Using Google URL Builder to Track Marketing Campaigns

So, you’re ready to start a new marketing campaign. Perhaps it’s a social media campaign, or an email newsletter, or some paid ads. Most likely, your goal is to attract traffic to your website and convert that traffic into customers. But, how do you determine if your marketing campaign is successful? The answer is the Google URL builder, which lets you track your campaign. This article will tell you the steps for how to use the Google URL builder to track your marketing campaigns. If you are a small business owner using online marketing, you need to know how to use a UTM campaign (or you need to hire a digital agency to help with your campaign URL builder.)

campaign tracking in Google analytics

What is Google Analytics?

First, let’s discuss Google Analytics and how it can help your business. Google Analytics is a free tool that helps you analyze your website and its users to help you monitor the performance of your marketing and advertising campaigns, content, products, and more. You can use Google Analytics for a variety of reasons, but in this article, we will discuss how to use it for campaign tracking. You can use Google Analytics to track custom campaigns.

What is Campaign Tracking?

Campaign tracking is a method of identifying how users find your website. In Google Analytics, you can use campaign tracking to accurately track marketing campaigns to your website, both from Google Ads-generated campaigns and other ad sources, like landing pages. Basically, campaign tracking lets you learn how users are discovering your website.

How does this work? With UTM tracking codes. For example, instead of using a regular link in your marketing campaign, instead you use a tracking link that includes a tracking code.

how to track a marketing campaign

Why Should I Use the Google URL Builder?

Every marketing campaign has a goal, whether it’s conversions, or just awareness. The Google URL Builder allows you to track every separate marketing campaign in Google Analytics. If you don’t track your marketing campaigns individually, they will get lumped in with your traffic coming from other places. That makes it difficult to know whether your campaign was successful or not.

Particularly if you are using a paid marketing strategy, you need to know if your marketing budget is being spent well on your marketing efforts or not. That’s why it’s important to set up your goals in Google Analytics. Google Analytics can show you each campaign and how it performed in terms of sales, subscribers, and leads.

How to Use the Google URL Builder

It is very easy to use the Google URL builder. The following are the steps to help you set it up:

Step 1

Enter the link you want to use to take users to your website.

Step 2

Add the three main parameters you will want to track. Campaign Source tells Google where the traffic is coming from, like an email newsletter. Campaign Medium tells Google what kind of source it’s coming from, like an email marketing campaign. Campaign Name is pretty self-explanatory, it describes your campaign. As you type, the new URL will be auto-generated.

Step 3

Next, clip on “Copy URL” and paste it into your campaign, replacing your regular link.

Don’t forget to repeat these steps for any links you want to track as part of your marketing!

Google url builder

Where Do I Find My Campaigns in Google Analytics?

Now that you’ve set up your tracking, it’s time for the most important part: you will need to check in and see your results. You can do so by logging into Google Analytics. Once you are logged in, head to Acquisition, then Campaigns, and All Campaigns. You can see how many visitors resulted from your campaign, the amount of time they spent on your website, how many pages they visited on your site, as well as your bounce rate and any conversions.

How Do I See if My Campaigns are Converting? 

If you want to see conversions from your campaign, look to the top right of the table and below the line graph. You’ll see a column specifically for conversions. From the drop down menu, choose which goal conversion you want to see. Now, you can view visits and goal conversions for every campaign.

You can also go back and look at trends over time. This will help you see which articles your visitors spent more time on and which are most successful. You can also use Google Analytics and Google Sheets together to see all of your converting pages in one report.

url builder

Do You Need Help with Google Analytics? 

SEO Design Chicago can help you use the Google URL builder to track your marketing campaigns. Our experts use analytics and data to help websites track their success. Contact us today for help with using Google Analytics to help your business!

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