Google Tag Manager Basics
Collecting data using tools like Google Analytics is critical for expanding your business’s online reach, converting leads into customers, and optimizing a digital marketing strategy to create stronger relationships with audience.
However, collecting data is easier said than done. Google Analytics aids the process, but it works more effectively with additional tags.
What are Google tags?
Tags are bits of code you embed in your website’s JavaScript or html to extract information.
For a marketer, necessary tag information usually includes how long users visit a page on your site, form submission, how they arrive on your site, which links they clicked, or even what products they removed from their shopping cart.
Each tag tracks something different. For instance, you might create a tag just to see how many people fil out the form on your “Contact us” page. That tag can then send more precise information to Google Analytics, or AdWords.
Unfortunately, manually coding tags can be a tedious and difficult process for marketers without much development or coding knowledge, and it is also time consuming to fill out tickets for the IT department responsible for such activity.
With Google Tag Manager, your whole tagging process becomes much easier. All you do is embed a code into your site pages once, and then each time you want to create a tag, Google Tag Manager codes it and embeds it for you.
What is a Google Tag Manager?
It is a system that allows you to create and monitor tags on a user interface, without writing new code each time you want to construct a tag. You simply embed the Google Tag Manager code into each page of your website. This process eliminates the manual process of creating tags, making your marketing process more efficient and precise.
Google Tag Manager Tasks
- It allows your developer an IT department to focus on bigger-picture tasks by eliminating the burden of coding each individual marketing tag.
- Since Google Tag Manager codes the tags for you, it significantly reduces the possibility of human error.
- Google Tag Manager enables your marketing department to take complete control over the tags they create and monitor, hence increasing efficiency. Additionally, using tags improves the accuracy of your analytics system, guaranteeing high-quality reports and a better sense of your true online audience.
How to setup Google Tag Manager
Setting Up an Account
Setting up a Google Tag Manager account is free in an easy two-step process. Below is how you do it:
1. Sign up for an account.
Go to the Google Tag Manager and click the green “Sign Up for Free” button. It will ask you input your account name (company), country, and website URL, as well as where you want to use Google Tag (web, IOS, android, AMP). When you’re finished, click the blue “create” button.
2. Follow the coding instructions.
Next, you’ll be given codes and instructions to include one code high in the <head> of your page, and other after the opening <body> tag. You can do this now, or apply the codes to your site later (they are accessible in your dashboard) Once you’re done, click “Ok”.
Set Up Tag
Once you have a Google Tag Manager account, the first thing you’re going to want to learn is how to setup a tag.
You can create unlimited configurations of tags in Google Tag Manager.
This is helpful for creating in-depth reports on your audience’s behavior, but it can become inefficient if you don’t organize your tags properly.
Google recommends using the following naming convention: tag type — name of app — detail.
Perhaps you name one tagging configuration, “AdWords conversions — iOS — 2018–02 campaign” and then another, “Google Analytics — CTA — About Us page”.
This way, you can correctly identify and collect data related to specific campaigns or pages.
For instance, the second tag, “Google Analytics — CTA — About Us page,” tells you how well your About Us call-to-action button is performing. That information is valuable, and might be lost if you named your tags more generally, like, “CTA button”.
Now that we’ve cleared that up, let’s check out how to set up a tag:
- Create a new tag in the Google Tag Manager Dashboard.
2. Configure your tag.
Title your tag, and then click anywhere in the top “Tag Configuration” box, to choose a tag type.
3. Choose a tag type.
There are dozens of tag types (they are not all displayed here, and you can also customize a tag type). (chose “Classic Google Analytics”
4. Link your tag to Google Analytics tracking.
If you want to tag tracked in Google Analytics account. Then, select a “Track Type”. I chose “Page View”, but there are plenty of other options.
5. Choose a trigger to determine when the tag is recorded.
Next, choose a trigger (a trigger means when you want the tag recorded, i.e. “every time someone visits the page”). I chose “All Pages”, to get insights every time someone views any of my web pages, but this varies depending your purpose.
6. Save your tag.
When you’re happy with the information in the “Tag Configuration” and “Triggering” boxes, click the blue “Save” button.
7. Activate your tag by pressing “Submit.”
Next, click the blue “Submit” button. Your tag won’t work until you do so.
When you click “Submit”, you’ll be taken to this “Submission on Configuration” page. There are two options: “Publish and Create Version” or “Create Version”. Since I am ready to push the tag onto all my site pages, I selected “publish and create Version”, and then pressed blue “Publish” button in the top right.
8. Add a name and description to your tags to keep them organized.
Finally, you will be shown this “Container Version Description”. To keep your tags organized, add a name and description to understand what you’re trying to record with this tag.
9. Ensure your tags appear in your “Version Summary” report.
Now, you’ve successfully created your first tag.
If you want to use Google Tag Manager in conjunction with Google Analytics, there are a couple steps you need to take.
1. You need to remove your GA code from your sites pages. You will only need your Google Tag Manager tag code embedded — if you use both, It will just report everything twice and mess up your data.
2. You will probably want to create a variable for your Google Analytics Track ID. If you save your GA Tracking ID as a variable, you won’t have to look it up every time you create a new tag from GA which makes life easy for you.
