We all know that tracking your marketing campaign’s performance is important. Very important. After all, you want to know how well your efforts are paying off and if any campaign adjustments are needed.
If you are a Google Analytics user, you can track your product’s performance through UTMs. Doing so will help you understand what campaigns, keywords and sources are driving shoppers to your Google Shopping product listing ads.
What is UTM Tracking?
UTM tags are added to a URL that allows you to track performance. Once the URL is clicked on, the tag is sent to your Google Analytics account where you can view information about a visitor's session.
Knowing what campaigns are driving impressions will help you better target the text of your product listings to improve click-through rates.
UTM tracking can also give you insight into optimization. This can be a useful tool when you're trying to identify trends in your campaigns, like the PLA elements that are leading shoppers to your products.
But what if your campaigns are off the mark? What if your products are coming up in search queries that have nothing to do with your products? Knowing this would help you edit listings to create better targeting.
Creating UTM Tags
Simple. Visit Google’s URL Builder, fill out the form and run the app. Alternatively, you can append these values manually -- if you know what you're doing. The key here is know what the accepted values are and how the UTM string is parsed in the URL.
Accepted values:
- utm_source - Campaign source or the referrer (e.g. google, newsletter)
- utm_medium - Campaign medium or marketing medium (e.g. cpc, banner, email)
- utm_campaign - Campaign Name, product, promo code, or slogan (e.g. spring_sale)
- utm_term - Campaign term; used to identify the paid keywords
- utm_content- Campaign content; used to differentiate ads by content
URL string elements:
- ? - used to separate the base URL from the the UTM tag; apply this only once at the beginning of the UTM tag
- & - used to separate variables in the string
- = - used to denote the value of the variable
Once you've entered this information, click ‘Generate URL.’ Below is an example of what a URL with a UTM code will look like.
https://www.mystore.com/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=spring-sale&utm_term=sun-dress&utm_content=flower-print-dresses
By appending a specific UTM code to the product URLs in your Google feed, you will know which website clicks came from those product listings and therefore you can see how well your campaign strategy is doing.
Applying UTM Tracking
You can manually add these codes to the individual product URLs that you are sending to Google or you can use a data feed automation software to add these codes in bulk. Here at GoDataFeed, we offer a quick, headache-free solution to add these codes with the creation of one simple rule.
If you are interested in learning more about how our software can help you measure your success with UTM codes, visit our website or give us a call. We're here to help.
.png)
