Lead and Conversion Tracking
In business, understanding where your leads and sales originate is paramount. It’s not just about making sales; it’s about making informed decisions that drive growth. However, understanding where your customers are finding you online can sometimes feel like searching for a needle in a haystack. Imagine if there was a GPS that could track every visitor’s journey to your website, showing you exactly which marketing roads they traveled to get there. That’s where UTM codes come into play—they are like secret codes attached to the end of your web links, acting as beacons for tracking the success of your ads, emails, and social media posts.
Understanding UTM Codes
UTM, short for Urchin Tracking Module, codes are snippets of text that are added to the end of URLs. UTM codes are used to track the performance of digital marketing campaigns across various channels. They help identify the source, medium, and campaign associated with traffic going to your website. Think of UTM codes as breadcrumbs left by your potential customers, leading you to understand which of your marketing efforts are working best. With these codes, you no longer have to wonder if someone found you through a Google search, your Google Business Profile, or a Facebook ad. Instead, you’ll see clear paths showing where your traffic and leads originate, helping you pinpoint what’s really getting you results.
UTM code link tracking isn’t just about numbers; it’s about making smarter business decisions. By analyzing where your leads come from and how they convert, you’ll be equipped to invest more wisely in marketing that genuinely works, saving you time and money. This is especially crucial for moving business owners who want to understand the return on every marketing dollar spent without getting bogged down by the technicalities.
When to use UTM Codes
Using UTMs is simpler than it seems. Anywhere you have a link leading to your website, you can integrate UTM parameters. Whether it’s a social media post on Facebook or Instagram, a PPC campaign, or even your Google Business Profile, UTMs allow Google Analytics to trace the origins of your website visitors. This means when a lead fills out a form or makes a call, your CRM, like SmartMoving, knows exactly where they came from.
How to Create UTM Codes and Use With My Quote Form
Building UTMs doesn’t need to be a daunting task. Thanks to tools like Google’s Campaign URL Builder, creating UTM parameters is a breeze. With just a few clicks, you can generate unique URLs tailored to each of your marketing campaigns, ensuring no lead goes untracked. And that is it! CRMs, like SmartMoving’s quote form, are designed to capture UTM code information from incoming links, automatically.
Let’s build our first UTM code enriched URL together. Assume our URL is 'www.mymovingcompany.com'. All we need to do is add the following parameters to the end of the URL, starting with a '?', 'utm_source', 'utm_medium', and 'utm_campaign'.
Let’s fill these in with some examples:
'utm_source=google'
'utm_medium=google-business-profile'
'utm_campaign=movers near me'
Now we add those to the end of the URL like so
'https://www.mymovingcompany.com?utm_source=google&utm_medium=google-business-profile&utm_campaign=movers+near+me'
Try it out below for your website URL!
Campaign URL Builder > > >
Helpful Tips for UTM Codes
Initially it might make sense to just add any names to these UTM codes but over time as you are tracking more links across the web, you may be tempted to change the format or naming of these. All we will say is that consistency is key for these. It is better to spend an hour to carefully plan out your tagging structure than to regret it later when nothing is consistent. Follow a few of these tips and avoid the headaches we have seen others experience.
- Use all lowercase letters. Analytics tools like Google analytics are case sensitive, meaning they will treat “Google” and “google” as two different tracking metrics. Having everything lowercase keeps it simple.
- Make your UTM parameters easy to read. Adding hyphens makes words easier to read and definitely easier to remember than an acronym that you may forget the meaning of. As example,
'utm_campaign=google-business-profile-everett'is easier to read than'utm_campaign=googlebusinessprofileeverett'and easier to remember the meaning than'utm_campaign=gbpe'. - Watch out for
'?'in URLs. UTM generators usually add in the'?'for you, for easy copy and pasting. However, this can potentially cause issues if you are adding these UTM parameters to a URL that already has a question mark in it. The best way to avoid this issue is to add the full URL, with the question mark, that you want to append the UTM parameters to when using the Google’s Campaign URL Builder tool. This will automatically fix that issue for you so you don’t need to worry about it. - Mixing up the meanings of source, medium, and campaign UTM code parameters. Let’s walk through the flow of a user coming to your website. They start by opening their computer and going to google search. The `source` is where they started, e.g. Google. They then look up movers near me and click your Google business profile.This is the medium, it is the method of transport the user took to find you, e.g. an ad or google business profile. They then click on the website button on your Everett Google Business Profile and end up on your website and that is the campaign. In the end, you now have answers to a few questions, where did this user come from (Google), how did they find me (organic search, Google Business Profile, or PPC ad) and by what means did they get to my website (visiting my Everett location Google Business Profile and clicking the website button). You can then tie these details to a quote form submission and attribute that lead and conversion event to the story we painted with the additional information from UTM codes.
How Rotate Digital Uses UTMs for Clients
At Rotate Digital, we’re passionate about empowering our clients with data-driven insights. We use UTMs to gauge the effectiveness of our SEO campaigns and offer holistic guidance on all marketing channels. With a wealth of experience working with over 150 moving companies, we know precisely where to optimize for maximum impact.
Additionally, we firmly believe that data without action is meaningless. This is why our team is equipped to analyze our clients data and suggest data-informed strategies to help them grow their business and minimize marketing waste.
How SmartMoving Uses UTMs
Our CRM partner, SmartMoving, takes UTM tracking to the next level. By seamlessly capturing UTM data from website form submissions, SmartMoving provides invaluable insights into which marketing efforts are driving revenue and which ones are falling short. By running a simple report you can see exactly where each sale or lead originated from.
SmartMoving Integration
SmartMoving is a fantastic CRM carefully designed and intentionally built just for the moving industry. Since SmartMoving is a CRM that helps you run your business, they offer a great suite of software tools, one of them being a quote form you can embed directly into your website to capture leads and send them to the CRM. We have partnered with them to help moving business owners, like yourself, install the quote form on their website. They offer four ways to go about this, all of which we are experts in, to help you every step of the way.
Option one is to embed an iFrame into your website html, which will render the form wherever you want it to show up. Option two is to use their WordPress plugin which can be configured to render the form on your landing page as a great call to action for your website visitors to contact you. Option three is to use their pre-build JavaScript library to hook into your pre-built form and send these new leads to SmartMoving. And Option four is to build out a custom integration with a custom form and make API calls to the SmartMoving CRM API to add your new leads in.
If you are interested in any of these options but don’t want to deal with the hassle, reach out to us, we are happy to help you get this in place! We are offering option one and two free of charge but can work with your needs, no matter how your website was built. To learn more about how we can assist you, fill out the form below and our team will reach out to you with next steps.
Once this is in place, you are ready to get additional insights in SmartMoving and Google Analytics (GA4)! Analyzing the UTM data in Smart Moving is easy. All you need to do is navigate to their Lead Source and Conversion Tracking page and you will see all the leads you have received and where they specifically came from.
Curious to Learn More?
If you’re ready to unlock the full potential of your marketing efforts, we invite you to connect with Rotate Digital and SmartMoving. Fill out the form below, and our team of dedicated consultants will schedule a complimentary strategy session with you. We would love to partner with you to analyze your current marketing landscape and unearth untapped opportunities for growth through SEO and beyond.