How do I see which of my marketing brings people in?
Labels on a link tell you where a visitor came from. They answer one question: which of your marketing brought you enquiries and customers?
The prompt
“Make me labelled links for [what I am promoting], to share on [LinkedIn, my newsletter, a partner’s website], that go to [the page on my site].”
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Say your plan is a LinkedIn post that sends people to your website, where they sign up. The labels on the link let you see the people who came from that post.
1. Label the link you share
Your LinkedIn post links to your website, with labels added to the end of the address:
https://your-site.com/signup?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=autumn-launch
| Label | What it says | Example |
|---|---|---|
utm_source | Where did they come from? | linkedin |
utm_medium | What type of marketing? | social |
utm_campaign | Which marketing effort? | autumn-launch |
utm_content (optional) | Which post or which link? | demo-video |
Use the same campaign name everywhere you promote the same thing. Write every label
in lowercase. Analytics counts LinkedIn and linkedin as two different sources.
Send the link to the page that has your form, such as your signup or contact page. Bernard reads the labels from the address of the page the form is on. If a visitor lands on your home page and then clicks through to your contact page, the form does not see the labels.
2. Label the links that bring people in
For one campaign, the links you share might be:
| Link shared in | Source | Medium | Campaign |
|---|---|---|---|
| A LinkedIn post | linkedin | social | autumn-launch |
| Your newsletter from another tool | newsletter | email | autumn-launch |
| A partner’s website | partner-name | referral | autumn-launch |
| A printed flyer with a QR code | flyer | print | autumn-launch |
Use the mediums social, email and referral where they fit. Analytics sorts
visits into groups from them. It cannot sort a medium it does not know, such as
print, so those visits show in a group called Unassigned. The source and the
campaign are still kept.
Do not label links between pages on your own website. A new label replaces the one the visitor arrived with, so you lose where they really came from.
Do not label links that bernard already labels. Bernard labels links to your own site in your emails (Can I see which email sent people to my website?) and in the social posts it schedules for you.
3. See what happens after they arrive
Labels say where a visit started. They do not say what the person did next.
- Someone fills in the form on the page the link opened. Bernard keeps the labels with the new contact. Their page shows “via linkedin / social (autumn-launch)” in Where they came from (How do I know where a contact came from?). This works for forms bernard runs. A form from another company, such as HubSpot or Typeform, keeps its own record in that company’s tool.
- Visits to your site. Reports shows where visitors came from, sorted into groups such as social and email, with the top sources (How many people visited my site?). It counts only visitors who accepted your cookie banner.
- A sale or a course enrolment. These do not keep the labels yet.
4. Test one link
Before you share it:
- Open the labelled link in your browser.
- Fill in your own form with your own email address.
- Open the new contact and check Where they came from shows your labels.
If the labels are missing, check that the link was not shortened by a service that removes them, and that the page did not redirect to an address without them.
Ask Bernard to make the links
Make me labelled links for my autumn launch, for LinkedIn, my newsletter and Mark’s website, that go to my signup page.
Bernard checks the page address on your site, writes one link for each place, and keeps the names the same across all of them. It changes nothing on your site.
To learn why visits show as direct, and why “where did my customers come from” is so often unanswered, read the Measure article Why your analytics says “direct”.
Questions people ask
- Does making labelled links change my website?
- No. Bernard only writes the links for you to copy. Nothing on your site changes, so there is nothing to approve. Any change to your pages still waits for your approval.
- Do I need to label the links in my bernard emails and social posts?
- No. Bernard labels links to your own site in your emails and in the social posts it schedules for you. If you put your own labels on a link, bernard keeps yours.
- Can a label say who clicked?
- Never put a name or an email address in a label. Labels go to your analytics as part of the address, so they must only describe the campaign, never the person.
- Why do some visits show as direct?
- Direct means the visit came with nothing to say where it came from: no website that sent it and no labels. Links opened from WhatsApp, an email program, a PDF or a printed QR code often arrive that way. A label on the link fixes it.
- Does a sale keep the labels?
- Not yet. Today bernard keeps the labels when someone fills in a form on the page the link opened. A purchase or a course enrolment does not keep them.