At this point, I am sure many of you have heard about Google Tag Manager, but do you know exactly what it is or what it is fully capable of? Odds are, no. The truth is that very few people actually understand the plethora of opportunities that Google Tag Manager has to offer. Furthermore, some online marketers are unfamiliar with the basic concept of tags to collect data. Have no fear: this is going to be your comprehensive tutorial and guide. We’ll cover:
- What is Google Tag Manager
- Why marketers and IT teams are so excited
- Why you should use Google Tag Manager
Let’s jump right in!
What is Google Tag Manager
Let’s start things off simple by explaining what exactly a tag is.
According to Google, “tags are tiny bits of website code that let you measure traffic and visitor behavior, understand the impact of online advertising and social channels, use remarketing and audience targeting, test and improve your site, and more.”
Now, let’s explain this without all of the marketing buzzwords. A tag is how we track metrics on websites by sending data to third parties, such as Google.
Without tags, we would not have all of the wonderful data and information available in Google Analytics or AdWords. And what kind of world would it be without all that data?
Google Tag Manager is here to make our lives a little simpler by helping marketers improve the data they gather while increasing the speed that they can safely make changes to the metrics they need to track. GTM is a free tool that lets you manage the tracking tags for your website in one aesthetically pleasing UI with only one actual injection of code into your website’s source. It allows marketers the ability to deploy the tags they need without giving our IT guys heart attacks. IT teams can rest easy since we no longer have to play around with injecting snippets of code into the website’s source and risk messing up the function of a website.
Why Marketers and IT teams are so excited
I’m going to start off with a little background on how we used to track data before Google Tag Manager.
- How it used to be done
Before the days of GTM, if you wanted to track a specific metric like how many people click on a particular button (e.g. – Details or Buy Now) then you would have to insert a snippet of code onto your website’s source. This requires some technical skills and also poses a very real threat of messing up something on your beautiful website. Often times, implementing tags required both the marketing team and the IT team to work together to get this job done safely. Unfortunately, this process was very time-consuming and tied up the IT team on simple tasks when they could be performing more complex jobs. The task is further complicated if you use an out-of-house IT team who only pushes updates to your website periodically. Additionally, if you ever changed a button, you would have to find your old snippet code and inject a new one. What a headache!
- How much easier it is now
With Google Tag Manager, you simply have to inject the GTM container code snippet into every page of your site, one time and one time only. After that, marketers can use the Google Tag Manager UI to create new tags to track the exact data and metrics they need to perform their job.
- How much safer GTM is
Since messing with your website’s code can be detrimental to a website’s function if you do not know what you are doing, Google was smart enough to allow for different levels of user permission: View, Edit and Publish. With this setup, a container should only need 1-2 users with the publish permission, a few marketers with the edit permission and countless individuals with the view permission. If needed, this gives the IT team some reassurance that no one is going to publish a tag without their approval since publishing incorrect tags can skew data.
GTM also offers an incredibly useful safety net in case something does go wrong – Version Control. Every time you make changes or publish new tags, GTM will update the version of your tags and archive it. This creates a very useful (and reassuring) safety net in case anything goes wrong with your site. You can simply rollback to a previous version when your site was working and remove the changes that caused issues to your site or tracking.
It also offers some very useful tools like a Debug/Preview option that allows you to look at the tags that are firing whenever you interact with a previewed version of the tags on your website. Additionally, Google included automatic error checking that prevents publication if tags are not formatted properly.
Why You Should Use Google Tag Manager
GTM offers countless options and benefits for tracking digital data on your website, but I am going to run you through a few of the most exciting ones.
- Built-In Tags
Luckily, Google is great at simplifying even the most technical tasks to a level where nearly anyone with some know-how can achieve. Built-in tags are key for simplifying the creation of new tags to track data. GTM has included tags for Universal Analytics, Adwords remarketing and conversions, Google consumer surveys along with many other Google and third party options. This is extremely helpful to marketers who are just starting with GTM and who do not have much coding experience. These allow you to customize the tags with just a few pieces of information and skip the technical complications of implementing custom HTML code. Thanks, Google!
- Do more with less
Data is so important to every marketer’s decisions, and as we all know, data changes are constant and can happen in the blink of an eye. In the era of Big Data, it is becoming increasingly more advantageous to leverage available data to give you and your clients a stronger competitive advantage. With Google Tag Manager, if we all of a sudden wanted to track the number of people who fill out a contact form on a new landing page for a short term promotional campaign, we can create a tag, set up the triggers for the tag, test it with Google’s handy-dandy preview and debut tool, then implement it all in just an hour or less. Google Tag Manager essentially helps us stay on top of our client’s needs and goals in a very timely manner. With a little training and practice, nearly anyone can do this without the IT department looking over your shoulder.
Furthermore, since marketers no longer need ITs help to implement and update code snippets on your website’s source, there will be much less cross-department interaction and the whole process will be streamlined. This will let your IT team work on more complex tasks that really require their brain power, and let marketers work their magic on the numbers and analyze the exact data they need all on their own. I’d call that a win-win!
- Speedier Website
No one likes to wait for a website to load. To make matters worse, people’s expectations of website load time seem to be increasing by the day. According to Aberdeen Group, “a 1-second delay in page-load time equals 11% fewer page visits, a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction and 7% loss in conversions.” Who knew that such a small delay could have such a dramatic impact??
While implementing GTM may not shave an entire second off your page’s load time, it has the potential to save you some serious time and also prevent excess code snippets from piling up in the future and dragging your site’s speed down.
- Google Tag Manager is Free!
This benefit does not need much explanation. We are all familiar with the vast amount of software tools that Google offers to the public for free. From the mundane to the most technical tasks, Google probably has a free software out there to assist you, and Google Tag Manager is quickly becoming one of the most talked about free roll-outs.
Google also offers free interactive training on Google Tag Manager through Analytics Academy. If you are just beginning or if you have already spent extensive time with GTM, I highly recommend checking out the available lessons.