You Can’t Measure What You Don’t Know
How to Use UTM Tags to Measure Your Campaign Successes (and Failures)
Most automotive marketing managers and agencies would agree that you need to be able to determine proper ROI for all campaigns in order to see successes and failures and to change strategy as needed. You need to see value markers such as performance and sales. Where the difference might lie between answers is how to measure it. The fact is that you can’t measure what you don’t know–and to truly know how your campaigns are performing, you have to be able to identify them. UTM tags are how you do that.
What are UTM Tags?
UTM tags are the building blocks of a URL link that identify the source, medium, and campaign of each link to your website. These three primary identifying markers allow Google Analytics to read the link properly, so that you can then analyze how the traffic coming to your website is performing.
Source identifies the website that your traffic is coming from–such as a social media site, a Google My Business Profile, or a 3rd party like Autotrader.
Medium identifies the type of marketing that is happening. This is very narrowly defined by Google, meaning you can’t make this up; it should to be what Google knows it as–such as organic, paid (ppc or cpc), direct, referral, or email.
Campaign is the most specific parameter, and can be named at your discretion–so if you have an Autotrader banner ad, you can name your campaign as “March_2022_banner_ad” so that you know where exactly the click originated from.
Why are they important?
UTM tags are important for every single link that directs customers to your website because they tell Google where they came from. Without them, you cannot reliably differentiate your traffic based on what Google Ads, 3rd parties, CRM emails, etc that you are running. Without that ability, you lose the opportunity to properly measure your ROI on those advertising efforts, because you cannot tell what website visitors are doing, which is a very integral part in measuring ROI.
Your website is your virtual showroom; it’s where shoppers typically end their research stage of shopping and are looking to buy from you. It is vital that you know how much traffic, and how interactive and lead-producing, is coming from the vendors you are paying to funnel shoppers into buyers on your website. If these campaigns that are driving clicks to your website aren't tagged properly–you will not be able to see which ones are performing the best.
How do you build them?
You can build these yourself by placing this at the end of your link:
?utm_source=[insert source]&utm_medium=[insert medium]&utm_campaign=[insert campaign]
So a proper example of a UTM for that banner ad would look like this:
https://www.mycarsite.com?utm_source=autotrader&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=march_2022_banner_ad
You can also use a tool like this one from Google Analytics Demos & Tools, which is free and very easy to use. Again, you want to use this with every single link that sends people to your website–whether you are placing it in your Facebook profile, Google My Business, on your local Chamber of Commerce website, in your CRM emails with links to VDPs, etc. You can customize the tagging for the campaign to help you identify the best sources of traffic on your website.
The biggest thing to remember when building these is to make sure you know the proper Mediums that Google recognizes, and be sure and stick to lowercase letters with no spaces (we suggest underscores between words).
Know Your Campaigns and Vendors
The hardest part for using UTM tags is the implementation of them, tracking down every link and making sure your vendors are doing their job as well. This means you have to know exactly what campaigns you are running and the vendors in charge of them. Some vendors do the legwork for you, such as 3rd parties like Autotrader, which makes sure that you know the campaign details for all the traffic they are sending. In the screenshot below, you can see that there are three different types of Autotrader traffic coming to this website, and that each campaign carries different performance results:
What about Google Ads?
Google Ads are a special breed when it comes to UTM tagging. Since it is a Google product, it links up to Google Analytics seamlessly using something Google calls auto-tagging (and you should definitely make sure your vendor connects those dots for you), but if you are looking at data in other places, such as VIN IQ, that connection needs UTM tags to be properly set up. To correctly distinguish your campaign traffic, we recommend you use UTM tags as part of your campaigns in Google Ads.
Common approaches for adding UTM tags will vary based on your specific needs. You can get as granular as you wish or keep it high-level. Some examples are as follows, with utm_campaign being used directly after the utm_source and utm_medium parameters ?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc:
For Service campaigns, you can add something like &utm_campaign=service
For New Car Model campaigns, you can add something like &utm_campaign=new_models
For New Car Dynamic Inventory you can add something like &utm_campaign=new_car_dynamic
For Used Car Dynamic Inventory you can add something like &utm_campaign=used_car_dynamic
If you want, you can further define details of your campaigns by using two additional parameters Google Analytics supports: Content and Term. These are used with the following form: &utm_term= and &utm_content=, respectively. For example, with the New Car Model campaign example above, you could tag separate campaigns based on WHICH models they are directing traffic to, by adding parameters such as:
&utm_campaign=new_models&utm_content=2022_frontier
&utm_campaign=new_models&utm_content=2022_rogue
This would allow you to distinguish traffic in Google Analytics by all New Model campaigns together but then further refine reporting by the model of vehicle each campaign is focused on, so you can see which specific content or keywords are performing well (and which ones aren’t).
Within the Google Ads configuration, you would add these UTM parameters as part of the Final URL Suffix option within the Campaign URL Options. You can send this directly to your Google Ads vendors to start a dialogue with how they can help you better understand your campaign performances by utilizing UTM tags.
Using Auto-tagging and UTM Parameters at the same time
Google Analytics supports the use of both auto-tagging and UTM parameters at the same time. By default, Google Analytics prioritizes auto-tagging when both are being used. Google understands that while many marketers rely on Google Analytics for much of their reporting, 3rd party platforms are widely used to supplement analytics reporting, and these platforms will look to UTM parameters to denote the various marketing channels driving traffic to your website.
When using both auto-tagging and UTM parameters, you will want to ensure that the default setting to prioritize auto-tagging over UTM parameters has not been changed in your Google Analytics. To check this setting is correctly configured, ensure the checkbox for Allow manual tagging (UTM values) to override auto-tagging (GCLID values) for Google Ads and Search Ads 360 integration is unchecked.
This setting is located under Admin -> Property Settings ->Advanced Settings
We’re here to help!
When dealers have their campaigns correctly configured with UTMs, VIN IQ can properly analyze the campaign traffic and make optimization recommendations. If you need help setting this up, talking with your vendors, or getting started with figuring out how to perfect your ROI measurement–we are here to help you do just that!