If you’re a marketer or business owner, Google Tag Manager is going to be your new best friend.
It is arguably the most popular tag management system, and is used by at least 4.9 million sites across the web.
What is it?
Google Tag Manager promises to make managing and implementing tags, a task that used to involve lots of complicated coding, easy enough for marketers with no knowledge of web development to do.
It requires a little bit of upfront training to use, but for the most part, this tool lives up to its claims of being simple enough for marketers and business owners to navigate.
According to Ironpaper:
Google Tag Manager … allows the marketing team to add and update their own website tags – including javascript code snippets for site analytics, conversion tracking, and remarketing – while the development team focuses on larger projects.
Instead of wasting resources by having your developers work on low-level coding tasks, you’ll be able to take tag management into your own hands with the free, easy-to-use tool.
What are tags?
Tags are snippets of code that collect information about traffic and visitor behaviour and send it to third parties like Google Analytics.
Adding tags to your website through Google Tag Manager allows you to collect much more data than you could with Google Analytics alone.
Here are just a few of the things you’ll be able to track:
- Views on a specific page
- Clicks on buttons on the website
- Downloads
- Purchases
- Form submissions
So, if you’re committed to data-driven marketing, you should definitely consider setting this free tool up on your website.
Need more convincing? Here are 8 reasons why you should be using Google Tag Manager.
Why you should use Google Tag Manager on your website
1. Easy to use
Google Tag Manager is extremely easy to use. It has a simple interface that allows you to implement and manage your tags even if you have zero knowledge of coding.
2. Easy to update
Tracking codes used to be coded directly into the website’s source code. Every time you wanted to make a change, a developer would have to go back through multiple files, find the code snippets, and fix the code.
Google Tag Manager makes it easy to tweak your tags. They’re all managed in one simple interface where you can make changes to any tag you want in a snap.
3. Useful debugging features
This tag manager has a built-in debugging feature that allows marketers to test their tags before they go live to make sure they work.
4. Version control
Every time you make a change through Google Tag Manager, the previous version is archived. So if one of the changes you made doesn’t work, you can rollback to the previous version, making troubleshooting easy.
5. Easy to set permissions
If you have lots of people on your marketing team, you’ll be glad to know that setting permissions for individual users is quick and easy.
6. Built-in tags
This tag manager is preloaded with a number of important tags for Universal Analytics, AdWords conversions, and remarketing. It also allows you to customize them without needing to change complicated code.
7. Works with Google Analytics
Google Tag Manager functions seamlessly with Google Analytics. Data can be sent directly from Google Tag Manager so you can analyze it, discover trends, and store it all in one place.
8. Auto-event tracking
Instead of making you manually tag each link you want to track, Google Tag Manager has an auto-event tracking feature that detects when certain events are happening and collects the data for you.
You don’t have to be a tech whiz to add tags to your website. With Google Tag Manager, marketers and business owners can collect lots of important data about visitor behaviour and activity on their website, all without the help of a developer.