What Are UTM Parameters and How Do You Track Them in GA4?

Your website is live and your marketing campaigns are in full flow, but how do you know all that hard work you’ve done is actually paying off?

One simple solution is to use UTM parameters.

In a nutshell, these are values that can be tracked in tools like Google Analytics- 4 to provide you with the kind of valuable insights that help you make informed decisions about how to reach your audience.

Below, you’ll learn everything you need to know about these parameters, what they do, and how you can use them to:

• See which campaigns and content types your audience responds best to
• Figure out which sources drive the most traffic to your website
• Invest your time and money on marketing strategies that generate the best results.

Let’s get started:

What Are UTM Parameters?

UTM parameters are essentially small codes tacked on the end of your URLs which allow tools like GA4 to track user behavior.

UTM stands for Urchin Tracking Module, a name left over from the early days of Google’s analytics software when it was still called ‘Urchin.’

The idea behind them is to provide brands with highly accurate metrics about visitor behavior on their site.

Analytics tools need a way to track and gather data to provide those metrics. That’s what UTM parameters do.

Add UTM tags to your URLs, and, in return, you’ll receive valuable insights into how visitors are finding your website and which marketing campaigns are driving the most traffic.

Why Use UTM Parameters for Tracking Campaigns?

You’ve invested time, money, and energy in developing a valuable online asset for your business, so, naturally, you want the best possible Return on Investment (ROI) from it.

This is where UTM parameter tracking proves so essential:

It provides clear data that shows you:

• What’s working
• What isn’t working
• What you could do better
• Which opportunities you should capitalize on
• Which of your sales and marketing channels are costing more than they’re making?

For example, say you’re putting all your eggs in the social media marketing basket. You’ve got a rock star marketing team making great content and you’re putting it out there, confident that it’s the best approach.

Yet once you start monitoring UTM links in Google Analytics 4, you discover that you’re generating far more organic traffic from search engines than you ever have from the likes of Facebook or Instagram.

Now, you can start to correct course, whether that’s rethinking your social media strategy or redistributing time and resources to focus more on SEO.

Now, imagine if you didn’t have UTMs in place. You’d simply keep doing the same old thing, day in, day out, possibly pouring time and money down the drain on an approach that isn’t working as well as you thought.

Key UTM Parameters

Perhaps the best thing about UTM parameters is that there’s enough of them to provide you with insights into just about any aspect of your website, user behavior, and overall marketing efforts.

To get the absolute most value out of UTM tracking, we recommend focusing on the following key parameters.

A. UTM Source (utm_source)

Traffic to your website generally comes from one of five primary sources:

1. Search engines – Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo etc.
2. Social media – Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn etc.
3. Email marketing – Newsletters, promotional emails
4. Direct traffic – Visitors typing in your website address directly
5. Referrals – Traffic from other websites linking to yours

UTM source tags keep track of which sources are driving traffic and how much they’re driving. Armed with this information, you can make informed choices about which sources are worth more investment and which ones may need to be readdressed.

B. UTM Medium (utm_medium)

The UTM medium tag goes one layer deeper than the primary source, providing details on the effectiveness of specific marketing channels.

This might include:

• Organic search
• Organic social
• PPC advertising
• Referral links from other websites
• Affiliate marketing.

You can probably already imagine the benefit of this tag in terms of improving your marketing ROI.

For example, say you’re running two PPC campaigns side-by-side, one on Facebook, the other on Google.

By using UTM codes in Google Analytics, you can see which one is producing the best results and optimize your spending to invest in the most effective channels.

C. UTM Campaign (utm_campaign)

Recently set up a marketing campaign or promotion to achieve a specific goal such as increasing sales of a particular product or generating newsletter sign-ups?

The UTM Campaign tag is your best friend here.

Assign a unique UTM Campaign value to each of your campaigns and you’ll get valuable insights into traffic and conversion rates generated by each one.

For example, if you’re running a holiday sale, you might set ‘Christmas2024’ as your UTM value so that you can monitor -almost in real-time- how they’re performing.

That way, you can quickly make any necessary adjustments, tweaking elements of that campaign for maximum results.

D. UTM Term (utm_term)

A vital asset in your quest for maximum ROAS (Return on Ad Spend), the UTM Term Parameter tracks the specific keywords that visitors use to find your website through paid search campaigns.

Setting up UTM tags in GA4 for key search terms opens up a whole new world of possibilities when it comes to getting the most out of paid search. Add them to your URLs, and the data you get back can help you to:

• Identify which keywords get the most impressions, clicks, and conversions.
• Change direction with your keyword targeting to focus on your highest-performing search terms.
• Calculate the ROI of your keywords and reallocate your ad spend on those that get results.
• Discover negative keywords that don’t resonate with your audience so that you can remove them from your campaigns, and avoid wasting money.

E. UTM Content (utm_content)

Particularly useful for content marketing, assigning unique UTM content values to each piece of content on your website lets you track how each one performs.

As you can imagine, this can make a whole world of difference when it comes to identifying which topics, formats, and content elements (headings, images etc.) are most effective in getting your audience to take a desired result.

That’s why you’ll often find UTM content tags used in A/B testing.

For example, a brand may create two landing pages that are almost identical except for one crucial component, such as the Call to Action (CTA). By using UTMs to track their performance in GA4, that brand can then see which CTA gets the most conversions.

Do this again with headlines, images, and copy, and before you know it, that brand has a solid understanding of which elements work best and combine them into one super-charged, conversion-optimized landing page.

How to Set Up UTM Parameters

Armed with a solid understanding of UTM parameters in Google Analytics 4, you’re now ready to go put them to work in generating valuable data about your marketing efforts.

Here, we’ll show you two ways to that:

1. The old-school manual way
2. Using the GA4 Compliant Campaign URL Builder from E2M Solutions.

1. Creating UTM Tags Manually

On the plus side, setting up your UTM tags manually gives you greater control and ensures your URLs are set-up exactly the way you like it.

However, it also means there’s a greater risk of making a mistake, especially if UTM tracking is new to you.

If you prefer to take this root, here’s the steps you’ll need to take:

A. Select Your Base URL

This is the URL for the page you want to track, such as https://mywebsite.com/landing-page.

B. Add UTM Parameters

Next, decide on the type of data you want to track so that you can add the appropriate UTM.

If you skipped the previous section where we broke down these parameters, here’s a quick recap:

To begin adding your chosen tag, first ensure that your base URL is separated from the parameter with a back-slash (/) and a question mark (?) like so:

https://mywebsite.com/landing-page/?

Then, without using any spaces, add the UTM tag:

https://mywebsite.com/landing-page/?Utm_source

Next, add an equals sign (=)

https://mywebsite.com/landing-page/?Utm_source=

Finally, next to the equals sign, add the specific value for that parameter.

For example:

https://mywebsite.com/landing-page/?Utm_source=facebook.

Here, you can see that we’re tracking traffic driven to a specific landing page via Facebook.

Tracking more than one parameter at once?

Use the ampersand symbol (&) to tell GA4 that you want to track multiple parameters.

For example:

https://www.mywebsite.com/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=ppc

This URL will allow us to set up both UTM source and medium tracking in GA4.

When you’re done, these new UTM-inclusive URLs are the ones you’ll be sharing and incorporating into your ads, links, and content.

For example, if you’re setting up a new Facebook ad, you would enter the full URL, parameters and all, into the field that determines where visitors are sent after clicking on your ad.

2. Using URL Builders

If that all seemed like an awful lot of hard work, you’ll be pleased to know there is an easier option – using a URL builder.

Sticking with Facebook for a moment, you can click on the Add New URL Parameter link to add further tracking options.

Use this option, and you can build your URLs quickly and easily, not only saving you time and effort, but ensuring mistakes are avoided.

Here at E2M Solutions, we’ve developed our own GA4-compliant URL Builder. It’s designed to make Setting up UTM tags in GA4 as easy as possible, and -best of all- it’s free to use.

This is as simple as using the predefined fields to set your parameters and clicking Generate to produce the required URL.

How to Track UTM Parameters in GA4

So, you’ve got your URLs set up. The next question is where do you find the data they produce?

Unlike the old Universal Analytics, Google Analytics 4 automatically tracks any UTM data added to your URLs, so you don’t need to configure anything manually.

The best place to begin looking at your UTM data is the Traffic Acquisition Report, which you’ll find by going to Reports – Acquisition – Traffic Acquisition.

Next, click Customize and select Dimensions.

Here, you can customize the report table to prioritize the kind of UTM data you want to look at.

In this example, we want to track session source and medium in GA4, so we bring that to top and click Apply.

You’ll find your UTM values listed for these parameters in the table, along with valuable metrics that show you how much traffic these sources and mediums are providing.

Creating Custom UTM Reports

Alternatively, you can also use Explorations to custom reports focusing specifically on your UTM tags.

First, create a blank report and give it a name.

Next, open up the Metrics tab, select Sessions and click Confirm.

With that done, go to Dimensions – Traffic Source and select the UTM Parameters you want to analyze. Then, click Confirm.

From here, you can drag and drop your dimensions into the appropriate columns or rows to begin analyzing the data.

You can also:

• Select additional dimensions like utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_term, or utm_content to analyze your UTM data in more detail
• Use filters to narrow down your data based on specific UTM values or other criteria
• Create segments to analyze specific subsets of your data, such as users who converted or visited multiple pages.

Our GA4 Channel Group Compliant UTM URL Builder

Looking for an easy and effective way to add UTM parameters to your URLs? Add the E2M URL builder to your bookmarks and use it to quickly generate accurate URLs ready to be picked up and tracked by GA4.

Designed with effortless usability in mind, the URL builder simplifies the UTM process by providing predefined drop-down menus of UTM values that you can select to generate an entire URL at the click of the button.

What’s more, it’s specifically created for optimum compliance to GA4’s channel grouping feature to ensure accurate, error-free categorization, meaning you can focus on your marketing campaigns and data analysis without worrying about the technical complexities of UTM tracking.

Tracking UTM Parameters in GA4 – Key Takeaways

So there you have it, your complete guide to understanding UTM parameters in GA4. From setting up your URLs to tracking the data of your tags, you’ve now learned all you need to know to generate accurate Google Analytics data that can help you optimize your online marketing efforts.

Before we finish, let’s quickly recap the most valuable lessons to take away from this guide:

• UTM Parameters allow you to track valuable data about the way users reach and interact with your website – Including the source that directed them to you, the content that resonates most with them, and which campaigns are proving to be the most effective.
• GA4 automatically tracks UTM data – All you need to do is add the appropriate tags to your URLs, either manually or using a dedicated URL builder tool.

• You can find the resulting data in traffic acquisition reports – Or create a custom exploration to dive deep into specific metrics.

Prefer to take a hands-off approach with Google Analytics and Search Engine Optimization? Talk to E2M Solutions to discover how our white label SEO services can help you and your agency clients achieve whatever SEO goals you have in mind.

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