Kevin Dieny: 00:00:00

Hello, welcome to the Close The Loop podcast.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:02

I am really excited about today's episode.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:05

We're going to be talking about Why Bother with UTM parameters, which

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:09

is something that comes up a lot.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:11

And something that I think is a little bit of a complex topic to unravel.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:15

And with me, I have a very special guest today.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:18

I have Jeff Sauer he is the founder of data-driven.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:21

He's an agency owner, business coach, he's blogger of Jeffalytics.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:25

If you've ever heard of that, that's how I found him.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:28

He's a lecturer and a recently retired digital nomad after

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:31

four years on the road.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:33

He is a firm believer in data-driven marketing.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:35

Jeff's work has been featured in many industry publications and best of lists.

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Jeff has had 50,000 or more digital marketers enroll in his

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:44

Google certification programs.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:46

He has delivered over a hundred keynote presentations and

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:50

workshops in 20 countries.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:52

So thank you and welcome to our podcast, Jeff.

Jeff Sauer: 00:00:55

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Kevin Dieny: 00:00:57

So to set the stage a little bit.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:00

Let's properly define what we're talking about when we say UTM parameters.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:05

So every business that wants to drive more traffic to their website.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:10

Could really by what we're talking about today, which is implementing,

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:14

and making sure you're using and bothering with UTM parameters.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:18

They're essential, I think for quantifying and refining marketing campaigns.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:22

So there's that aspect to it.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:24

If you're in the marketing side.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:25

I think it becomes easier to justify marketing expenditures.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:28

When you can prove the lift or what channels traffic is coming from, the

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:33

conversions that are coming from like your website traffic, or campaign efforts.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:39

And that makes it a lot easier to make a business decision around: should we

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:42

put money into this marketing campaign?

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:43

Should we put money into this ad?

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:45

Or is this source of traffic worthwhile?

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:48

Some of them are short-term decisions, right?

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:49

Like if this thing is happening are better than that.

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:52

And, but most marketing is longer term, so bothering with UTM parameters today

Kevin Dieny: 00:01:56

has a profound impact on what will maybe take place months down the road.

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:01

The first question I have, Jeff, you can jump in on this.

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:03

Is why are businesses, you think, not bothering to take

Kevin Dieny: 00:02:07

the time to use UTM parameters?

Jeff Sauer: 00:02:10

I think the reason why is often times.

Jeff Sauer: 00:02:12

It's either a business or the marketing team doesn't even know they

Jeff Sauer: 00:02:16

exist, or that they're part of the process for tracking your marketing.

Jeff Sauer: 00:02:21

Or...

Jeff Sauer: 00:02:22

that, there's no process to say, every time we drive traffic back to our

Jeff Sauer: 00:02:27

website, every time we run a campaign, every time we are on a podcast or

Jeff Sauer: 00:02:32

do a paid search ad that we need to make sure that we're tracking that.

Jeff Sauer: 00:02:35

Now the reason why that happens is because Google analytics is so easy to use.

Jeff Sauer: 00:02:42

You know, for example, if you were to go to Google analytics now and install

Jeff Sauer: 00:02:46

it on your site, all you need is a Google account or an email address.

Jeff Sauer: 00:02:50

And then it says, take this piece of code, put it on your site and you're tracking.

Jeff Sauer: 00:02:55

And that's fantastic.

Jeff Sauer: 00:02:56

It's a feat.

Jeff Sauer: 00:02:57

It's amazing that we have that at our disposal, that we can do that.

Jeff Sauer: 00:03:01

But because that piece of code gives you this security blanket, or the safety net,

Jeff Sauer: 00:03:06

saying you put it on your site and you're tracking data and they make it so easy.

Jeff Sauer: 00:03:10

That'd be like, option one.

Jeff Sauer: 00:03:12

They don't tell you about option one, B or C, or option two are

Jeff Sauer: 00:03:16

the things that you need to do.

Jeff Sauer: 00:03:17

The configurations that will make Google analytics speak the language

Jeff Sauer: 00:03:22

you want it to and to work for you.

Jeff Sauer: 00:03:23

And so what happens is, and it's compounded even

Jeff Sauer: 00:03:26

further, whereas you install.

Jeff Sauer: 00:03:29

The snippet of Google analytics, and then you hook it up to Google ads, or

Jeff Sauer: 00:03:33

you hook it up to your SEO campaigns.

Jeff Sauer: 00:03:35

And then they'll tell you that you have traffic from Google.

Jeff Sauer: 00:03:38

They're very good at telling you that Google drove you traffic either through

Jeff Sauer: 00:03:41

this search engine organic results or through paid media because they

Jeff Sauer: 00:03:45

make it a one-click to set up Google.

Jeff Sauer: 00:03:48

But all the other traffic to your site, whether it's from Facebook, their

Jeff Sauer: 00:03:51

major ad competitor, or if it's from an email campaign you send, or if it's

Jeff Sauer: 00:03:56

from being on a guest on a podcast or a direct mail piece, you send any other

Jeff Sauer: 00:04:00

way, you send somebody to your site, Google analytics, not only doesn't

Jeff Sauer: 00:04:05

know that you sent that traffic, but they don't tell you that you should be

Jeff Sauer: 00:04:08

tagging that or keeping track of it.

Jeff Sauer: 00:04:10

And so they make it easy to make Google the center of the world.

Jeff Sauer: 00:04:15

Because when you think Google is the center of the universe, you're going to

Jeff Sauer: 00:04:18

probably spend more money with Google ads.

Jeff Sauer: 00:04:21

It's the reason why they give the tool away for free, but they don't give you

Jeff Sauer: 00:04:24

the, the follow-up to say, the next thing you need to do is to make all

Jeff Sauer: 00:04:27

the rest of your data makes sense.

Jeff Sauer: 00:04:30

And so this is one of, probably the three configurations that I recommend as a

Jeff Sauer: 00:04:34

mandatory way to make Google analytics make more sense for your business.

Jeff Sauer: 00:04:38

And that is campaign tracking or UTM parameters.

Kevin Dieny: 00:04:42

When I was thinking about this topic for the last weekend and my

Kevin Dieny: 00:04:47

wife asked about it, I was like, okay, so UTM parameters, you put them in the

Kevin Dieny: 00:04:50

URL and she's like, what's the URL?

Kevin Dieny: 00:04:53

And I was like, okay, let's go back a step.

Kevin Dieny: 00:04:56

When you put a link in the email, let's say, and you want people to click on it.

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:00

That link is the URL like a link and a URL are all kind of synonymous.

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:04

And then the UTM information is just added, dimensional details that, are

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:10

on the link that tell us more about it.

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:12

Now, if we have multiple emails going out we may want to know, which email,

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:17

if we have some emails associated with one single campaign, we might

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:20

want to know what campaign it was.

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:22

And so the UTM parameters are that extra added context.

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:26

And I know you mentioned there's maybe three things that you may recommend when

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:30

someone sets up the GA, did you want to just, I guess, touch on what those other

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:33

ones are just so we put it in context.

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:35

What if UTMs are important in the top three and maybe what

Kevin Dieny: 00:05:38

the other two things are?

Jeff Sauer: 00:05:40

Absolutely.

Jeff Sauer: 00:05:41

Google analytics is easy to install and then these UTM parameters, or what I call

Jeff Sauer: 00:05:45

campaign tracking allows you to identify the source of traffic to your site.

Jeff Sauer: 00:05:50

And so in Google analytics that we all use what I call Google analytics

Jeff Sauer: 00:05:54

three or the classic Google analytics it's been around for awhile.

There's the ABC reports: 00:05:58

acquisition, behavior, and conversion.

There's the ABC reports: 00:06:04

And the ABC is like, basically you need to acquire traffic to your site.

There's the ABC reports: 00:06:08

Campaigns help you identify the traffic so that the additional configuration you

There's the ABC reports: 00:06:13

want to do for the A's of the ABC reports is where did that traffic come from?

There's the ABC reports: 00:06:18

The B is behavior it's what did they do on your site?

There's the ABC reports: 00:06:22

What did they do while they were visiting your site?

There's the ABC reports: 00:06:24

Did they click on the call to action button?

There's the ABC reports: 00:06:26

Did they scroll a certain amount?

There's the ABC reports: 00:06:28

Did they go to your site and leave?

There's the ABC reports: 00:06:31

Another, I guess, widely known secret, but little known secret.

There's the ABC reports: 00:06:36

When you're first getting started with GA is that Google

There's the ABC reports: 00:06:39

analytics only tracks page views.

There's the ABC reports: 00:06:40

They don't track what happens within a page.

There's the ABC reports: 00:06:43

And so you could spend 45 minutes inside of a page, clicking around on

There's the ABC reports: 00:06:46

every button and Google wouldn't track that unless you gave them supplemental

There's the ABC reports: 00:06:50

tracking, which is called event tracking.

There's the ABC reports: 00:06:52

And so the second thing to consider is event tracking to make

There's the ABC reports: 00:06:55

your behavior reports cleaner.

There's the ABC reports: 00:06:57

And so tracking what's within a page, instead of just the fact

There's the ABC reports: 00:07:00

that the page was served up.

There's the ABC reports: 00:07:01

And then the, C one, the conversion one is setting up goals to help

There's the ABC reports: 00:07:05

Google know what outcomes happened when somebody came to your site.

There's the ABC reports: 00:07:09

And so a goal is basically saying, did somebody convert or not.

There's the ABC reports: 00:07:14

And then we, the definition of conversion for me is that somebody took

There's the ABC reports: 00:07:17

a favorable action that is designed to help you make more money or make

There's the ABC reports: 00:07:22

more of the result you're looking for to fuel your economic engine.

There's the ABC reports: 00:07:25

And that requires configuration too.

There's the ABC reports: 00:07:28

And so there's these three things that are uber important.

There's the ABC reports: 00:07:32

Like I'm almost like I wouldn't use Google analytics if I

There's the ABC reports: 00:07:34

didn't do all three of those.

There's the ABC reports: 00:07:36

That Google doesn't even tell you about.

There's the ABC reports: 00:07:38

And so that's why, anytime that somebody says, Hey, how does this work?

There's the ABC reports: 00:07:42

Can you do a podcast to talk with us?

There's the ABC reports: 00:07:43

I'm like, yeah, I want everybody to know this because I love Google analytics,

There's the ABC reports: 00:07:47

but also I want you to do it in a way that enables you to get more actions

There's the ABC reports: 00:07:53

that fuel your economic engine, whether it's leads or sales or, or any number

There's the ABC reports: 00:07:58

of things you can't do more if you don't know the outcome that happened.

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:02

The part I was always struggling with and explaining

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:04

this is like, there's so much good information in there.

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:08

And a lot of businesses work a little different, one of

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:11

them may just want leads.

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:12

Some of them may have more of an interest in getting someone to the, to a cart

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:16

on the e-commerce side of a business.

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:18

Another one may be trying to segment the people who get there so they

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:22

can refine a later audience for a later ad or something like that.

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:25

Like there, there may be a lot of layers, like an informational part of the site.

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:29

The traffic that gets there, it comes from a source and that's like the first that's

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:33

one of the first legs of getting someone to the website is where they came from.

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:37

UTM parameters help inform us about that insight.

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:42

Businesses may feel like man, UTMs are a lot of work.

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:44

You're telling me I have to put something on the end of all my links.

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:47

That could be a lot of work.

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:48

If I'm doing a lot of campaigns or if I have a ton of ads, that

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:51

seems like a little bit of work.

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:53

So what's the value add?

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:54

So question, for you it would be, how can, insights from the UTM parameters add

Kevin Dieny: 00:08:59

value to a myriad of types of businesses?

Jeff Sauer: 00:09:03

Yeah.

Jeff Sauer: 00:09:03

Yeah.

Jeff Sauer: 00:09:04

So I love what you're saying about.

Jeff Sauer: 00:09:06

Everybody has a different Google analytics.

Jeff Sauer: 00:09:08

If you install Google analytics, it's the same.

Jeff Sauer: 00:09:09

If you have a five person cat blog as a million person a

Jeff Sauer: 00:09:14

month e-commerce website, right?

Jeff Sauer: 00:09:15

It's the same Google analytics and Google's smart and they can read minds

Jeff Sauer: 00:09:20

when it comes to searching, but they don't know what you're trying to achieve.

Jeff Sauer: 00:09:24

You need to tell them what you want, right.

Jeff Sauer: 00:09:25

What you want to achieve.

Jeff Sauer: 00:09:26

And so that's a big part there.

Jeff Sauer: 00:09:28

Now, as far as why you should tell them that.

Jeff Sauer: 00:09:32

The reason why is pretty simple to me.

Jeff Sauer: 00:09:33

And that is as a marketer, or if you're running traffic to your

Jeff Sauer: 00:09:37

site, you want to assign credit for the different activities you do.

Jeff Sauer: 00:09:42

And so, for example, if you have a, let's just use a round number, if

Jeff Sauer: 00:09:45

you have a thousand dollar budget to send people to your website, or

Jeff Sauer: 00:09:48

to try to bring in new business.

Jeff Sauer: 00:09:51

You want to know if you put a hundred dollars into 10 different things,

Jeff Sauer: 00:09:54

a hundred dollars into a yellow pages ad, into a Google search

Jeff Sauer: 00:09:58

ad, into Facebook ads, into email marketing, into say you do a hundred

Jeff Sauer: 00:10:03

dollars into 10 different things.

Jeff Sauer: 00:10:05

Well, from my experience, not all 10 of those things are going

Jeff Sauer: 00:10:09

to give you the same results.

Jeff Sauer: 00:10:11

Some of these things will have a 10 X return on your investment.

Jeff Sauer: 00:10:14

Some of these things will give you zero return on your investment.

Jeff Sauer: 00:10:17

And so the chances are that they all perform the same as is slim to none.

Jeff Sauer: 00:10:22

And so if you want to know that you have a a hundred dollars,

Jeff Sauer: 00:10:26

you can put into things.

Jeff Sauer: 00:10:27

Would you want to put a hundred dollars into 10 different things or would you

Jeff Sauer: 00:10:29

want to put the whole thousand dollars into the one thing that's working for you?

Jeff Sauer: 00:10:33

Whether that's ads or certain channel.

Jeff Sauer: 00:10:36

And so the only way you can tell that is if you tell Google analytics

Jeff Sauer: 00:10:41

which traffic is coming in.

Jeff Sauer: 00:10:43

If you have to say that this came from email, you have to say,

Jeff Sauer: 00:10:46

this came from advertising you have to say where it came from.

Jeff Sauer: 00:10:49

And so the only way you'll know how to divide that pie in a way to get

Jeff Sauer: 00:10:53

more results is to tell Google that.

Jeff Sauer: 00:10:55

Or to tell whatever your analytics tool is.

Jeff Sauer: 00:10:58

Now, the reason why this is important and just think about the outcome that can

Jeff Sauer: 00:11:00

come from that is if you spend a thousand dollars on ten channels, and some of them

Jeff Sauer: 00:11:05

give you a hundred percent return on your ad spend some of them give you a zero.

Jeff Sauer: 00:11:09

Then you're probably going to average out to a thousand dollars back.

Jeff Sauer: 00:11:12

So you spend a thousand, you get a thousand back.

Jeff Sauer: 00:11:14

Now, if one of these things has a one hundred percent return every

Jeff Sauer: 00:11:17

time you do it, then you put a thousand and you get $2,000 back.

Jeff Sauer: 00:11:21

And so which one would you rather go with?

Jeff Sauer: 00:11:22

The one where you're sort of hoping that one of these, that they all

Jeff Sauer: 00:11:26

work equally and then you get your thousand dollars back or knowing...

Jeff Sauer: 00:11:29

Hey, if I put a thousand into this one channel, I will get 2000 back.

Jeff Sauer: 00:11:33

I'm riding that one.

Jeff Sauer: 00:11:35

Cause that's what my business is going to thrive doing.

Jeff Sauer: 00:11:37

You don't know that if you don't use these parameters, if you don't track

Jeff Sauer: 00:11:40

it, if you don't feed it, good data.

Kevin Dieny: 00:11:42

Yeah, I've heard it said quite a lot actually,

Kevin Dieny: 00:11:45

attribution is expensive.

Kevin Dieny: 00:11:47

In Google analytics case, the tool is free.

Kevin Dieny: 00:11:50

You can put the parameter in that's free.

Kevin Dieny: 00:11:52

You have attribution.

Kevin Dieny: 00:11:53

There's lots of built in really cool tools in Google analytics to help you

Kevin Dieny: 00:11:57

do attribution and see the different levels of channels overlapping, or

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:01

channels bringing in traffic and resulting in the ROAS of return on

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:05

your ad spend or per se, like what channel is lifting my conversions.

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:10

But at the same time, there is a little bit of effort involved there.

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:12

Are there any tools or tricks or templates, or suggestions,

Kevin Dieny: 00:12:17

you have to make it easier to build the UTM parameters?

Jeff Sauer: 00:12:21

Yeah, absolutely.

Jeff Sauer: 00:12:22

A hundred percent.

Jeff Sauer: 00:12:23

So there's varying levels.

Jeff Sauer: 00:12:24

You can do it.

Jeff Sauer: 00:12:24

The first thing is to recognize in whatever process you have for sending

Jeff Sauer: 00:12:29

traffic to your site, that you need them.

Jeff Sauer: 00:12:31

And so asking the question, are we tracking this?

Jeff Sauer: 00:12:34

Asking that before you do a campaign instead of after, and that might

Jeff Sauer: 00:12:37

sound obvious, but I can't tell you how many times people have come to me

Jeff Sauer: 00:12:41

and said, Hey, we didn't track this.

Jeff Sauer: 00:12:43

Can you figure it out?

Jeff Sauer: 00:12:44

And it's like, no, you can't.

Jeff Sauer: 00:12:45

So you need to have a good source.

Jeff Sauer: 00:12:46

So you need to do this commit to doing it.

Jeff Sauer: 00:12:49

And then every time you run a campaign.

Jeff Sauer: 00:12:52

Now the easiest way to do it.

Jeff Sauer: 00:12:53

And the one, if you're running like one campaign a month or every so often is

Jeff Sauer: 00:12:56

if you just Google campaign URL builder, or Google analytics campaign builder,

Jeff Sauer: 00:13:02

there's a tool that's free on Google, where you can put in your base URL,

Jeff Sauer: 00:13:07

and then it asks you to put in the five UTM, the five UTM parameters in there.

Jeff Sauer: 00:13:12

And then it will tell you it'll build that URL for you.

Jeff Sauer: 00:13:15

And that's always where I recommend starting.

Jeff Sauer: 00:13:17

Those five parameters are the source, the medium, which is the

Jeff Sauer: 00:13:22

sources who sent you the traffic.

Jeff Sauer: 00:13:24

The medium is how they sent you the traffic.

Jeff Sauer: 00:13:26

So a source would be like call source sent you the traffic and the

Jeff Sauer: 00:13:28

medium would be a phone call, let's say, and then a campaign, what is

Jeff Sauer: 00:13:32

the exact campaign we're running?

Jeff Sauer: 00:13:34

So you can get down to, this is the campaign.

Jeff Sauer: 00:13:35

It's the July campaign versus the June campaign.

Jeff Sauer: 00:13:39

Then you have two other ones that are less often used, but there's

Jeff Sauer: 00:13:42

still, that can be nice for you.

Jeff Sauer: 00:13:44

One is content, like what was the content that was displayed on the

Jeff Sauer: 00:13:47

screen or on the call to action?

Jeff Sauer: 00:13:49

What was the phone number that they called?

Jeff Sauer: 00:13:51

What was the tracking number they called.

Jeff Sauer: 00:13:53

Hint hint.

Jeff Sauer: 00:13:54

And then the final ones term, and that's if you're doing paid search,

Jeff Sauer: 00:13:57

you can actually put in what is the keyword that somebody searched for.

Jeff Sauer: 00:14:00

So those are the five parameters, and I'm not expecting you to remember them,

Jeff Sauer: 00:14:04

but that campaign builder tells you here's the five things and they even

Jeff Sauer: 00:14:07

give you examples that are in writing.

Jeff Sauer: 00:14:10

So you can see the embodiment of what I'm talking about.

Jeff Sauer: 00:14:13

That's definitely the starting point and for most people, if you're doing

Jeff Sauer: 00:14:16

this a couple of times a month, or you're doing a big quarterly

Jeff Sauer: 00:14:20

promotion, just use that tool.

Jeff Sauer: 00:14:22

Now, if you want to have a history of what URL's you built, what parameters you have.

Jeff Sauer: 00:14:26

I highly recommend the next step is to create a spreadsheet that

Jeff Sauer: 00:14:30

captures all those tracking URLs.

Jeff Sauer: 00:14:32

And if you're an Excel jockey or a Google sheets jockey, you could actually build

Jeff Sauer: 00:14:36

those parameters without using Google's thing just in your own, in a spreadsheet.

Jeff Sauer: 00:14:41

I think that's if you're doing it daily, right.

Jeff Sauer: 00:14:43

If you're doing it all the time, but if you're just getting started, just

Jeff Sauer: 00:14:46

use that tool and then paste the final URL into a note book or a document.

Jeff Sauer: 00:14:50

So you know what you built.

Kevin Dieny: 00:14:52

That's how I started.

Kevin Dieny: 00:14:54

And then I eventually was like, okay, I want to standardize these.

Kevin Dieny: 00:14:57

I want these to have a similar format.

Kevin Dieny: 00:14:59

I also want to make sure I'm doing them right every time.

Kevin Dieny: 00:15:02

And then once I was like, okay, I'm not the only one doing this.

Kevin Dieny: 00:15:04

Now I have a team.

Kevin Dieny: 00:15:05

I need them to be able to have this follow the same standards.

Kevin Dieny: 00:15:08

Then I was like, okay, here's a spreadsheet that everyone will use.

Kevin Dieny: 00:15:12

And when you put the wrong thing in it, won't let you do it.

Kevin Dieny: 00:15:14

I built a little builder template thing in my spreadsheet guru time.

Kevin Dieny: 00:15:19

I put that together.

Kevin Dieny: 00:15:20

And that was really helpful to keep it in a standard way.

Kevin Dieny: 00:15:23

And that way, whenever we jump into Google analytics, there wasn't

Kevin Dieny: 00:15:26

like four or five different ways of spelling CallSource or Facebook.

Kevin Dieny: 00:15:29

There was one standard and it cleaned up the data quite a bit, especially

Kevin Dieny: 00:15:32

when you're getting into multiple people, multiple levels of people.

Kevin Dieny: 00:15:35

But when it's just you and maybe one person or two people doing it, it

Kevin Dieny: 00:15:39

can get using the Google campaign builder tool is really effective.

Kevin Dieny: 00:15:43

That's been really helpful.

Jeff Sauer: 00:15:45

There's also software that you can use to, like, I have

Jeff Sauer: 00:15:47

a friend who built one called like campaign tracker.io, and that software

Jeff Sauer: 00:15:51

just helps you keep track of it.

Jeff Sauer: 00:15:53

But I think that that's more when you're at a volume when you're doing a lot of it.

Kevin Dieny: 00:15:57

There's tools that will check to make sure the link's

Kevin Dieny: 00:15:58

working, it's not a broken thing.

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:00

There's a lot of really cool tools out there to help.

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:02

This may not be so tedious and not be so hard.

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:06

One thing you did mention, which is, when you ignore it, and then you start

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:09

doing it from that point on is when you can start doing the analysis you

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:12

told the story about someone who didn't start track didn't do any tracking

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:15

and then asked, okay, now, can you tell me what happened with this?

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:17

Retroactively can't really look back and pull out the

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:21

details unless they were there.

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:22

That's the way that it works.

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:24

Privacy is increasing in, browsers and technology.

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:27

So if someone's like, why should I bother with UTM parameters now,

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:30

possibly if down the road, is privacy going to take away all this tracking?

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:35

And is starting now too late?

Kevin Dieny: 00:16:37

That kind of, a conflict that someone's having, what would you say to all that?

Jeff Sauer: 00:16:41

That's an awesome question.

Jeff Sauer: 00:16:42

I don't recommend losing sleep at night over something you have control

Jeff Sauer: 00:16:46

over, and if you're running a campaign, if you're driving traffic, you

Jeff Sauer: 00:16:49

have control over where they go to.

Jeff Sauer: 00:16:52

And so I wouldn't lose sleep over that.

Jeff Sauer: 00:16:54

And in fact, it's one of the few things that, that will

Jeff Sauer: 00:16:57

fight through the privacy noise.

Jeff Sauer: 00:16:59

Is that if you own that relationship and you're the one that's driving the

Jeff Sauer: 00:17:02

traffic or renting the traffic from a search engine or from a social network,

Jeff Sauer: 00:17:05

like Facebook, you control that.

Jeff Sauer: 00:17:08

And so as long as you left that on the field, or you did your best

Jeff Sauer: 00:17:11

to make sure that the things you control were done well, you will

Jeff Sauer: 00:17:15

know how your campaigns performed.

Jeff Sauer: 00:17:16

There's some traffic that no matter what you do, won't show up in your reports

Jeff Sauer: 00:17:21

properly, or that could be a problem.

Jeff Sauer: 00:17:23

But that's outside of your control.

Jeff Sauer: 00:17:25

You can do some stuff to try to be as good of a steward as possible, but once it it's

Jeff Sauer: 00:17:30

outside of your hands, you're really risk mitigating instead of just like completely

Jeff Sauer: 00:17:35

in control or in the driver's seat.

Jeff Sauer: 00:17:37

And so UTMs are definitely for when you're in the position

Jeff Sauer: 00:17:40

of being in the driver's seat.

Jeff Sauer: 00:17:42

Now, when it comes to privacy, I just mentioned or alluded to that UTMs are

Jeff Sauer: 00:17:47

the one thing that will shine through privacy because you're not really giving

Jeff Sauer: 00:17:50

up somebody's privacy or violating it by adding those parameters in there.

Jeff Sauer: 00:17:54

In fact, you're making it more clear as to where they're coming in.

Jeff Sauer: 00:17:58

Now, the reason why privacy is important here is because

Jeff Sauer: 00:18:01

Google has a lot of liability.

Jeff Sauer: 00:18:03

If they're storing data or they're giving away data that

Jeff Sauer: 00:18:06

does violate somebody's privacy.

Jeff Sauer: 00:18:08

And so they might in the future, they might, or a browser, even anybody that

Jeff Sauer: 00:18:13

that's in control of data has to be like, they're plugging up holes where

Jeff Sauer: 00:18:17

somebody can see certain information.

Jeff Sauer: 00:18:19

And so that's actually what worries me the most is that if they move to plug up holes

Jeff Sauer: 00:18:23

or to make it to the data is more obscure, you're going to get more obscure data.

Jeff Sauer: 00:18:28

That's less useful.

Jeff Sauer: 00:18:29

The only way around that is campaign tracking it's UTMs.

Jeff Sauer: 00:18:34

And so it's basically giving you even more signal through the noise.

Jeff Sauer: 00:18:39

And so the only way to cut through privacy problems, and noise, and so on

Jeff Sauer: 00:18:43

is that if you are driving it, you're measuring it, you're tracking it.

Jeff Sauer: 00:18:47

It makes the value proposition even stronger in my opinion, is

Jeff Sauer: 00:18:50

that it might be the only data you can rely on in the future.

Kevin Dieny: 00:18:54

Yeah, that's a really powerful statement.

Kevin Dieny: 00:18:55

And I really liked the idea of, if it matters, if the marketing you're

Kevin Dieny: 00:19:00

spending money, if the performance matters, if any of that matters to

Kevin Dieny: 00:19:04

you, measurement then must matter.

Kevin Dieny: 00:19:07

So the cost of doing it, which can be mostly mitigated like the time.

Kevin Dieny: 00:19:12

There is some time investment, but for the most part it's not too crazy.

Kevin Dieny: 00:19:16

Once you get it, once you have done it a few times, it becomes a lot

Kevin Dieny: 00:19:20

easier to do over and over again.

Kevin Dieny: 00:19:21

Or you may have a standard.

Kevin Dieny: 00:19:22

And so it's easy to plug away.

Kevin Dieny: 00:19:24

There are tools that, may make it even easier to do.

Kevin Dieny: 00:19:27

Some email platform tools, have standard UTM parameters that they'll throw in every

Kevin Dieny: 00:19:32

time so that you don't really have to.

Kevin Dieny: 00:19:34

Ad platforms have what are called tracking templates, which will allow

Kevin Dieny: 00:19:37

you to slap on a format at the end of an ad, a URL for you on every time to

Kevin Dieny: 00:19:43

help mitigate and make that easier.

Kevin Dieny: 00:19:45

But at the end of the day, they want you to measure it because they

Kevin Dieny: 00:19:48

want you to see the performance.

Kevin Dieny: 00:19:50

An ad platform is like, Hey, spend money with us.

Kevin Dieny: 00:19:52

They want you to know it's working.

Kevin Dieny: 00:19:54

Otherwise you're going to be like, why would I spend money here?

Kevin Dieny: 00:19:56

So they want you to do it.

Kevin Dieny: 00:19:57

Our company wants you to do it because it shows more granular detail when you go

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:01

to ask the question, okay, this is great.

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:03

I now know what channel it came from, but now I want to know

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:05

what campaign it came from.

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:07

I want to know if it came from a paid, an owned, different types of

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:11

channels, organic things like that.

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:13

I want to know that information.

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:14

The types of information that you need come from that additional

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:18

layer of data and being able to see how people move between them.

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:21

The question that's going to take us to the next direction I have is where should

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:25

businesses be using UTM parameters?

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:27

There's definitely places where you definitely want to use it.

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:30

There are places where you actually don't have to use it.

Kevin Dieny: 00:20:32

So I want to talk about what those could be.

Jeff Sauer: 00:20:35

Let's talk about where you probably don't need to use it.

Jeff Sauer: 00:20:38

You don't need to use it for organic search.

Jeff Sauer: 00:20:40

If somebody finds your website, Google will discern that pretty well.

Jeff Sauer: 00:20:44

If you're running Google ads and you're using their auto campaign tracking,

Jeff Sauer: 00:20:49

you don't need to add UTMs to your URL.

Jeff Sauer: 00:20:51

They'll do that for you.

Jeff Sauer: 00:20:53

And then it's not required on social media, because if somebody comes to

Jeff Sauer: 00:20:58

you from Twitter or Facebook, Google analytics sorta knows that pretty well.

Jeff Sauer: 00:21:03

Although, they don't know what campaign it was.

Jeff Sauer: 00:21:05

It would just be that the website sent you traffic or that the

Jeff Sauer: 00:21:07

mobile version sent you traffic.

Jeff Sauer: 00:21:09

That would be a case for why you'd want it.

Jeff Sauer: 00:21:11

So it's basically everything else is better with UTMs.

Jeff Sauer: 00:21:16

So everything else, meaning any email you send out, mostly bulk email.

Jeff Sauer: 00:21:22

Now you could add it to individual emails you send out, but I wouldn't recommend

Jeff Sauer: 00:21:26

that because if it's going to one person, you don't really need a campaign.

Jeff Sauer: 00:21:30

Any social posts that you control?

Jeff Sauer: 00:21:33

Definitely any paid social, definitely.

Jeff Sauer: 00:21:36

Any shortened hyperlink, if you do a Bitly link or a shortened link,

Jeff Sauer: 00:21:41

definitely put those at the end of it.

Jeff Sauer: 00:21:43

So that the final URL gets those UTMs that gets over the space or size problem.

Jeff Sauer: 00:21:48

Any phone call that comes in any QR code that you put into

Jeff Sauer: 00:21:53

the marketplace should have.

Jeff Sauer: 00:21:54

Any direct mail piece with a vanity URL that redirects to

Jeff Sauer: 00:21:58

your main site should have it.

Jeff Sauer: 00:21:59

It's basically anytime that you are trying to get somebody to find you,

Jeff Sauer: 00:22:04

you should make sure that effort to try to find them is trackable because

Jeff Sauer: 00:22:08

otherwise you don't really know where your sales can come from, you can't

Jeff Sauer: 00:22:11

attribute your marketing and see.

Jeff Sauer: 00:22:14

You're putting money into the wrong thing.

Jeff Sauer: 00:22:15

You're allocating your resources inefficiently, if you can't track it.

Jeff Sauer: 00:22:19

And so if you want to know where you should put your resources to

Jeff Sauer: 00:22:23

get a 10% lift, a 20% lift, a 30% lift, a hundred percent lift for

Jeff Sauer: 00:22:29

the money you spend in marketing.

Jeff Sauer: 00:22:31

This is the only way to do that.

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:33

I really like laying out each channel.

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:35

Thank you for putting down and naming the channels and then the sources and

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:39

helping them understand that the channels that we measure a lot of times are the

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:45

ones where we do have dollars behind.

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:47

But even the ones we don't have dollars behind are still important,

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:50

especially if we're running a specific campaign or there's been

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:53

a lot of team effort behind it.

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:55

It may not have a cost associated with the ad budget, but, there's

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:58

a cost of time consumption.

Kevin Dieny: 00:22:59

We're spending a lot of time working on something, we want to know how

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:02

it worked, ended up working out.

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:04

And also some agencies use it cause they want to differentiate

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:09

themselves from, let's say a company that has multiple agencies.

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:12

They want to be making sure that their traffic is signaled and stands out.

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:15

And so that's why it's critical being able to see this is the traffic my

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:19

agency is bringing versus something else.

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:21

I know that some agencies will do that or enable that technology or

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:25

use those parameters to do that.

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:27

A little question here off something you said before, which was the ABCs.

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:31

We've brought someone to your website and let's say you have used a UTM parameter.

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:35

So, I know exactly what campaign they came from, I know, and

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:38

I brought them to the site.

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:39

Am I done there and I'd say, no, but I was curious if you could elaborate

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:43

on how the B, the behavior, what they do can then inform a better strategy

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:49

for the, A for the acquisition?

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:51

So if you've used UTM parameters and you brought them to your website and

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:55

how could their behavior now help you guide your acquisition strategies

Kevin Dieny: 00:23:59

and help inform, what channels are working, because there are some

Kevin Dieny: 00:24:02

behaviors that are better than others.

Jeff Sauer: 00:24:03

Yeah.

Jeff Sauer: 00:24:04

I love it because that is truly why I got into analytics.

Jeff Sauer: 00:24:08

And so this is an existential thing for me, and that is, I used to be

Jeff Sauer: 00:24:12

only doing paid ads, so I'd pay money to Google and then Google,

Jeff Sauer: 00:24:16

it had this conversion tracking.

Jeff Sauer: 00:24:18

So we'd bid on a keyword.

Jeff Sauer: 00:24:20

And then it would go to a website and then either they bought, or

Jeff Sauer: 00:24:22

they didn't like the Wolf of Wall Street, either they buy or they die.

Jeff Sauer: 00:24:26

In about 2%, on the average of the web, we'll end up doing the conversion part.

Jeff Sauer: 00:24:31

And so that means that you'll send a hundred clicks to a

Jeff Sauer: 00:24:34

website and two of them will do something you want them to do.

Jeff Sauer: 00:24:36

And then 98% you'll have no idea.

Jeff Sauer: 00:24:38

It's a black box.

Jeff Sauer: 00:24:40

I was attracted to Google analytics because I wanted to see inside

Jeff Sauer: 00:24:43

that black box, I wanted to know how the sausage is made.

Jeff Sauer: 00:24:45

I wanted to know how I won or how I lost.

Jeff Sauer: 00:24:47

Right.

Jeff Sauer: 00:24:47

I wanted to have more control over my fate because otherwise I'm just guessing.

Jeff Sauer: 00:24:51

I didn't want them to take away the guesswork.

Jeff Sauer: 00:24:53

And so that middle part is really nice because it helps answer

Jeff Sauer: 00:24:56

the question as to whether that middle 98%, was effective or not.

Jeff Sauer: 00:25:01

And so a few things, one is they say that it takes, I believe between

Jeff Sauer: 00:25:04

five and eight times hearing a message to, to want to buy something.

Jeff Sauer: 00:25:08

And so to expect that every one of those hundred people is ready to buy

Jeff Sauer: 00:25:11

would go against your contact strategy.

Jeff Sauer: 00:25:13

You need to talk to them more often.

Jeff Sauer: 00:25:15

You need to have multiple touch points.

Jeff Sauer: 00:25:17

This allows you to see, okay, well maybe I'm not in the fifth touch point,

Jeff Sauer: 00:25:20

but did that person scroll down far enough in order to see half the content.

Jeff Sauer: 00:25:25

Did they spend more than a minute on the page?

Jeff Sauer: 00:25:28

Did they end up clicking on the phone thing, but then not dialing or, what

Jeff Sauer: 00:25:31

did they end up doing in that case?

Jeff Sauer: 00:25:33

Did they, hover over the phone number and sort of think about it?

Jeff Sauer: 00:25:36

Did that give them intent that they were going to purchase that

Jeff Sauer: 00:25:38

they were going to call you?

Jeff Sauer: 00:25:39

Those are all things you can do within the process that will tell

Jeff Sauer: 00:25:43

you a little bit more about that 98.

Jeff Sauer: 00:25:45

And then instead of optimizing towards those two sales or those two leads,

Jeff Sauer: 00:25:49

whatever you call it, you would optimize towards a better experience for those 98%.

Jeff Sauer: 00:25:55

And that can be the choice of traffic you send, like in choosing one channel or over

Jeff Sauer: 00:26:00

the other, or it can be self-reflection and say, okay, our website is not as good

Jeff Sauer: 00:26:04

as we thought people are going there.

Jeff Sauer: 00:26:06

And then 98% of them are leaving within five seconds.

Jeff Sauer: 00:26:09

We have to redo the whole site.

Jeff Sauer: 00:26:12

We have to redo a landing page, send them to a landing page instead of

Jeff Sauer: 00:26:15

our homepage, so on and so forth.

Jeff Sauer: 00:26:17

And so those are all things you can do in between that will give you a better idea

Jeff Sauer: 00:26:22

as to whether this ad spend is productive, or if it was just a complete miss.

Kevin Dieny: 00:26:26

You mentioned, some behaviors there that may not be out of the box

Kevin Dieny: 00:26:30

tracking by Google that you may have to, let's say you wanted to see who

Kevin Dieny: 00:26:34

clicked on a specific element, like a phone call and a phone number, scroll

Kevin Dieny: 00:26:39

depth, a video on the page you want to know did people watch this video.

Kevin Dieny: 00:26:42

There's been some mistakes too, where, we put a button on the page but we forgot

Kevin Dieny: 00:26:46

to put the link in the button it's there, but if you click on it, it does nothing.

Kevin Dieny: 00:26:50

And so some of those, I almost look at it like there's performance.

Kevin Dieny: 00:26:54

You want to track, you want to see the time on page.

Kevin Dieny: 00:26:56

You want to see where they scroll and let's see where they clicked.

Kevin Dieny: 00:26:58

If we're on a mobile or desktop or tablet, you want to see whether

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:01

the experience was still ideal.

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:03

And then there's other things that are like marketing insurance.

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:07

Which is okay, this button worked or what happens when they click this button?

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:11

Does it do what I think it's going to do?

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:12

If they click this thing does it do like I expect it to do, and it may work

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:16

fine testing here in our browser here.

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:20

And it may look great here on like our Mac or our screen, but then elsewhere, man,

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:24

it just doesn't work and it's not as good.

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:27

And, some of that comes packaged in some other tools.

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:29

I know there's tools that do like heat mapping and stuff like.

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:33

And so there's just a lot of stuff you could do, in the

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:36

behavioral area to unravel that black box to see what's in there.

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:41

And it, even going down, like a couple of those holes, like diving in there can

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:46

really reveal a lot about what's working.

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:48

What's not, and it, it could absolutely point to, we need a new website, we

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:52

need a new concept, a new design.

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:53

We need something to, to change here.

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:56

And then that could potentially lift it.

Kevin Dieny: 00:27:58

And I could change things.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:00

The whole analytics world.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:03

Is not, like a crystal ball.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:06

Jeff's going to tell you everything is going to work exactly

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:08

perfectly right for your business.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:09

Neither could I, no one can, it takes so much experimentation.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:14

It takes a lot of playing around fiddling around or seeing what's going to work

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:18

with your, your specific audience.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:21

If your audience is much older.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:23

I know this from working with, you know, older audiences,

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:26

you need a larger font size.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:27

They can't read this on the page.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:29

That might be why they're just sitting there on the top of

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:31

the frame and not moving down.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:32

There's a lot of, there's so many things and questioning, why are they doing this?

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:36

Why aren't they, why is their mouse stuck on the right side?

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:38

Or why is this happening?

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:40

That behavioral element fills in.

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:42

And I think that's, it can be such a funny experience, such

Kevin Dieny: 00:28:45

an interesting experience.

Jeff Sauer: 00:28:46

Talking about like personal missions is that data is cheap.

Jeff Sauer: 00:28:50

It's almost free.

Jeff Sauer: 00:28:51

I mean, it is free.

Jeff Sauer: 00:28:51

Google analytics can give you a lot of data.

Jeff Sauer: 00:28:53

It's the human element, it's the insights, it's the piecing together

Jeff Sauer: 00:28:57

what somebody's story might be.

Jeff Sauer: 00:28:59

That is really exciting to me.

Jeff Sauer: 00:29:01

And it's exciting to many people, but it, but it takes time and effort to do.

Jeff Sauer: 00:29:05

And, you want to get data so that it's not getting in your way.

Jeff Sauer: 00:29:08

You want to make it so you're getting as clean of data as possible.

Jeff Sauer: 00:29:11

So then you can do the piecing together this story as to why somebody came in.

Jeff Sauer: 00:29:16

I'll give you a quick one, and that is the reason why I started doing

Jeff Sauer: 00:29:19

phone call tracking for my clients is because I'd send them with Google

Jeff Sauer: 00:29:23

ads to a page and I'd get a couple of people filling out the form.

Jeff Sauer: 00:29:26

And I didn't know how to track the phone number.

Jeff Sauer: 00:29:29

And I was not getting credit properly for all the work we were doing, all

Jeff Sauer: 00:29:32

the things we were driving and on some clients they did phone call tracking

Jeff Sauer: 00:29:36

and other ones they didn't, and it was, 200% of the number of people who

Jeff Sauer: 00:29:41

filled out forms, did phone calls.

Jeff Sauer: 00:29:42

This is in the home improvement space.

Jeff Sauer: 00:29:44

And if we wouldn't have tracked that we would have had zero,

Jeff Sauer: 00:29:48

almost no attribution for our ads.

Jeff Sauer: 00:29:50

And they would have had to spend a, you know, a third as much money on ads.

Jeff Sauer: 00:29:53

They wouldn't have thought that it was successful.

Jeff Sauer: 00:29:55

And so you have to start a piece together what is the story here?

Jeff Sauer: 00:29:58

What are we trying to do?

Jeff Sauer: 00:29:58

And then what extra data or information can we put in place to

Jeff Sauer: 00:30:03

help us confirm that, to validate that this is what's happening?

Jeff Sauer: 00:30:06

And so that's how I fell into the world of call tracking is because

Jeff Sauer: 00:30:10

Google analytics does a lot, but it doesn't really do everything right.

Jeff Sauer: 00:30:14

These things can work together in synergy and in concert and it leads

Jeff Sauer: 00:30:18

to a better product and better results and better tracking of results.

Kevin Dieny: 00:30:22

You're touching on the ABC, the C of the conversion.

Kevin Dieny: 00:30:26

So we talked about the acquisition, we've talked about the behavioral

Kevin Dieny: 00:30:28

elements, the conversion, is something where not everything has to be a form.

Kevin Dieny: 00:30:34

It could be a call, it could be a chat, it could be a text now, it could be

Kevin Dieny: 00:30:39

a click to get directions, it can be an add to cart, it can be a purchase,

Kevin Dieny: 00:30:42

it can be a lot of things and you can miss out if you're not tracking all

Kevin Dieny: 00:30:48

the ways that your audience converts.

Kevin Dieny: 00:30:52

If you're just tracking one of them like, oh, I'm just going to track this form.

Kevin Dieny: 00:30:54

Well, what about the numbers?

Kevin Dieny: 00:30:55

What about the, their support lines?

Kevin Dieny: 00:30:58

Maybe there's sales lines, maybe there's a cart.

Kevin Dieny: 00:31:00

Maybe there's a number in the cart.

Kevin Dieny: 00:31:01

There's a lot there.

Kevin Dieny: 00:31:03

But it's important too.

Kevin Dieny: 00:31:04

Is there anything else that you wanted to add about the ABCs or

Kevin Dieny: 00:31:07

about the converting element here?

Jeff Sauer: 00:31:09

No, I would just look at it as getting past the initial fear

Jeff Sauer: 00:31:13

of data and the technical piece.

Jeff Sauer: 00:31:15

There's a lot of software out there that makes it easier than ever.

Jeff Sauer: 00:31:19

Google analytics made it easier than ever.

Jeff Sauer: 00:31:21

CallSource has made it easier than ever to track this.

Jeff Sauer: 00:31:24

They're just asking you to put snippets on your site and so on.

Jeff Sauer: 00:31:27

If you really want to get geeky and you have a lot of snippets of code,

Jeff Sauer: 00:31:30

Google tag manager is my favorite.

Jeff Sauer: 00:31:33

It puts them into containers and then it allows you to do a lot of extendability

Jeff Sauer: 00:31:37

and communication between systems.

Jeff Sauer: 00:31:39

That's a really cool thing to do, but, start looking at it as, how do

Jeff Sauer: 00:31:42

I track the data that's coming in so that then you can do the fun part.

Jeff Sauer: 00:31:46

Which is saying, how do I get more and better results?

Jeff Sauer: 00:31:50

And the companies that have the best results, it's not by chance.

Jeff Sauer: 00:31:54

They're not lucky.

Jeff Sauer: 00:31:55

It's not an accident.

Jeff Sauer: 00:31:57

It's because they say, okay, well, this is good, this

Jeff Sauer: 00:32:01

information, but how do I get more?

Jeff Sauer: 00:32:03

They stopped doing the things that aren't working or decide to

Jeff Sauer: 00:32:06

improve them, and they double down on the things that are working.

Jeff Sauer: 00:32:08

And you can't really do that with any certainty without

Jeff Sauer: 00:32:12

having this data in your hands.

Jeff Sauer: 00:32:14

Getting the data is one thing, fortunately it's easier than ever now.

Jeff Sauer: 00:32:18

And then analyzing it is the next thing, which is really important.

Jeff Sauer: 00:32:21

The things that it enables you to do are tremendous.

Jeff Sauer: 00:32:24

And that's where if you meet any resistance or if it's a little

Jeff Sauer: 00:32:27

bit overwhelming to think about these things, just realize that.

Jeff Sauer: 00:32:31

The feeling in the end, at the end of the day, to know that you put your

Jeff Sauer: 00:32:34

money in the right spot and that you will get a lift of any percentage.

Jeff Sauer: 00:32:39

It all happens because you put these steps in place.

Jeff Sauer: 00:32:42

And so it enables a ton for you.

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:44

A big takeaway of what you said there for

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:46

me, it was, this can be fun.

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:47

This can lift your business.

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:49

This can drive more traffic, it can drive better behaviors.

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:52

It can add more conversions, more sales revenue to your bottom line

Kevin Dieny: 00:32:58

you're already spending money on.

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:00

I'm talking to you businesses, you're already spending money on your marketing.

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:03

So knowing what's working, what's not working, being able to cut off the

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:08

fat and focus on what's important, or being able to properly say, this is

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:13

why we're not getting the results we want, or this is what's holding it back.

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:16

Or this could help us get more performance out of this.

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:20

A lot of that has to do with UTM parameters.

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:22

So in that sense, I say it's worth the time and it's valuable.

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:26

It takes those insights.

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:28

Provides them to you.

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:29

You need to look at them, understand them, measure them.

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:33

Understanding what's there.

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:35

But once you get the hang of that, then you're able to really improve performance

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:38

or reduce something that's friction or causing an issue for your audience to get

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:42

to wherever they want to get to which, which is ultimately the conversion there.

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:46

You're trying to get them there as fast as they can, and they want to get there

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:49

as fast as they can, as easy as they can with as much trust as they possibly can.

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:53

And you want to get out of the way.

Kevin Dieny: 00:33:54

So UTM parameters are helping all those things and making that so much easier.

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:00

We've been able to touch on, I think, why it is important

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:03

to bother with UTM parameters.

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:05

Was there anything else you wanted to add on this entire topic or

Kevin Dieny: 00:34:08

touch on before we close out Jeff?

Jeff Sauer: 00:34:10

I think that fun is a key operative here.

Jeff Sauer: 00:34:14

I tried a lot of stuff in my life as a marketer.

Jeff Sauer: 00:34:17

I tried a lot of stuff.

Jeff Sauer: 00:34:19

You know, social, SEO, PPC, call tracking, web design, everything.

Jeff Sauer: 00:34:26

The one thing that's always made me excited is to have that Aha moment to

Jeff Sauer: 00:34:31

understand human behavior better and how I can mold my website experience,

Jeff Sauer: 00:34:38

the media we buy, everything we do in order to get humans to do more.

Jeff Sauer: 00:34:43

And I can only imagine that if you're listening to this podcast

Jeff Sauer: 00:34:46

and you are a CallSource customer or prospective customer, then, okay.

Jeff Sauer: 00:34:51

I would feel pretty good if I could mold my customer's behavior to do

Jeff Sauer: 00:34:55

the action I want them to take.

Jeff Sauer: 00:34:56

I have control of that.

Jeff Sauer: 00:34:58

It's not just an accident that some companies are doing better than others.

Jeff Sauer: 00:35:02

It's part psychology, it's part data, it's part everything.

Jeff Sauer: 00:35:05

Right?

Jeff Sauer: 00:35:05

But the fun, the most fun part for me is to realize that this data supports you

Jeff Sauer: 00:35:10

and it helps you get answers more quickly.

Jeff Sauer: 00:35:14

We're in an era now, the online world where you can get fit data right away,

Jeff Sauer: 00:35:18

it used to be 50 years ago that you would do something and then you'd

Jeff Sauer: 00:35:22

know if it worked or not a year later.

Jeff Sauer: 00:35:24

Now you can tell if something's working in near real time.

Jeff Sauer: 00:35:27

And so that's exciting and that's something I'm like,

Jeff Sauer: 00:35:29

okay, this is really cool.

Jeff Sauer: 00:35:31

And I've dedicated my entire career to that feeling and helping

Jeff Sauer: 00:35:34

other people get that feeling too.

Kevin Dieny: 00:35:37

I have felt that feeling and I wish I could feel it all the time.

Kevin Dieny: 00:35:41

The Aha moments are so awesome and wonderful.

Kevin Dieny: 00:35:44

They are tremendous for careers, for businesses and I want

Kevin Dieny: 00:35:49

everyone to know you can do it.

Kevin Dieny: 00:35:50

UTMs are totally doable and gosh, it opens up the door to so much.

Kevin Dieny: 00:35:56

Now, if you want to, connect with Jeff, if you want to know more about,

Kevin Dieny: 00:36:00

what he does, what he can offer, Jeff, is there any sort of a way

Kevin Dieny: 00:36:04

people can get to know you connect with you or find out more about you?

Jeff Sauer: 00:36:08

Yeah.

Jeff Sauer: 00:36:08

So I have a website it's called datadrivenu.Com, like

Jeff Sauer: 00:36:13

data-driven than the letter u.com.

Jeff Sauer: 00:36:16

And it's basically where I teach people, the power of both the Google

Jeff Sauer: 00:36:21

suite of tools and Facebook ads and a bunch of other digital marketing areas.

Jeff Sauer: 00:36:25

But it's basically, if you have zero experience at all, or you're more of

Jeff Sauer: 00:36:29

like an intermediate marketer, either way, if you have no experience of data

Jeff Sauer: 00:36:33

or some experience or enough to be dangerous, I have several online courses

Jeff Sauer: 00:36:38

that teach you from the ground up.

Jeff Sauer: 00:36:40

Assuming no knowledge, even at the beginning, all the way to

Jeff Sauer: 00:36:43

where you can be pretty advanced.

Jeff Sauer: 00:36:46

Using Google analytics, tag manager, Google ads, Facebook ads.

Jeff Sauer: 00:36:49

And so data-driven U is like a, it's an online teaching community.

Jeff Sauer: 00:36:53

And then you can either get courses one at a time.

Jeff Sauer: 00:36:56

So you could just buy the Google analytics course, or I have a membership where

Jeff Sauer: 00:36:59

you can become and, learn everything from me and there's in the membership.

Jeff Sauer: 00:37:03

There's hundreds of hours of content.

Jeff Sauer: 00:37:05

And so if you were like, this is pretty interesting.

Jeff Sauer: 00:37:08

I know that I have a long way to go, or I want to learn more.

Jeff Sauer: 00:37:11

I would love to teach you more and again, I'd make it accessible.

Jeff Sauer: 00:37:14

So it's not like everything goes over your head in minute one, we go step

Jeff Sauer: 00:37:18

by step by step through these things.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:19

I'd totally check it out.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:20

I've been a follower of Jeffalytics for a long time and

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:24

I really, I get a ton out of it.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:26

It's one of those places where I go to and I walk away from it and I have

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:29

ideas for what I want to implement.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:31

I really recommend it.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:32

And I really appreciate Jeff you coming on to our podcast and adding

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:36

so much value to this and helping, I think everyone get a better foothold

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:40

on why UTMs are so important.

Kevin Dieny: 00:37:42

So really appreciate it.

Jeff Sauer: 00:37:44

Thanks for having me and happy campaign tracking to all of you.