{"id":7880,"date":"2019-02-19T15:50:48","date_gmt":"2019-02-19T15:50:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gosquared.com\/blog\/?p=7880"},"modified":"2019-11-28T10:39:35","modified_gmt":"2019-11-28T10:39:35","slug":"utm-parameters-guide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gosquared.com\/blog\/utm-parameters-guide","title":{"rendered":"UTM parameters \u2013 what are they? How do I use them?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Tracking<\/p>\n

How do you get more traffic to your website?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s a question that anyone involved in online marketing can discuss for hours.<\/p>\n

Whether you’ve just set up your first website, or head up a marketing team with a website that generates millions of visits every day, you\u2019ll probably have an opinion on the topic of traffic generation. <\/p>\n

This question is often the starting point for creating an online marketing strategy. A strategy that could involve anything from evaluating the channels best suited for driving traffic, to paid activity like buying online display ads or bidding on search terms. Or alternatively, free activations such as distributing a digital newsletter or posting content to social media channels. <\/p>\n

These efforts, individually or collectively, would come under an online \u2018campaign\u2019. One of the biggest benefits of running online campaigns, specifically for driving traffic to your website, is the ability to track their effectiveness.<\/p>\n

If you used an offline medium as part of your campaigns, like TV, radio or print, it\u2019s not to say those channels wouldn\u2019t drive traffic to your website, it can just be very difficult to determine exactly which visits were a result of that activity. <\/p>\n

This is exactly what UTM parameters allow us to do \u2013\u00a0when a visitor clicks a link to your website, that they find as a result of one of your online marketing campaigns, the UTM parameters appended to the end of the URL enable you to identify exactly which part of the campaign the visitor came through. <\/p>\n

Tl;dr<\/h3>\n

UTM parameters enable you to track the source a visitor to your site has come from, and therefore enables you to evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing strategy.<\/p>\n

What is a UTM parameter?<\/h2>\n

\"What<\/p>\n

Before we get into UTM parameters, it\u2019s probably good to explain what a “parameter” is. <\/p>\n

Parameters are additional details that you can add to the end of your URL. They provide more specific information about the link. <\/p>\n

Take this URL for example: http:\/\/www.example.com\/search?product=1234<\/p>\n

The \u201c?\u201d after the website name indicates the start of the parameter. The term \u201cproduct\u201d is a parameter and the \u201c=\u201d following the parameter allows us to assign a value to that parameter. In this case, the value would be \u201c1234\u201d.<\/p>\n

Once we click on this link, the parameter is letting the website know that we\u2019re searching for product \u201c1234\u201d. <\/p>\n

How are UTM parameters different?<\/h2>\n

\"how<\/p>\n

UTM parameters are a special kind of parameter. Rather than providing information on what we are searching for, like in the above example, they are used to tell analytics tools like GoSquared Analytics<\/a> or Google Analytics more information about where a link was clicked from. <\/p>\n

Take this URL for example: https:\/\/example.com\/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=spring-summer<\/p>\n

If this link was clicked on, we would be able to tell in our analytics tool that the \u2018source\u2019 of the visit came from our newsletter, the \u2018medium<\/strong>\u2019 that we used to deliver that newsletter was \u2018email<\/strong>\u2019 and the newsletter was sent out as a part of our spring-summer \u2018campaign<\/strong>\u2019.<\/p>\n

One thing you\u2019ll notice is that we are including more than one parameter. You are able to do this (with any kind of parameter) by joining the parameters using the \u2018&<\/strong>\u2019 symbol. <\/p>\n

There are five main UTM parameters you can include in a campaign URL:<\/p>\n