Your analytics are only as good as your UTMs and good analytics increase ROI 📈
Many digital marketers treat UTMs as an afterthought; at their peril. Don’t make the same critical mistake.
Let’s talk about UTMs for efficient Facebook UTM tracking.
UTMs are also known as Urchin Tracking Module parameters.
They have been around forever. Do you remember when Google Analytics was called Urchin prior to 2005? Me neither.
But there is a reason UTMs stuck around and why they are super important for tracking Facebook ads.
See Facebook UTMs are tremendously valuable – if you want to improve the ROI of your Facebook campaigns 📈
Because without UTMs you have unreliable analytics.
And unreliable analytics leads to bad decision making – which in turn leads to negative ROI 📉
Unbelievably the process of creating, managing, and implementing UTMs hasn’t changed much over the years.
More often than not built-in features for creating UTMs are limited and seem to have been added as an afterthought 🩹
Take for example adding UTMs to Facebook Ads using the Facebook Build a URL Parameter feature:
– You have to manually create UTMs for each ad and there is no way to control naming conventions across accounts
– Dynamic name-based values do not reflect any name changes after a campaign is published
– Creating and implementing custom Facebook UTMs takes a lot of time
So yes the process is still old school, right out of the early web days but this in no way negates the importance of UTMs.
Accurate UTMs are the key to clean analytics for better marketing decisions.
Remember your analytics are only as good as your UTMs.
And Good analytics increases ROI 📈
UTMs are not critical for just Google Analytics but any third-party analytics platform you use for reporting
This could be:
Amplitude, Heap or Mixpanel for user and product-level analytics
Shopify, Glew or Wicked Reports for e-Commerce product/customer and customer lifetime reporting
Pipedrive, Hubspot or Salesforce for lead generation campaigns and lead source tracking
DataStudio, Microsoft Power BI or Tableau for working with a BI team to analyze performance data pushed to your custom database such as big query
There is no way around it. You need to track Facebook ads with detailed UTMs to collect performance-based analytics so that you can improve your ROI, regardless of what analytics platform you are working with.
So UTMs are not going anywhere. They are sticking around.
With Facebook now boasting over 7 Million active advertisers, there is a good chance you are using Facebook Ads to grow sales or leads.
Hopefully, you are using UTMs to make your Facebook Ads profitable.
If so there is a good chance you have used the Facebook Build a URL Parameter feature
But…
The default Facebook campaign URL Builder is limited and here’s why:
It’s not automated – UTMs are important but your time should be spent with analytics so you can make ROI positive decisions.
Dynamic fields are limited – every organization has its own combination of custom and dynamic values to track for their specific analytics needs
Dynamic name-based values are inaccurate – Dynamic name-based values use the name-value defined at the time the campaign was published. Any campaign, ad set, or ad name modified post publishing will not be reflected in your UTMs.
Third-Party Analytics don’t like Facebook’s UTM encoding method – By default spaces are encoded using a + symbol, not the %20 value. This often translates as a + not a space character in third party analytics which can significantly hinder joining campaign data without cleaning your data first.
You could say Hey I don’t need UTM Parameters I can rely on the Facebook Ads manager for reporting, but the truth is solely relying on the Facebook Ads Manager for reporting will fail you.
Here is why:
Double counting conversions – Facebook’s default attribution model is 28 day post-click and 1-day post view. Although using a longer attribution window to evaluate Facebook campaigns can be helpful it gives you limited insights into cross channel funnel and true last click to conversion/lead data.
Limited feedback loop – Facebook cannot give you lifetime value or lead to customer conversion rates/values
We can all agree No UTMs = bad analytics… Yes?
Fortunately, there is a proven way to efficiently create and scale accurate UTMs for tracking Facebook Ads across Google Analytics and third-party analytics platforms.
Facebook marketers have already saved 20,056 hours and 45 minutes creating UTMs by upgrading their UTM workflow with EasyAutoTagging.
Here is what EasyAutoTagging can do to upgrade your UTM Parameter experience:
Automation – We scan and detect any new ads created and automatically assign UTM Parameters to the Facebook Ad tracking field.
Don’t run ads without UTMs because someone forgot to update the tracking field 🤯
Flexibility – There are no account or UTM Profile limits. Speaking of UTM Profiles, you can create any combination of UTM Parameter definitions using standard, custom, and dynamic fields.
Every use case is unique and needs to be flexible to fit your analytics needs 📊
Accuracy – Define UTM Profiles on the account level. Say goodbye to random naming conventions and control tagging consistency in one place.
Clean analytics hinges on consistent UTMs. Control the source for superior analytics and profitable ROI 📈
Dynamic name-based values – Use up to date dynamic name-based values. Facebook only uses name-based values from the time the campaign was published.
Data accuracy so your UTMs don’t get left behind 👌
What are you waiting for?
Upgrade and improve your Facebook UTMs today for better analytics and profitable decision making.
Click the button below and get started 👇Â