UTM Codes/Tags: A Quick Guide to Tagging Ads Like a Pro

UTM Codes: The Basics

When you have multiple channels funneling web traffic to your  website, UTM Codes let you control with precision how that web traffic is represented in Google Analytics. Here, look how slick this is…

So an ad tagged like this:

https://clientsite.com?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=premium-phoenix&utm_content=carousel-phoenix-v2

Will appear like this in your Google Analytics:

UTM Tagging

UTM Tagging

How it works is super simple: Google Analytics is already set up to “Listen” for your tags–you do not need to do anything in Google Analytics.

Useless Fun With UTM Codes

So YOU can push any data you want through the codes…literally anything, so for example, if you wanted to toy with your co-workers:

This:

https://tastyplacement.com/?utm_source=matthew_smells&utm_medium=matthew_smells

Will appear in your Google Analytics like so:

When Are UTM Codes Useful?

  • They are an absolute must for Email campaigns. If you don’t tag links in your email newsletter, any clicks from the newsletter will report the “Source/Medium” as a mess of dozens of separate sources like “gmail”, “not set”, “search.mail.com”. This will happen because technically, the mail service is the referral source. The UTM Codes are the way to override this behavior.
  • You can also tag ads in obscure 3rd party networks.
  • You can UTM tag ads from social media campaigns. Facebook ads, for example, will appear correctly in Google Analytics as the source “fb”, but no campaign name, no ad name will populate, unless you tag each ad with a UTM Code.
  • If you are running a social campaign through an agency and they are not tagging your ads, you should not use that agency, you should use Austin-based digital marketing and SEO agency, TastyPlacement.

Let’s Dive in and Tag Our Links w/ UTM Codes

Before we start, here are a few key parts to remember:

  • Everything MUST be lowercase. Information that is passed to Google Analytics is case-sensitive so November-2019 and november-2019 will appear as different campaigns in Analytics.
  • We recommend only using dashes or underscores in tag names. No spaces, commas, periods, etc.
  • Most importantly, keep an organized naming convention!

This will save you the headache and mistake of having duplicate data in Google Analytics.

Example: Black Friday Sale Promotion

One of our e-commerce clients, Neurobiologix, sends monthly newsletters to their client base announcing promotions and deals they offer. In today’s example, we’re going to be sending out a newsletter promoting a Black Friday Sale.

Let’s go to Google’s Campaign URL Builder and fill out all of the appropriate fields. It will look like this:

UTM Tag Builder

 

Now, let’s break down the image above.

Website URL – Place the full URL of the page you are sending users to on your site.

Campaign Source – This is literally the “source” of website traffic. Is it a newsletter? Is it an ad? For social ad campaigns, this will be the web property that generates the traffic: fb, pinterest, etc. Keep in mind that you may already have organic traffic from, say, pinterest in your analytics. You want to use the same spelling, down to the capitalization so when you do a “Source” analysis, you want have Pinterest as one source and pinterest.com as another source. Just go look in your analytics account to be sure.

Campaign Medium – The medium is a well-defined channel in Google Analytics. These really are classes from which you should not stray:

  • cpc for paid ads
  • organic for organic traffic
  • referral for referral type traffic
  • email for referrals from email newsletters
  • direct for direct visits, but never use that in a UTM tag because by definition it means the source is largely unknown

Campaign Name – This is how you decide how you want to organize the data that comes in. Here at TastyPlacement, we like to analyze the data by  month, but you can also do it by quarter, season sale, etc. This is wide open, it’s up to you. “summer_promotion”, “march_2019_newsletter”, that sort of thing.

Campaign Term – This is the keyword you are using to identify your ad. We often leave this one blank.

Campaign Content – Now this part is optional. Use this field if you want to further filter out traffic for a specific occasion. In this example, Neurobiologix has already sent out a November newsletter early in the month. So in order to be able to distinguish the data between the first November newsletter and this Black Friday Sale promotion, we are going to use the Campaign Content field to track the data for this specific holiday newsletter with “black-friday-sale-2018”.

After filling out all the fields above, a link is automatically generated for you:

And that’s it! You are now ready to use this link to share with your users and be able to track where your campaigns are coming from.

Avoid Polluting Your Google Analytics Data w/ UTM Codes

UTM Codes appear permanently in your Google Analytics data–at least in that view. Remember that “matthew_smells” joke we did before? I could look that up in 20 years, and it will still be there.

If you are using these links in a monthly newsletter or ad campaign, make sure to replace the tagged URLs with the most current Campaign Name (aka time frame you want to track) in order to keep track of any conversions coming in during this period.

Tagged URLs can be reused through the same month unless the landing pages change in the newsletter

If you are tracking monthly traffic, the URLs must be changed each month in order to keep track of any conversions coming from the newsletters during this period.

5 Epic Facebook Marketing Tips for Dermatologists

marketing

1. Set Goals to Track Your Success

When starting any campaign it is important to set goals so that you can easily monitor progress and success. It helps you gauge what works and what doesn’t. Be realistic with your goals. What metrics are you using to measure your progress? Reach is a great metric that can be found and monitored on Facebook Insights in the admin section of your business page. Reach is the total amount of people who have seen your page or post on a desktop or mobile site.

 facebookinsights
As you can see above, this business consistently posts every week. The purple dots represent content shared on the page. The larger purples dots mean that multiple content was shared on a particular day. Posting consistently helps keep users engaged and constantly talking about the brand. Some may argue that the ‘People Talking About This’ (PTAT) metric doesn’t matter but it in fact IS very helpful in measuring the virility of your brand’s Facebook presence by counting how many people you are interacting with. It is great to have hundreds and thousands of likes to show that your business is relevant and popular, but you want your users to come back to your page and interact with you. This is what the PTAT metric measures. A great goal ratio of ‘Likes’ to PTAT is 10%. This means that 10% of your audience is commenting, liking and sharing the content you are posting. As you can see above, this company’s ratio is just shy of 10% but it is on an upward trend and should reach 10% within a couple of days.

2. Show Potential Clients You Care by Sharing Free Tips

Potential clients prefer a physician who noticeably cares about their patients. One way to show you care is by posting free tips regarding skin care. This can help clear up confusion caused by advertisers and skin care product companies who make false claims about their products. This also shows that you are a very knowledgeable person in your field. If you have a blog section on your website, you can easily publish your tips in a blog post and share them on Facebook!
chiutips
The dermatologist shown here is sharing her tips via a blog entry she made for a beauty website that she contributes to. Not everyone has the time to be a contributing blogger to outside publications but it does help with establishing your credibility.
dermtip
This dermatologist is sharing tips as a status update and accompanying it with a popular internet meme that people love to share. Including hasthags (#) is a new feature that Facebook recently implemented that was previously only found on Twitter. Using hashtags is a great way for anybody to find your content and page. Make your tips easy to be found by using hashtags such as #dermtips, #dermatologytips, #skincaretips, or even using #dermatology and #skincare could be effective.

3. Testimonials Establish Trust and Credibility

Posting testimonials from current and past clients is a great way to show users that your business is reputable and trusted. Invite clients to email their testimonial and copy and paste to your page. Establishing credibility is very important in this industry because a client wants to visit a specialist who not only knows what they are doing, but that do it well! Trusting a dermatologist is important because the skin is the largest organ in the body and is the most visible.

 allenbytestimonial

This example shows a testimonial that was submitted to the dermatologist either personally or via email or a feedback box. Since Facebook users can post on your business page once they’ve liked it, you should also invite clients to post testimonials directly on your page. This allows the testimonial to be seen by others instantly and welcomes engagement.

4. Promotions, Coupons, and Special Offers

Coupons and special offers are a great way to acquire new clients via a social media platform. ‘Limited time only’ offers create a sense of urgency and inspires your potential clients to act quickly. Doing a giveaway of a particular product is also a great way to encourage engagement. An example of a simple way to have a contest with a high participation rate is to ask users to like or share a photo to be counted as an entry. This increases your reach tremendously and allows for people in your user’s network to see your business profile even if they don’t like your page yet.
bvdermdiscount
The dermatologist above sets a deadline, provides information about the product and promotion, and includes a phone number so that the user can take action. You may also notice that this post is promoted. It isn’t necessary to promote your post, especially if you are on a limited budget, but it does expand your reach as the number of “people who saw this post” reflects. That is a topic of discussion for a future date.

westlakedermcontest
A contest that involves collecting user-submitted content is a great way to get people to participate with your page. This is a great way to produce content because you can share the entries on your timeline and ask for feedback. A popular way to run a contest like this is to install a tab on your timeline. Our favorite resource for this is Shortstack.

5. Engage With Your Audience

Maintaining an approachable and friendly voice for your business is also very important. It is surprisingly easy for a business’ voice to come off as automated or robotic on a social media account. Clients like to feel like they are engaging with another human being rather than a computer. One way to create comfortable interaction between clients and your business is to welcome questions on your profile. Respond to them in a timely manner so the exchange is quick and the client will be satisfied with the quick response time. You may also instigate the conversation by asking general questions like “What are your weekend plans?” or “What’s your favorite summer vacation spot?”. Posting humorous photos or photos related to your industry is also a great way to instigate interaction since people can easily like or share a photo thus expanding your reach and PTAT metric.

 allenbydog
As you can see above, this dermatologist decided to post a photo of a dog to engage with their audience. The post was on a Saturday when most people are relaxing and looking for entertainment. It’s great to add a variety of “fun” posts to balance out all the informative and important information you already share.

Now that you know what it takes, go out and make your Facebook page one to be seen and talked about! Good luck!

 

 

Google Places Update: How to Find Missing Google+ Local Listings

How to Recover Missing Google Places Listings

[deprecated, 2019, due to Google+ shutdown]

This morning Google started rolling out a global update to Google Places. The entire service has finally merged with Google+ Local. If you try to go to the normal Places login, you’ll be automatically redirected to a gateway to Google+. For most people this isn’t a problem, but if the email address you use to manage your Places listings doesn’t already have G+ activated, you’re probably going to find a screen like this where you should see your business listings.

Empty Manage your pages

If that’s the case, don’t panic. You can still recover your work. This morning, we received a Google Places verification post card for a client. They are eager to gain a presence on Google Maps so that they can start gaining leads. Unfortunately, the client’s listing was in the middle of the verification process when update hit.

01-Verification-Postcard02

This client’s listing was brand new, and, as mentioned before, had yet to be verified. It wasn’t already a part of the G+ Local ecosystem, which meant that we thought we lost all the work we’d done to create their local listing. But after exploring the new dashboard and Google Maps, we found a way to reconcile what would have been yet another stray listing.

If you have a Google Places listing that you need to recover, follow these steps:

1. Go to your old Google Places dashboard

Sign into the Google account you use to manage your listing. Since you can’t access the Google Places dashboard using http://www.google.com/places you’ll need to go here.

<https://www.google.com/local/add/businessCenter?hl=en&utm_campaign=ww&utm_source=placepage-badge&utm_medium=et>

02 Unverified Listing in Places Dahsboard

2. Enter your verification PIN

Enter your verification PIN to verify your listing. You should be redirected to the standard verification screen for Google Places.

03 Listing Verified

3. Submit your Places listing for early upgrade

Once your listing is verified, go back to your Google Places dashboard by clicking the logo on the upper left side of the PIN verification screen. You should be redirected to your dashboard and find your listing marked as “Pending: Being reviewed.”

04 Listing Pending Review

If you look at the top of the page you’ll also notice a message explaining that Google Places is being upgraded to Google+ Local. Follow the link in the message to go to Google’s article explaining the changes in detail.

05 Update Message

 

At the end of the article, there is a field to submit your page for early upgrade to G+ Local, under “Who can use the new Places dashboard?”Submit your listing, and wait on Google to update your Places listing to a Google+ Local listing. (This is probably a good idea because it sends a signal to Google that your listing is monitored by a real human being, and that you care enough about your listing to proactively submit it to G+ Local.)

06 What’s happening to Google Places for Business

4. What if my previously verified listing disappeared?

If your listing was previously verified and you know the URL, recovering your listing is simple. First, sign into the Google account you use to manage your listing. Next, go directly to your listing and click on “Manage this page.” If you don’t know where this is, you can find the button in the lower right sidebar.

01 Manage This Page Button

You should be redirected to the old Google Places dashboard where you can still send verification postcards.

06 Google Places Dashboard with Pending Listings

Don’t forget to take the time to also submit your unverified listing for an early upgrade, lest you lose hours of work.

At the end of the day, to succeed in this new local search environment that Google+ Local offers, you must make sure that your Places listing is managed by an active account, currently enrolled in G+.