Benefits and Best Practices of using Google Tag Manager

When you are running a business you’ll find yourself wearing many, many different hats, but you’ll find that some things, like coding or developing your website, are just outside of your wheelhouse. You are not alone. No matter what industry you are in, or what you do or sell, you need a place online where your customers can reach you to find out more about your business, or to take action. Not every action may result in a lead or a purchase, and because of this, your business should also be ready and able to track how your visitors are interacting with your website.

Measuring and reporting this type of data allows you to gain valuable customer insights that are important to growing and scaling your business, both online and offline. Google Tag Manager has given business owners and non-developers these capabilities. GTM allows business owners and marketers the ability to track downloads, scrolling behavior, link clicks, form submissions, video activity, and more.

With GTM you have the ability to track and generate key data points for in-depth insights and analysis to improve your website and your business.

What is Google Tag Manager?

Your website consists of several different webpages. Each of these webpages is made using HTML code. This code contains several tags like paragraphs, images, headings, scripts, etc. Most analytic tools work by adding a script to the HTML code. Then we have to edit our HTML code to insert this tag, like the Facebook Pixel, to the head section of the website’s HTML code. After that, the script starts collecting information and sends it to Google’s analytics system for tracking and reporting. The more you add these third-party codes to your website, the messier it can become to manage. There are also potential issues like load speed, which come with managing many codes.

Google Tag Manager is a free solution to simplify this process and eliminate time-consuming editing tasks for your developers. With GTM, you just need to add the code onto your website and use Google Tag Manager itself, to add any further tracking code/scripts. This means those with access permission can add and update website tags for site analytics, conversion tracking, and remarketing without the intervention of the development team.

With Google Tag Manager, you can house all tags – including whether it’s Google Analytics code, Facebook Pixel code, or any other custom HTML code – in a universal workspace.

What are tags?

Tags are snippets of code or tracking pixels from third-party tools that measure traffic and visitor behavior. These tags tell Google Tag Manager what to do. Tags make it easier to target and remarket to your audience by offering insights into the impacts of your online social or advertising efforts. Tags also enable specific site functions including conversions. If your business is leveraging digital marketing strategies, GTM is a pivotal tool to add, edit, or remove measurement tags without any difficult coding.

Why should you use a tag management system?

Once the Tag Manager has been integrated into the website, it communicates with all other tracking codes you have stored in the Google Tag Manager. Not only is it time-consuming to manage tags without a system, doing so can delay or misrepresent important measurements being tracked or recorded. Trying to constantly update, change, or add new tags can also cause issues if not executed properly. With a tag management system, you can use triggers to specify which interactions should be recorded on your website.

This is essential when you want e-commerce product and promotion tracking.

Benefits of Utilizing Google Tags Manager

Works with Google Analytics

There are those who will confuse Google Tag Manager with Google Analytics and aren’t sure which they should be using. The answer is both. GTM allows you to install a basic implementation of Google Analytics via Google Tag Manager that gives you all the options you would have had in your previous Google Analytics implementation. GTM is also compatible with older onsite code for event tracking, page views, and cross-domain tracking.

Tracks Important Events

Event tracking means adding code to the website to track important visitor events like landing page views, clicks, video engagement, purchase conversions and form submissions, etc. Google Tag Manager’s auto-event tracking feature eliminates the need to manually tag each event you want to track. Instead, you can target links or buttons by attributes that are already on the link or by using a standardized naming structure.

There’s no struggle to code

With GTM you don’t need a web developer to add, edit, or remove your code, on the website. The same code snippet can contain various marketing and analytics tags easily placed on all pages of the website. Then, it takes a few clicks to edit, remove or add new tags and it can all be done through a user-friendly GTM interface.

Use Tag templates

Google Tag Manager comes with a number of important built-in tags for classic and Analytics, AdWords, website conversions, social tracking, remarketing, and so much more.

Get More Security

You have control over who has access to your GTM account and you can revoke permissions at any time, so if a user without access attempts to gain entry into your account from an unknown IP address or URL, Google will flag the suspicious account activity and notify you. Google automatically scans all tracking scripts added with Custom HTML tags in GTM accounts and pauses if they match a known malware domain, IP address, or URL.

It’s Free To Use

Just like Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager is free to create an account and manage.

Best Practices For Google Ads Manager

Structure your GTM account properly

Similar to the structure of Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager is made of accounts, tags, and containers. Each container has its own Javascript code that must be placed in a website’s source code. Google recommends using only one account per company and one container tag per website. Using multiple GTM accounts/containers can cause tracking and other issues down the line.

Use Naming Conventions

As you use GTM you will find that the more you use tags, triggers, and variables, the easier it can grow very quickly into a mess. It is recommended that you use clear naming systems and identifiers to help you implement and manage your tags. Easy name conventions mean you will spend less time trying to track, read and measure your data.

Only give GTM access to essential people

Google tag manager houses very important data points for your business, it’s a powerful tool and needs to only be accessed and managed by team members you can trust and who have experience with planning, testing, and implementing tags. can break your website functionality. GTM allows you to delegate access to other users at the Account and Container level. Users can be granted the ability to view or administer other users at the Account level and can be granted read, edit, approve, or publish rights at the Container level.

Always Test Before Publishing

Even if you feel like you’re in a hurry to launch new tags, always test configurations first. If you don’t like what you’ve created or it doesn’t create the intended results, you can always edit or delete and start new. Be sure that you and your team are running plenty of tests before publishing any changes live. Also, be sure to communicate any edits or changes to those team members who have access to your GTM.

Google Tag Manager is a powerful and useful tool and, if you have a website and plan to generate leads or purchase conversions, you need to have adequate tracking measures in place to capture critical data. Get started by setting up your free GTM account, and then reach out to the Idealgrowth team to help you optimize your account, and get the most from your marketing and website campaigns.