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Using UTM Parameters To Track Your Ads

UTM Parameters, Marketing tips for photographers and creatives

Using UTM Parameters To Track Your Ads

Have you ever wondered how visitors come across your site? UTM parameters are a game changer for learning about your website visitors via their behavior. 

In short, UTM parameters track visitors from different sources that feed your site. How does this benefit you in regard to ad strategy? These parameters that you set efficiently track the effectiveness of your paid ads in different sources, allowing you to evaluate which campaigns are performing the best for your target audience and which ones are not.

What are UTM parameters?

UTM parameters are the tags you see at the end of URLs. They’re the ones that provide information on which ad, adset, button, etc. was clicked by a visitor of your site. And through the use of Google Analytics, you can see how much traffic comes from each source.

How does it work?

The query string communicates info to tools such as Google Analytics. This is how Google knows where your site visitors come from if another site sent them to you. You can check the source of your visitors on your analytics page under referral source.

However, if the link comes from an email or an ad with no referrer from Google Analytics, Google then classifies that as a direct visit. (even though it most definitely was a paid ad). This skews your data by telling you certain campaigns aren’t performing as well as you thought, and direct visits are overperforming. By building UTM parameters, we can tell Google Analytics to put those generic links without enough referrer analytics into a different measurement group.

Want to learn how to generate UTM parameters the RIGHT way?

Mandy Ford | Photographer & Marketing Educator

Mandy is a top-ranked international photographer serving luxury destination weddings & portrait clients around the world. As an educator, Mandy helps photographers grow their businesses through data-driven marketing strategy and education.

Want to learn more about the simple, Magnetic Methodology that teaches you how to attract and book 5k, 8k, and 10k clients begging to book your services? Watch the free training here.

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