A Personal Injury Law Firm’s Guide to UTM Codes

by Seth Sparks | June 24, 2024

If you have no idea which of your law firm’s marketing campaigns are successful, you could be wasting valuable time and money. Understanding the effectiveness of your marketing efforts helps you craft a strategy that brings more people—and leads—to your site.

UTM codes (Urchin Tracking Module codes) are a powerful tool that can help you track the success of your campaigns. With UTMs, you gain insights into where your website traffic is coming from and how visitors interact with your content.

In this blog, we’ll guide you through the best practices for using UTM codes, explain each UTM field, and show you how to analyze the data in Google Analytics 4 (GA4).

Best Practices for Using UTM Codes

  1. Consistent Naming Conventions: Use consistent and descriptive naming conventions for UTM parameters to ensure data is easy to interpret. Avoid using spaces or special characters; use hyphens or underscores instead.
  2. Keep URLs Clean: Use URL shorteners to keep URLs clean and manageable, especially when sharing on social media or in print.
  3. Document Your Campaigns: Maintain a spreadsheet or document that tracks all your UTM codes, their purposes, and where they are used. This will help you adhere to a standard naming convention and avoid duplication and confusion.
  4. Use Lowercase Letters: UTM parameters are case-sensitive. Use lowercase letters to avoid discrepancies in your data.
  5. Test Your Links: Test your UTM-tagged URLs before deploying them to ensure they lead to the correct page and track properly.
  6. Avoid Adding UTMs From Other Pages on Your Site: UTMs help you track visits to your site from sources beyond your website, such as your Google Business Profile, email campaigns, or QR codes. It’s not recommended to include UTMs to track internal traffic from your own website.

Understanding UTM Fields

UTM codes can consist of several parameters that help track your campaigns. You don’t need to use all these fields; only two fields (source and medium) are required. In many cases, simply including two to three fields will be adequate for tracking. Here’s a list of the most commonly used fields:

  1. utm_source: This required field identifies the source of your traffic, such as a search engine, newsletter, or social media platform.
    • Example: utm_source=google
  2. utm_medium: This required field describes the marketing medium, such as email, CPC, social, or banner.
    • Example: utm_medium=cpc
  3. utm_campaign: Specifies the campaign name, slogan, or promotion being used.
    • Example: utm_campaign=spring_sale
  4. utm_term: Identifies the keywords for paid search campaigns.
    • Example: utm_term=running+shoes
  5. utm_content: Differentiates similar content or links within the same ad or campaign.
    • Example: utm_content=logolink or utm_content=textlink

When combined, these parameters provide detailed tracking information for your marketing efforts.

How the Fields Fit Together in Tracking

When you append UTM parameters to a URL, each field works together to provide a comprehensive view of your traffic sources. For instance:

https://www.example.com/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=spring_sale&utm_term=running+shoes&utm_content=logolink

The UTM included in this URL tells you that the traffic came from Google, through a CPC campaign named “spring_sale,” targeting the keyword “running shoes,” and the visitor clicked on the logo link.

Building a UTM

There are several free online tools available to help you build your UTM. One of the most used is the open source Google Analytics Demos & Tools URL Builder. To use this or a similar tool to build your URL with the included UTM:

  1. Load the tool in your browser.
  2. Add the destination URL of the page you’ll be sending traffic to.
  3. Enter the fields relevant for your campaign.