Google Tag Manager (GTM) is a fantastic tool that allows marketers to take control of web tracking without the need to involve a webmaster each time a change is needed. Before looking at the benefits, let’s recap on what tags are and what purpose they serve.
What are Tags?
Simply, tags are snippets of code that are added to web pages that measure traffic, help us understand visitor behaviour and the impact of our online marketing efforts and allow us to use remarketing and audience targeting. Ultimately these tags help us to test and improve our sites and gain a better understanding of our online marketing activity.
Overtime many websites will have had lots of marketing tags added for tracking and measurement but many won’t have managed them efficiently. So what’s the problem? Too much code slows a site down and redundant and incorrect tags can distort results. Updating tags can be slow for web developers, possibly even delaying the launch of campaigns, with GTM marketers can take back control and avoid these issues.
Benefits of using Google Tag Manager
Quicker and more cost effective
- Google Tag Manager is FREE to use.
- Once GTM is set up there won’t be any need to involve the webmaster as changes will be easy to manage.
- Changes can be made instantly, no more waiting for developers to edit code.
It’s smart and gives you control
- GTM has a great built-in debug feature that makes sure your tags are working before you publish them to the live site.
- Another great feature of GTM is version control – every time a change is published GTM creates a new version making it easy to go back to an existing version. This is great for keeping tags organised and troubleshooting any tagging problems that might arise.
- GTM also has user permissions which mean that you can control who in the team can view/edit and publish changes.
- Not much coding experience? No problems. GTM has a number of build-in tags for Classic and Universal Analytics, Google Ads conversions, DoubleClick Floodlight, remarketing as well as other popular platforms. This means that tags can be customised with just a few pieces of information without the complication of implementing code to your website.
- Facebook, Twitter and other conversion and remarketing tags can also be very easily implemented using the Custom Tag option.
Google Analytics friendly
- If you haven’t yet upgraded your Google Analytics Classic to Universal GTM can help with that too! GTM can be used to make the switch over a gradual process and allow you to test as you go. Whilst implementing GTM would take a similar amount of time as upgrading to Universal, future upgrades will be much simpler as changes can be made through GTM opposed to making changes to each page of your website.
How to set up Google Tag Manager
- For most getting set up is easy, once you’ve created an account, added a snippet of code to your site you can start managing tags!
- You will need to know what tags you currently have set up on your site so it’s advisable to speak to your web developers to get set up and once that is done you won’t need to bother them anymore.
- For step by step instructions visit Google Tag Manager
Knowing what information your site is collecting and trusting the data is a powerful resource that can help you make some good online marketing decisions. We encourage you to take control of your marketing tags with Google Tag Manager and start saving yourself time and money whilst gaining valuable insights.
For more information on how LOGIC1 can help you with Google Tag Manager browse our site further.