Is Digital Marketing Worth Your Time and Money? (How to Tell)

Tracking the impact of your digital marketing spending (both time and money) is essential.

Whether you’re a broker running a large firm with multiple locations or an agent just starting in the business, you’re probably doing some kind of marketing. After all, without marketing, how are people going to find you? And like all businesses, you also probably want to know where your money goes and how your spending contributes to your sales. For most areas of your business, tracking the impact of your spending (both time and money) is a no brainer. 

Then there’s marketing. For lots of real estate pros, and businesses at large, tracking the value of money spent on marketing seems complicated at best. Maybe you have a general sense of what works and doesn’t work. Maybe you’re using certain channels because they seem like what most people are using. Maybe a client has even mentioned that they found you via “x website.” But beyond that, we’re willing to bet it’s pretty unclear. 

Unfortunately, this is also one area where what you don’t know absolutely can hurt you. So what’s a realtor to do?

If you’re doing any digital marketing…

Odds are, you’re doing something, starting with the basics: Do you have a website? If not, you should check this piece out before continuing, because all of your other marketing efforts should (ideally) be centered on your site, your home base.

If you have a website, you’re probably doing something to promote it, your company, your listings, etc. Do you send emails? Do you use Facebook or other social media platforms? What about digital ads on Google, Bing, or paid social media campaigns? All of these digital spaces are increasingly popular and can be a valuable source of lead generation. They can also get really expensive if you’re not paying close attention to what’s working and not working.

...and you’re not tracking your efforts…

And therein lies the catch. How do you know what’s working? You might see how many followers you have on Facebook, how many new email subscribers you get (or lose) after a newsletter, or how many impressions your online ads have received. But how does that translate into an actual benefit to your company?

Ask yourself: do I know if people are actually coming to my website from my emails, ads, posts, etc.? And if they do come to my site, do I know if they’re looking around and contacting me?

...you might be losing money, wasting time, or both.

If your answer to those questions is “I don’t know” then you probably can’t judge how successful your digital marketing it. While you can use some benchmarks - like the total impressions or number likes a social media post gets or your open and click rates for email campaigns - those don’t give you the whole picture.

Without tracking and monitoring, your online advertising could turn into a one-way relationship: you show Facebook or Google your money, and they take it. Those platforms are happy to take your money without giving anything back.

And that’s a problem. If you’re spending your hard-earned cash and valuable time on digital marketing, you want to know if it’s worth it, right? If your efforts aren’t working, you want to know what’s not clicking. And if you’re absolutely killing it, don’t you want to know so you can do more of what’s working? No matter what the result, there’s no downside to having a more clear picture of the health of your online marketing. 

Sounds great, but how do I track everything better?

There’s actually a fairly easy - and more importantly, free - way to tighten up your online marketing tracking. Enter UTM codes. Yes, I know, that already sounds super technical and scary. But UTM codes are actually pretty easy to implement once you understand how they work.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. “Seriously, what even are UTM codes?!” you ask. According to Wikipedia, “Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) parameters are five variants of URL parameters used by marketers to track the effectiveness of online marketing campaigns across traffic sources and publishing media.”

Sure, the first half of that is a bit technical. But the second half is what we’re focusing on. Basically, UTM parameters are extra bits of information you add to a URL before inserting a link into your digital ads and outreach. Those extra bits of info then allow you to get a better picture of where traffic to your site is coming from when you’re looking in Google Analytics. 

You can also see how those people from specific channels behave once you’re on your site. So you’d be able to answer questions like:

• How many people got to our site from our latest email campaign? 
• Did anyone from our last email campaign end up looking at our latest listings page? 
• Are people coming to my site from my boosted Facebook post? And if so, do they stick around or leave as soon as the page loads? 
• Did I get any calls or emails from people coming to my site from my newest Google ad?

By knowing where people are coming from and how they behave on your site, UTM parameters help you track the impact of your online marketing across all of your different sources and platforms. 

How do I get started?

Before you run off to start Googling “UTM codes,” there are a few key things you need to set up first.

1. Do you have a website? UTM codes are all about tracking traffic to your site. Not to Zillow, Realtor.com, or any other site you’re active on. Don’t believe you need your own site? Head here! 
2. Do you have Google Analytics set up? If you have a website, you should be running Google Analytics on it. UTM codes provide information that your Analytics account reads and turns into useful reporting you can view. Never looked at your site’s Analytics? Head here!

Bonus Tip: If you’ve ever looked at your Analytics but are a little unsure of what exactly you should care about, head here for some tips on cleaning up your data and here for a full glossary of what those terms in Analytics mean.

Bottom Line

If you’ve got a website and Analytics, you’re ready to go! We’ve put together a complete guide to tracking the value of your online marketing with UTM codes. All you have to do is download it to get started!