Google Analytics tracks, reports, and measures activities that occur on your website.
To do it, is anything required to be done?
Yes, you need to place some code on your website. This is called tagging your website.
Now, what is a TAG?
A Tag refers to little bits of code that you are asked to place on your website by your analytics tool providers or advertising platforms. This will help to send data back to their servers.
To make it a success from Google Analytics point of view, you should
- Install your tags the right way.
- Ensure that the tags are in the right places.
They are critical to the data quality in your Google Analytics reports. The better the tags are placed in the right places, the better will be the quality of data for better decision making.
Now, how to make sure that you are using the right tags and installing them in the right places to get the appropriate data required.
For this Google Analytics custom campaign tracking is essential.
It will help you to measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. For instance, if you’re promoting your new eBook across emails and social media, the question is how it will be known which among the two will be the most effective.
This is where Google Analytics Campaign Parameters comes in.
GOOGLE ANALYTICS CAMPAIGN PARAMETERS
Also called as UTM Parameters, they are referred to as text snippets that should be inserted in the URL of your content by you. This will help you to track the number of buyers or visitors visiting your website. This will be the earliest form of feedback released over the Internet by you and which will help you to also understand the initial reaction of the audience.
You need to add them to your URLs which later are used in your web-based, email, or ad promotions. Now, when someone clicks them, the custom information linked to the URLs vide parameters will be sent to your Google Analytics reports.
By using campaign tagging, you will be able to understand which of the URLs have been the most effective in attracting users to your website or content.
For instance, you will get to see which Email newsletter garnered for you the most traffic; OR which Ad was the best in bringing you converting visitors; OR which Facebook post engaged the most users’.
WHICH TAGS ARE STANDARD ONES?
In Google Analytics, the following are standard tags.
- UTM SOURCE: It identifies the advertiser, site, publication, or other source of traffic to the property like Google, Newsletter4, or a billboard.
- UTM CAMPAIGN: It pertains to a product’s unique campaign name, promo code, slogan, and so on.
- UTM TERM: It helps determines paid search keywords. In case, you manually tag paid keyword campaigns, the keyword with utm term should be specified.
- UTM CONTENT: It helps to distinguish between similar links or information in the same Ad. For instance, if you have two phone links in the same email message, utm content can be used to establish different values for both. This will help to ascertain which version among the two is effective.
By adding the above tags, you will be able to analyze the overall efficiency of the campaigns.
Please note that it is important to maintain consistency in campaign tagging. Hence, you should make sure that the parameters used by you in your campaigns are exact or similar. For instance, if you’re using email, Email, and E-mail, then Google Analytics will record them as three different mediums in your reports. Hence, use the correct term, that is, email.
WHICH TAGS ARE STANDARD ONES?
If you want to do it manually, then it can be done provided how to do it manually.
Else, you can use the URL Builder Tools available online. This will help you to tag your links correctly.
Similarly, if you are using AdWords or Bing, you can enable auto-tagging. This will rid you of the worry about tagging them. For websites, just use the Google URL Builder Tool, to append URL parameters.
