Being a digital marketing agency we know that one key advantage of placing Digital Ads is that they can be measured. As a digital marketing agency we focus on the following:
- Has the campaign delivered the desired impressions?
- Did the Ad reach our Target Audience?
- What was the cost incurred per view for the Ad?
You won’t know any of these unless you track your campaign’s performance. When you start measuring your ad campaigns online, you can very easily identify campaign’s performance, posts with most likes for your brand and more. These can be used as key insights to further strategize and fine tune the Ad campaigns for the long run.
Here again we have Google as our savior! The Google Analytics tool makes this job amazingly simple with its built-in campaign tracking tool. By the end of this post you would be able to track all your campaigns and find out how they are performing.
Building UTMs for your Campaigns
UTM stands for Urchin Tracking Model, which simply explained, allows users to tag hyperlinks in order to trace where visitors originated. They are nothing but small information pieces added at the end of the URL for offering more information to Google about the specific link.
Example – http://www.website.com/?utm_source=adcampaign
In this case, what comes after the question mark is considered a UTM parameter. When a user clicks on this link, that particular site’s Google Analytics account reads and records it as parameter information.
Let’s give a quick overview for few of the UTM parameters:
A. utm_source
Source describes where your visitors came from. Common sources include
- Facebook
- Youtube
- Google
- The URLs of websites that refer you traffic
B. utm_medium
Medium tells you how the visitors got to your site. Some of the most common mediums include:
- Email
- Pay-per-click (PPC)
- Banner-Ads
C. utm_campaign
This simply describes your campaign. We are using the blog post that we wrote on How to set up Google Analytics, so we used how-to-set-up-google-analytics as our campaign name.
To make things easier you can use the Google UTM Builder where you can just plug in your information and automatically generate a hyperlink.
You begin by entering the link you want to use to take visitors to your website. Next, add the three main parameters that you want to track. As you type, you will see that the new URL is being auto-generated.
Finally, you click on “Copy URL” and paste it into your email newsletter (ad, social, etc…) instead of your regular “untagged” link. That’s it. Now you’ll be able to see who is actually converting from your marketing efforts.
Below you can see a snapshot of how the information needs to be filled in the Google UTM Builder.
Additional Tips:
Consistent Naming Conventions
As digital marketing agency, we advise you that while creating such UTMs you also need to make sure that you follow proper naming conventions. Which in simple terms means your campaign names and other UTM parameters should be descriptive.
Define your Targets
And always have the clarity while tracking links in Google Analytics of what to measure the results against. For which you need to ensure that you have your “Target” defined – whether you want to drive clicks, conversions, CTRs. For instance, you might be aiming for a 20% increase in conversions, a 50% increase in traffic, etc.
The place to Find Tagged URL Data in Analytics
After starting to tag URLs across your online marketing campaigns, all you’ll need to know is where to navigate in Analytics. This would help to view information the tags have been delivering. The information you need can be found in Standard Reports > Traffic Sources > Sources> Campaigns.
Great, you’re all set. We know this is a very long lesson but definitely a good thing for any business and digital marketing agency to know. It gives you a vast amount of data that helps you evaluate each marketing channel that you use. No matter how creative you and your team are, at the end of the day, all that the client looks for is ROI. You can deliver that with analyzing and tweaking your campaigns from time to time.
Mindstorm, a ‘Hybrid’ Digital Marketing Agency in Mumbai delivers exactly that. Our team has expertise in boosting the social media presence of the brand by building the right kind of buzz in the target audience. We also have expertise in lead generation and test drive promotions before pumping more money on advertising. Through all these services, Mindstorm empowers brands with real-time, personified creative communications. It helps to effectively target social media marketing goals and make the brand reach new heights.
