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Analytics Campaigns Digital Advertising Analytics online marketing

How to Skyrocket Your Advertising Results With UTM Tracking

Do you have any idea what the largest source of traffic for your business might be? What about which social platform brings the most visitors to your site?

Having access to such data would be amazing! It allows you to maximize efficiency and focus on what’s already working best in your marketing.

So, what’s the secret to all that?

UTM tracking codes…

In today’s post, you’ll learn what UTM codes are, what makes them critical for your marketing success, and how you can create them on your own.

Let’s dive in.

What is UTM Tracking?

UTM tracking is a technique that uses snippets of codes to track website traffic and evaluate the effectiveness of digital marketing campaigns.

UTM codes are made of two parts — the URL parameter and the tracking variable, both of which come at the end of the URL.

UTM tracking codes

The URL parameter starts with “?utm_”, then one of the five parameters you want to track.

The tracking variable comes after the “=” sign and it could be anything depending on the parameter you’ve chosen. For example, if you’re tracking the source of your traffic, your tracking variable could be “Google”, “Twitter”, “Facebook”, etc.

Your final UTM code should look something like this:

https://www.yourwebsitecom/bestoffer/?utm_source=google

Note:

The UTM code in your URL won’t make any changes to your content. So, you can delete it at any time and still have your page working perfectly.

Why Is Tracking So Important For Marketing Success?

Traditional marketing relied heavily on non-targeted campaigns that spoke to no one in particular. Companies used to spend the majority of their budgets on prospects that had zero interest in those offers.

Without any feedback or data, they continued making the same marketing mistakes every time and lost millions of dollars in the process.

But with digital marketing, everything has changed…

Businesses today focus on smaller audiences with a much higher interest in their promoted offers. What allows them to do that is the wide variety of tools available when it comes to tracking, evaluation, and feedback implementation.

For example:

If you ever run an ad on Facebook, you’ll have some data available to you after the campaign. Based on that, you can identify what works and make better marketing decisions in the future. Which allows you to maximize sales while minimizing your ad spend.

Adding a simple tracking script on your ads in Facebook will help. In this advanced example, we’re using dynamic variables to track campaigns and more details from ads:

utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=ppc&utm_campaign={{campaign.name}}&utm_content={{ad.name}}&utm_term={{adset.name}}

That’s exactly why UTM tracking is vital for your online success…

How UTM Tracking Can Enhance Your Advertising

UTM tracking allows you to identify top-performing campaigns, pages, or content in your marketing.

Here are the five UTM tags you can use to create your UTM codes:

1- Traffic Source

This is used to track the source of your visits — such as social platforms, search engines, email campaigns, etc.

For example: utm_source=facebook

2- Medium

This parameter identifies the medium through which traffic is coming to your site, whether it’s social, email, paid ads, blogs, guest posts, etc.

For example: utm_source=email

3- Campaign

Are you preparing to announce a new partnership, feature, product, or promotion?

This is the best UTM tag to do that because it helps you specifically monitor campaigns instead of mediums or sources.

For example: utm_campaign=2021-summer-product-launch

4- Content

This parameter is used a lot in A/B testing to track URLs with multiple links pointing to them.

For instance, a landing page with many external links could have different variables for each button to help you identify which one is getting the most clicks.

For example: utm_content=cta-sidebar

5- Term

The term tag is especially important in paid search campaigns to monitor keywords and ad results.

For example: utm_term=best-seo-agency-us

How to Create UTM Codes For Better Tracking

You can write the UTM code yourself without the use of any tools. For example, if you want to track visitors coming to your page via Google, you can use the following code:

www.yourwebsite.com/blog-article/?utm_source=google

However…

We wouldn’t recommend this method for two reasons:

  • A simple typographical error can mess up your whole monitoring campaign
  • UTM codes are likely to get complicated when you’re tracking multiple parameters (in paid ads campaigns, for example)

The second method is a lot easier and guaranteed to be error-free. And it’s done using the Campaign URL Builder tool by Google.

Campaign URL Builder

Fill out the form with the required details for each input.

UTM Code Tracking URL

The tool will then generate a link that you can use anywhere online. (Note: In the example above, space is encoded to ‘%20’, since no spaces are allowed in URLs.)

Ready to Jumpstart Your Business With Digital Marketing?

Chaosmap is a leading digital agency helping businesses thrive through digital marketing, paid ads, and SEO.

Learn more about our digital marketing services and how we can help. Contact us today if you need anything, and we’ll be happy to discuss your project needs.

Categories
Adwords Analytics Budget Digital Advertising Analytics PPC

The Only 4 Metrics You Need For Profitable Advertising With Facebook & Google

Online marketing is a must for any business looking for serious growth today.

Your company can’t survive without advertising in a market where your competitors are spending multiple thousands of dollars on ads each month.

Yet…

Topping their advertising costs isn’t necessarily the smartest of solutions.

Your marketing can yield better results if you spend your budget where it serves you best. With that, you’ll make up for all your costs, attract better clients, and emerge profitable.

That’s why you must calibrate your marketing costs to ensure that your investments will succeed.

So that makes you wonder…

What metrics should I focus on to ensure profitable marketing?

1- Return On Ad Spend (ROAS)

ROAS is an essential metric that allows you to evaluate your ad spend and manage your budget more effectively.

It measures the expected returns for each dollar you spend on an ad. You’ll then be able to choose the best performing ads and spend more money on them.

You can easily calculate ROAS using the following formula:

ROAS = Revenue x Cost

For example:

If you spend $1000 and get $3000 in return, your ROAS is 3. The result means that — for each dollar you spend, you make three dollars back.

NOTE: When you are starting a brand new campaign (or existing), it’s necessary to also review your Average Order Value (AOV) and Cost Per Acquisition (CPA). Understanding these numbers will help track the “health” of your business and advertising overall. You’ll know that a CPA less than AOV is highly beneficial!

2- Return On Investement (ROI)

ROI is a financial metric used in many areas of business. It’s a ratio similar to ROAS, which also helps you assess your marketing campaigns’ success.

But…

Unlike ROAS, ROI deals with the overall costs of marketing and business. And it does that by looking at the net profit instead of revenue.

Here’s how to calculate the ROI for your campaigns:

ROI = Net Profit x Costs

For example:

A starter business has made $25000 in revenue in its’ first month. It spent $8000 on ads but also has additional financial costs of 18000$.

By running the calculations, we find:

(25000 – (8000+18000)) / (8000+18000) x 100 = -1000/26000 x 100 = -3.84%

The company has an ROI of -3.84, which means that it’s still losing money.

This is why you need both ROAS and ROI to better evaluate your success.

3- Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

CAC is the average cost a business pays to acquire a new customer. It’s a unique measure that can help you increase your profit margins significantly and dominate more markets.

Customer acquisition cost is calculated using the following formula:

CAC = (Marketing + Advertising expenses) / New Customers

For example:

A business spends $9000 (marketing expenses) each month to acquire new customers. That includes employer salaries, ad spend, paying for third-party tools, etc… The company acquired 150 new customers during that month.

In this case:

CAC = 9000 / 150 = $60

The business is spending $60 to acquire new customers, which can be either good or bad based on many factors.

But, the general rule of thumb is this:

A lower CAC allows more flexibility with your marketing budget as you can convert a lot more customers for lower prices.

4- Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)

CLTV is a forecast of the total amount of money a customer will spend on your business. It tells you how valuable a client is throughout their whole relationship with your brand.

Calculating CLTV depends on your business plan and revenue model.

To calculate this measure, you must estimate the following :

  • Average sale value
  • Average number of transactions per customer
  • Average customer lifespan
  • Profit margins

Your formula should look something like this:

CLTV = average sale value X number of transactions X customer lifespan X profit margins

Calculating CLTV allows you to manage your ad campaigns more efficiently. You’ll have tangible numbers to compare to your customer acquisition costs.

You can then work on increasing CLTV and decrease CAC to boost profits and reduce costs.

Ready to Get Started With Paid Advertising?

Chaosmap has a dedicated team of digital marketing experts and professional advertisers at your service. We’ll help turn your company into a profitable business with paid advertising and PPC.

Take a quick look at our Pay Per Click services to learn more about our process. Contact us today to get a quote for your project.

Categories
Digital Advertising Analytics

Digital Advertising Analytics 2.0 – A Primer

The movement of technology and marketing to track your advertising analytics have progressed in ways many businesses don’t understand yet. Many still track activities by each media – TV, Radio, Print, etc.

Ads online are also tracked, but all of these media channels – independently.

A new approach

A new way of analyzing your data can be done through a set of principles and tools that can reveal wasted spends and lack of targeting opportunities. Some organizations will say that TV works well for them and base it on a “feeling” and “general trending”. Others, meanwhile – the more savvy – have ditched TV and now use YouTube instead. The latter is based on research, testing and findings of cost-reduction, but also in terms of heightened effectiveness in targeting and tracking.

digitial-analytics-mission

Reallocation of budgets and ad dollars can be the smartest thing you do, but you must know how to do it.

The idea that sales data is correlated with a few dozen variables for your advertising is over.

The new capabilities discussed here use “Big Data Marketing” concepts and models that churns through terabytes of data and hundreds of variables in real time.

Based on a recent study from Harvard Business Review, a result of 10%-30% in improvement can be seen from your total marketing performance.