Using UTMs to Step Up Your Marketing

One of the hardest parts of small business marketing (or any marketing, for that matter) is trying to figure out if it’s actually working. You’ve probably asked yourself some version of: “Where are my leads even coming from?” or “Is that social post doing anything?” It’s okay—you can admit that you’ve wondered if you’re just shouting into the void. We’ve been there too.

But we’re happy to tell you that you don’t have to guess. You just need UTMs.

UTMs (we'll explain in a second) are one of the easiest ways to take your marketing from “I think this is working” to “I know what’s driving traffic, leads, and sales.” They’re simple, effective, and surprisingly underused by small business owners.

Let’s break down:

What UTM codes are
Why they matter for small business owners
How to start using them to capture marketing data

Why UTMs Matter (Even for Small Biz Owners)

If you’ve heard of UTMs, you might think they’re something only marketers at big companies use, but they’re just as powerful—if not more so—for solopreneurs and small business owners. Why? Because when time and money are tight, every effort needs to count.

UTMs help you answer essential questions like:

Where’s your traffic really coming from?
Which post or campaign is pulling the most weight?
What should you double down on next month?

Say you’re a guest on a podcast. Or posting a new lead magnet on Pinterest. Or running a small Facebook ad. Without UTMs, it’s not as easy to track if any of those things are bringing in website traffic, email signups, or sales. You’re kind of just hoping for the best.

With UTMs, you can stop relying on hope and start using real data to guide your decisions. That means less wasted effort and more focus on what actually moves the needle.

What Even Is a UTM?

Okay, but if you’re already lost, we do need to get a little jargon out of the way. Don’t worry, you don’t need to memorize this. UTM stands for Urchin Tracking Module (yep, really). It’s a leftover term from early web analytics, but luckily, you really only see them referred to as UTMs these days.

What you do need to know is this: a UTM is just a short string of text you add to the end of a URL to help track where clicks are coming from. You’ve definitely seen it before, even if you haven’t realized it. They look like this:

yourwebsite.com/freebie?utm_source=instagram&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=summerlaunch

All that extra text after the question mark? That’s the UTM. It helps platforms like Google Analytics sort and organize your traffic.

Without it, traffic from different sources can get lumped together or show up as “direct,” which obviously doesn’t tell you much. With UTMs, every click has a name tag that tells you what platform it came from, what channel, and the specific campaign.

The 3 Main UTM Pieces You Need

UTMs might look a little technical, but you really only need to understand three parts to get started. These are the most important labels and what they help you track:

1. utm_source: Where’s the traffic coming from?

This is the platform, website, or referrer. Think: instagram, email, podcast, referral, facebook, pinterest

2. utm_medium: What kind of channel is it?

This describes the type of channel or how people are finding your link. Think: social, newsletter, ad, collab, blog

3. utm_campaign: What are you promoting?

This is your internal name for the specific campaign or promotion. Some examples might look like: springlaunch, blackfridaysale, leadmagnet, podcastfeature

When you put them together, your UTM link will look something like this:

https://yourwebsite.com/offer?utm_source=email&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=fallpromo

If someone clicks that link, your analytics will log exactly where they came from, how they found you, and what campaign they were engaging with.

Be Consistent With Naming Your UTMs

This part is important: Be sure to use the same exact wording each time you use a UTM for the same source. For example, if you label Instagram traffic as “instagram” in one campaign and “IG” in another, your analytics will treat those as two different sources.

Letter case matters too, so we recommend documenting your UTM names somewhere that can serve as a single source of truth.

Stick with one version per platform or channel and reuse it every time. That consistency keeps your data clean and easy to interpret, and you’ll thank yourself later!

How UTMs Help You Improve Your Marketing

Still wondering if adding UTMs to your links is really worth it? Here's how they help you take your marketing to the next level easily.

You’ll be able to:

Identify your top-performing platforms: UTMs show whether Instagram, Pinterest, or your weekly email is driving the most traffic or conversions. Without them, you can see where your traffic is coming from, but you can’t see what actions they are taking (per platform) once they get there.
Compare content formats and emails: Want to know if your welcome sequence outperforms your regular newsletter? Use UTMs to track links in each and see which gets more clicks.
Measure the impact of collaborations: Did that podcast shoutout or cross-promotion bring new traffic to your site? UTM links are a great way to help you find out for sure.
Double down on what’s working: With clear data, you can spend less time guessing and more time doing more of what drives results. This is HUGE.

Instead of wondering where your leads are coming from, you’ll be able to trace them back to the exact campaign, post, or platform.

How to Start Using UTMs Today

If you’re like most small businesses, you’re thinking: that sounds great, but how hard is it to set up UTMs? If you’re just getting started you don’t need to memorize all of the components of a UTM every time you drop a link somewhere.

Google makes it really easy with its free Campaign URL Builder.

Or if you want an upgraded version, you can make a copy of Ally from Akari Digital's UTM builder for free here! She made it for our recent marketing workshop and we've been obsessed with it ever since.

Just plug in your link, add your source, medium, and campaign, and the tool will generate the final URL that you can copy and paste.

Like we mentioned before, you’ll want to document your naming conventions for UTM labels you use often, like instagram, newsletter, or leadmagnet, so you can quickly reuse them without inconsistencies.

Here’s what Ally from Akari Digital had to say.

UTM Tracking is a Game-Changer (Not a Nice-to-Have)

Effective UTM tracking is one of the first things I audit and set up for my clients—and for good reason. With proper UTMs in place, we don't just guess what's working—we KNOW which marketing platforms are actually driving results.

We can drill down to see exactly which posts or content pillars are your highest performers, then use that data to make strategic adjustments (rather than throwing more spaghetti at the wall). When we discover a type of content is consistently bringing in sales and leads, we double down on it. Numbers don't lie, and they save you endless hours of creating content that doesn't convert.

The hardest part about UTMs isn't setting them up—it's extracting meaningful insights from Google Analytics. Their reporting systems can be a total nightmare if you're not familiar with them (and honestly, even when you are!).

That's exactly why I created my Traffic Sources Dashboard. You'll spend just a few minutes connecting your Google Analytics account, and when you start using UTMs, you can easily filter down to the specific parameters you want to investigate. No more getting lost in the Google Analytics maze!

Ready to take the guesswork out of your marketing? Grab my free Traffic Sources Dashboard.

Here’s a simple way to start incorporating UTMs ASAP:

Choose one link you regularly share in your marketing, like a lead magnet or blog post.
Add UTMs that match the platform you’re sharing it on.
Drop the UTM link you want to track into your social media scheduler (like Enji!) or email platform
Check your Google Analytics after a few days to see where your traffic is coming from. The data you see in your dashboard will exactly match the labels you used in your UTM!

Do this consistently, and you’ll build a much clearer picture of what your marketing is doing for your business.

A note on getting started: Sometimes, it can be easy to go a little too crazy with UTMs, adding them to every button and link within your website. But keep in mind that UTMs are meant to track external traffic coming into your site, not the clicks that people make once they’re already browsing your website.

Adding UTMs to internal links and buttons can actually mess up your data, so stick with using them on your social platforms, email campaigns, guest posts, and other external sources!

Make Tracking Even Easier With Enji

Enji makes it simple to post and track what’s working across your entire strategy. While Enji doesn’t automatically track all your UTMs, you can use the data from Google Analytics to track results for your marketing campaigns. At Enji we log this data in the Target section, and you can also set up custom charts to track leads by source more accurately.

Even better? Enji goes above and beyond a social media scheduler to give you all of the tools you need to manage your small business marketing. That includes:

It’s all in one place and designed for small business owners who want clarity and consistency without the overwhelm. Start a free trial today to see how it works and start tracking what actually works!