the product or promo name, such as budget-planner-launch.
Keep a small spreadsheet of the links you create so your names stay consistent over time.
Where to see the results
According to Google, campaign data appears in the Traffic acquisition report in Google Analytics. From there you can compare sources and mediums to see which channels bring visitors who go on to view your sales pages.
Practical tips
- Tag links you post off-site: emails, social posts, guest posts and bio links. Don’t tag internal links between pages of your own site.
- Use a link shortener or your email platform’s link settings if long tagged URLs look messy.
- Check whether your email service already adds UTM tags automatically, so you don’t end up with duplicates.
A few minutes of tagging gives you real data on where your buyers come from, so you can spend more time on the channels that work.
Sources
Featured image: Photo: StockSnap (CC0)