UTM Parameters Explained for Contractors

68% of contractors can’t tell you which marketing channel drove their last 10 leads. They know they got calls last week, but they’re not sure if those came from the Google ad, the Facebook post, the email blast, or the postcard they sent.

When you don’t know what’s working, you keep spending on everything. That’s how you end up burning $500/month on Facebook ads that produce nothing while starving the Google campaign that’s actually booking jobs.

UTM parameters solve this. They’re small bits of text you add to your URLs that tell Google Analytics exactly where traffic came from. No guessing, no asking “how did you hear about us,” no relying on customers to remember.

What UTM parameters actually are

UTM stands for Urchin Tracking Module, named after a company Google bought in 2005. You don’t need to know that. What you need to know is that UTMs are tags you stick on the end of a URL to track where clicks come from.

A normal link to your website looks like this:

www.yourcompany.com/water-heater-repair

A link with UTM parameters looks like this:

www.yourcompany.com/water-heater-repair?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=water-heater-promo

Everything after the question mark is tracking information. When someone clicks that link, Google Analytics records that they came from Facebook, through a paid ad, on your water heater promo campaign.

The visitor doesn’t see any of this. The page loads normally. But you now know exactly which marketing effort drove that visit.

The five UTM parameters

Google recognizes five UTM parameters. You’ll use three of them constantly and two occasionally.

utm_source (required)

Where the traffic is coming from. The website, platform, or publisher.

Examples: google, facebook, yelp, email, postcard, doorhanger

utm_medium (required)

How the traffic got to you. The marketing channel or mechanism.

Examples: cpc (cost per click/paid search), organic, social, email, print, referral

utm_campaign (required)

The specific campaign or promotion. This is how you identify which effort drove the traffic.

Examples: spring-ac-tune-up, water-heater-promo, june-newsletter, neighbors-postcard-78701

utm_term (optional)

The keyword you bid on. Mostly used for paid search.

Examples: emergency-plumber-austin, hvac-repair-near-me

utm_content (optional)

Differentiates between variations. Useful for A/B testing ads.

Examples: blue-button, video-ad, headline-a

How contractors actually use UTMs

Skip the theory. Here’s how this works in practice.

Google Ads

Google Ads can auto-tag your URLs, which is better than manual UTMs for most purposes. Turn on auto-tagging in your Google Ads settings and you’re done.

But if you want manual control, append UTMs to your final URLs:

?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=ac-repair&utm_term={keyword}

The {keyword} part dynamically inserts whatever keyword triggered the ad.

Facebook Ads

Facebook doesn’t auto-tag. You need UTMs on every ad.

In Ads Manager, when you’re setting up your ad, scroll to the “Website URL” section. There’s a “Build a URL parameter” button. Use it.

A typical Facebook ad UTM:

?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=summer-ac-special

If you’re running multiple ad variations, add utm_content to tell them apart:

&utm_content=video-ad

Email campaigns

Every link in every email should have UTMs. Every single one.

If you’re promoting a spring AC tune-up:

?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=spring-ac-tuneup-2026

Most email platforms like Mailchimp or Constant Contact have built-in UTM fields. Use them instead of manually adding parameters to each link.

Direct mail and print

This is where UTM tracking gets interesting for contractors. Print campaigns have always been hard to measure.

Create a unique URL for each print campaign:

yourcompany.com/neighbors

Set up that URL to redirect to your main page with UTM parameters attached:

yourcompany.com?utm_source=postcard&utm_medium=print&utm_campaign=neighbors-march-2026

When someone types in the short URL, they land on your main site but the UTMs fire. You can see exactly how much traffic came from that postcard drop.

Some contractors use QR codes instead. Same concept - the QR code links to a URL with UTMs baked in.

Google Business Profile

Your GBP drives traffic but it’s annoyingly hard to track. Add UTMs to the website link in your profile:

?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=gbp

Now you can separate GBP traffic from regular organic Google traffic in your reports.

Naming conventions matter

The most common UTM mistake is inconsistent naming. If one campaign uses “facebook” and another uses “Facebook” and a third uses “fb,” you’ll have three separate sources in your reports.

Pick a convention and enforce it:

Sources: All lowercase, no spaces. google, facebook, yelp, email, postcard.

Mediums: Use Google’s standard terms when possible. cpc for paid search, organic for unpaid, email for email, social for organic social, paid for paid social.

Campaigns: All lowercase, hyphens instead of spaces. spring-ac-2026, water-heater-promo, neighbors-78701.

Write these down. Share them with anyone who creates links. Inconsistency ruins your data.

Reading UTM data in GA4

Once you’ve got UTM-tagged links in the wild, the data shows up in Google Analytics.

Go to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition. You’ll see a breakdown by session source/medium. Click on any row to drill deeper.

For campaign-level data, go to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition, then add “Session campaign” as a secondary dimension using the pencil icon.

You can now answer questions like: How many visitors came from my Facebook water heater campaign? What’s the conversion rate from my email newsletter versus my postcard campaign?

Building a UTM spreadsheet

Keep a running log of every UTM-tagged URL you create. A simple spreadsheet works:

Campaign	Source	Medium	Full URL	Launch Date	Notes
spring-ac-2026	facebook	paid	yoursite.com/ac-tune-up?utm_source=facebook…	3/1/26	Video ad targeting homeowners
spring-ac-2026	email	email	yoursite.com/ac-tune-up?utm_source=email…	3/1/26	March newsletter

When someone asks “what’s working?” you can pull up the spreadsheet, cross-reference with GA4, and give a real answer.

Free UTM builder tools

You don’t need to type UTM strings by hand. Google offers a free Campaign URL Builder. You fill in the fields, it generates the tagged URL.

There are also Chrome extensions that let you right-click any URL and add UTM parameters without leaving the page.

For teams, tools like UTM.io provide a shared workspace where everyone uses the same naming conventions and all URLs are logged automatically.

Common UTM mistakes

Tagging internal links. Never put UTMs on links within your own website. They overwrite the original source data. If someone comes from Facebook, clicks your homepage, then clicks a UTM-tagged link to your services page, GA4 now thinks they came from that internal link, not Facebook.

Forgetting to track. You run a postcard campaign but forget to use a trackable URL. Now you have no data on whether it worked.

Inconsistent naming. We covered this, but it’s worth repeating. “Facebook” and “facebook” are different sources to GA4.

Making URLs too complex. Long UTM strings are hard to debug. Stick to the three required parameters unless you have a specific reason to add more.

Not testing. Before launching any campaign, click your UTM link and check GA4’s Realtime report. Make sure the data shows up correctly.

UTMs are the starting point

UTM tracking tells you where traffic came from. It doesn’t tell you which traffic became customers.

Someone clicks your Facebook ad, browses your site, leaves, comes back two weeks later from a direct visit, and calls. GA4 credits that lead to “direct” traffic. Your Facebook ad gets no credit.

Marketing attribution connects the full customer journey. Conversion tracking tells you when visits become leads. UTMs are the foundation that makes those insights possible.

Get your UTM system in place first. Track every campaign. Build the habit of checking the data monthly. The contractors who know exactly which marketing dollars produce jobs make better decisions than those who guess.