Best UTM Coding Hacks for Car Dealers Using Social Media

How effective is your advertising? Ensure UTM coding is being used in your social media advertising and you’ll have the information you need.

UTM stands for Urchin Tracking Module which was developed by Urchin for a now-discontinued web analytics platform. Even so, UTM coding communicates information to Google Analytics to give you the information you need in one place.

The Five UTM Parameters that Assist You in Measuring Traffic

There are five different parameters you can use when you’re adding UTM coding to your campaign to offer the reporting you desire. You must use at least three of them when coding and the information you receive will make it possible for you to have the results you want and understand how impactful your campaign is in reaching your target audience.

The required parameters are Campaign Medium, Campaign Source, and Campaign Name. This might mean that you use the medium of Social, source as Facebook, and Name of March Car Specials to fill these three blocks. Optional parameters are the Campaign Content which is usually the date the content was created and the Campaign Term which can be where the link is placed and will be clicked or the keywords being used during the campaign.

Tips to Get the Most Out of UTM Coding

Adding the right UTM coding parameters to your URLs and as part of your social media campaign isn’t a short-sighted or short-term process. You plan to have your car dealership operating for a long time and you want to know how impactful your advertising can be during that time. For UTM Coding to work you have to commit to these tips.

Consistency is Key

When describing different aspects of your advertising where you want to learn how many clicks are coming from different ads, you must be consistent in your terminology. The three required parameters make it pretty easy, but when you add the optional parameters, you may want to create a key to the terms. This will help when you’re reviewing Google Analytics to learn where your clicks are coming from. This consistency will help when creating annual and quarterly reports that show the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns.

Use UTM Coding for All Potential URLs

If there is a customer touchpoint on a page, you need to code it with a UTM parameter to indicate this is where the customer clicked and where your traffic came from. Some of the most overlooked places on your pages you should code are:

• Email signatures

• Links in mobile apps or games

• Social posts

• Link in social share buttons

• QR codes

Imagine that, two of the five most overlooked places where you can use UTM coding to help you monitor your campaigns have to do with social media. Make this coding a priority and let it help you build the best advertising for your car dealership.

Use the Full Capacity Often

With five different UTM coding parameters to help you narrow the impact of your social media and other online marketing campaigns, you can have tons of data at your fingertips. If the fourth and fifth parameters don’t make sense to use in a campaign, leave them out, but when they do make sense, include them, and allow these items to show you the traffic coming to your site.

Google Offers Default Channel Names –Use Them

Using the channel names and suggestions coming from Google will make the reports you receive through Google Analytics more impactful. This makes your life easier and allows you an easy way to use the UTM coding with your links. Most of these suggestions are simply common sense and easy to understand. As you become more experienced with the use of UTM parameters, you can change the defaults and their definitions to improve the reports you receive.

UTM Tagging Should be Creative

You can add UTM tags to the shortened links used in most of your media to let you know which pages receive the most traffic. You could add these tags to each of the social media pages of your employees and see which ones tend to gain the most traffic. As you gain more experience with UTM coding, you might find more creative ways to use these tags and learn more about where your ads are being seen the most.

With the right use of UTM coding, you can learn where your social media campaigns are most impactful and bringing the most leads to your car dealership.