What are UTMs and what are they used for?

[subornaakter20]

UTM stands for Urchin Tracking Module and is the format used by Google to track URLs.

In short, they are small pieces of information that are added to the end of a URL , to inform Google, in detail, about a specific link.

[Tweet “UTMs are small pieces of information that are added to the end of a URL”]

Remember: The mathematical physicist manufacturing email list Lord Kelvin said:

“What is not defined cannot be measured. What is not measured cannot be improved. What does not improve, always degrades.”

Lord Kelvin

And, in digital marketing , that’s something you can’t afford to forget. That’s why UTM codes in PPC campaigns are so important.

Now, let's continue with UTM.

UTM codes are text fragments that are added to the end of URLs. These fragments are used by Google Analytics – or whatever web analytics tool you use – to track the origin of visits and record where a visit to a specific page came from.


When we add the UTM code in PPC campaigns, the link will look like this:


Everything you see after the “?” symbol in the URL is a UTM parameter. It’s important to know that this code won’t change anything on your own site, but it will help you measure the success of your PPC campaign.

Basically, using UTM codes in PPC campaigns will allow you to customize your links so that you can later monitor and measure the results: be it clicks, conversions, purchases, registrations or any other activity.

In other words, UTM parameters in PPC campaigns will allow you to obtain valuable information from your visitors.

What does this mean? It means that you will be able to see which of your posts on each social network or which of your ads or even blog posts managed to drive the most traffic to a particular page. Obviously, this measurement is useful for seeing which medium worked best as a source of diffusion.

In a PPC campaign, this will allow you to know which actions should be boosted or which actions or publications did not work as expected and should be reviewed or removed from the plan.

Based on the above, it is essential that you use UTM codes in PPC campaigns to optimize your digital marketing strategy.

For example, imagine that you are dedicated to the online trade of healthy products to make nutritious recipes.

Well, that's exactly what BuyFresco, a digital food platform, does, which often publishes the same campaign on several social profiles and uses UTM codes to find out which post performed best.

UTM in PPC campaigns

Like BuyFresco, you can add UTM parameters to PPC campaigns to know which channels to invest more effort in, what changes you should make to the site to improve the user experience, and what actions to stop implementing.

In short, if you don't know where your clicks are coming from, you're flying blind. Anything you can track can be improved. If you don't, you're missing a huge opportunity to take your business to the top.

[Tweet “If you don’t know where your clicks are coming from, you’re flying blind”]

So, now you know a little bit more about UTMs in PPC campaigns, let’s actually see what the importance of custom URLs is.

Importance of custom URLs
First, I would like to remind you that this term refers to URLs that have traceable characteristics, as the name itself suggests, and allow you to identify, for example, where the user clicked to reach the destination page, in the case of a PPC campaign that uses several different URLs.

If this landing page is the landing page for downloading some material, it will also be possible for you to know how many people have gone there, regardless of whether they have downloaded anything.

Obviously, Google Analytics is a great partner when it comes to tracking results, but it still fails to detect important data.