Advanced UTM Tracking (Funnel Split Framework)

UTM tracking in marketing is one of the most important first principles. If you’d ask me after roughly 7+ years in marketing, I’d argue that UTMs should be a subject touched upon in the first month of learning the foundations of online marketing.

Even though UTM tracking is – hopefully 😅 – done by most marketing teams, it is one of the easiest things to misunderstand and do wrong. Everyone uses different methods for structuring and organizing, and if in the same company different methods are used your data quickly becomes a mess.

Fixing your data retrospectively is not possible in Google Analytics, so better get it at least 80% right from the start.

In this article I share the UTM framework that I currently use in 2024 which works well for paid advertising with multiple channels and campaigns per funnel stage.

What does UTM mean?

UTM stands for Urchin Tracking Module. It was created by a digital analytics company called Urchin, which Google acquired in 2005. This technology laid the foundation for what we now know as Google Analytics.

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What is UTM tracking?

Using UTM tracking allows you to track website visitors to its original source. Also known as UTM tracking parameters, you add small bits of info to the end of a URL to specify from which source a visitor came. Your website analytics software can then match a visitor to the marketing source info specified in the UTM parameters.

Example:

I decide to publish the article you’re now reading (ginogagliardi.com/blog/advanced-utm-tracking) to LinkedIn.

Without using UTMs, my analytics software would tell me that – whenever someone clicks on the link shared via LinkedIn – this visitor its source is:

• Source = linkedin.com
• Medium = referral

This is done automatically. All visitors who previously clicked on a URL on another website to end up on your website have this structure. The Source value has the domain name (linkedin.com) and the Medium value says referral because this visitor was referred to your website.

Now the problem with this is that it doesn’t reveal anything about which specific post resulted in which number of website engagement. All posts are just put on one pile, not allowing you to ever know which posts are doing well and what you should do more of.

Let’s fix this.

When sharing the article, I add the below parameters to the end of the URL.

https://ginogagliardi.com/blog/utm-tracking/?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=blog&utm_content=240508-utm-tracking

Parameters used:

• utm_source = linkedin
  Most often the domain name, or the source definition at the highest level (https://linkedin.com = linkedin).
• utm_medium = organic
  Used as a subcategory within the dimension source. Often organic when using links in publishing normal posts on your wall or stories, often cpc (or ppc = pay per click, or paid) when linking back to your website from paid advertising campaigns.
• utm_campaign = blog
  A specific description of what the campaign is about. Planning to post multiple posts within one category? Use the category or overarching campaign description here. In my example I use blog, because I plan to post more blog posts to LinkedIn. Later in your preferred analytics program this is helpful to have all posts within a category organized to be able to drill-down on this category.
• utm_content = 240508-utm-tracking
  Name of specific piece of content or ad. This parameter describes what the ad or content looks like that is clicked on inside a source / platform to proceed to the target URL. Here I add a special date formatting in front (yymmdd) so that in my analytics program of choice I am able to conveniently sort based on date when clicking the dimension.

When adding any parameter to a URL (also outside of UTM tracking), you start with a question mark (?) sign and directly add the parameter behind. Multiple parameters are joined by an ampersand (&) sign.

Example:

https://ginogagliardi.com/blog/utm-tracking/ + ? + tracking_parameter1=tracking_value + & + tracking_parameter2=tracking_value

(of course, we remove the spaces and pluses ^)

Organic UTM tracking structure

I call the above UTM structure the Organic UTM tracking structure. Organic because here we don’t specify audiences since they are quite obvious:

When publishing a post with your LinkedIn company page it is obvious that some of your company page followers will see it. Additionally, the post is also shown to users outside of your company followers who likely benefit from seeing it.

This is similar to when you publish a post on your personal profile: some of your connections and followers see the post and additionally the post would be pushed to followers of followers and an audience outside your own network that likely benefits from seeing it.

With paid advertising this is significantly different because here we talk about advertising to different funnel stages with many different audiences.

Paid ads UTM tracking structure

UTMs in paid advertising can get complex quickly. To measure what happens on your website most effectively, we must be able to analyze in the same ways advertising specialists do when looking at in-platform metrics.

You want to differentiate and run tests between:

• Your campaign and top-level objective:
  • Funnel stage
  • In-platform optimization objective (traffic, leads or purchase etc.)
• Your targeting audience
  • Are we running ads based on geo and interest? Do we target website pricing page visitors in the last 30 days or a high-value customer email list?
• Your advertisement.
  • Does advertisement A, B or C work best?

Old and common paid ads UTM tracking template

When filling UTMs in the way they were programmed and documented to be used as per Google, you automatically won’t include the targeting audience.

In the below image you find Google’s official Campaign URL Builder to create URLs prepared with UTMs based on a fill-in form.

Follow these specific naming conventions and you lose out on including an important piece of data: targeting audience.

Information about whether or not a targeting audience is working is not only important when looking at in-platform metrics inside your Facebook Business Manager or LinkedIn Campaign Manager account, but it may even be more important to know how this traffic engages with your website when checking the data back in Google Analytics.

My paid ads tracking template

You cannot have a complete picture of your ads tracking without adding audience info to your UTMs. For this reason, I recommend you start using this setup (or a variant of).

Let’s say that I run ads to a blog with the below post, to target everyone that has engaged with my ads in the last 30 days. My campaign objective is traffic.

I program my UTMs as follows:

• utm_source = linkedin
• utm_medium = cpc
• utm_campaign = retargeting | traffic
• utm_content = linkedin engagement 30d
• utm_term = 240517 | 8 predictions for wordpress 2024

The link would then be:

https://ginogagliardi.com/blog/post?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=retargeting | traffic&utm_content = linkedin engagement 30d&utm_term = 240517 | 8 predictions for wordpress 2024

In the below example you see an identical UTM naming convention used for one of my clients.

At the campaign level we chose to add a date label to distinguish between what campaign was created on what date. With the information I know now, I would not add date at the campaign level.

Reason for this is that campaigns at the highest level do not change much over time. They only change in campaign objectives, which are counted on 2 hands.

The impact work happens at the ad set and ad level when we talk Meta.

Below is a good example of how audience info populates in a Google Looker Studio dashboard using Google Analytics data.

Below you find ad names that resulted in a click to the website. Few bits of unclear data, but overall you see which ads result in which website engagement.

Facebook UTM tracking

Setting up UTM tracking in Facebook Business Manager is my preferred way of doing UTMs. The ads manager lets you fill the campaign name, ad set name and ad name as UTM values. This way you only have to:

1. Make sure you are using correct naming of your campaign name, ad set name and ad name.
2. Add the below query to the URL parameters field at the ad level.

Tracking template: utm_source={{site_source_name}}&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign={{campaign.name}}&utm_content={{adset.name}}&utm_term={{ad.name}}

Challenge yourself

My challenge for you is to stay curious and regularly click on ads and links in emails from companies you admire, to reverse-engineer their marketing campaigns. You may discover in which funnel stage you’re currently in.

This will not only help you understand how they run their UTM naming conventions, but it may reveal potential targeting options you hadn’t thought of yet.

Good luck and happy tracking.