Marketers rejoice because the clever individuals at Google have managed to pull off yet another one of those ingenious stunts, this takes the form of a tag manager. A place where you as the marketer can implement and manage campaign tags without waiting in agony for your script to be implemented. We all know that it can sometimes take a very long time for IT departments to notice there is campaign script lying around. Now marketers have the freedom to implement those tags without the extra hassle. Without further ado, let’s get started….
Google Tag Manager (GTM) is a platform to manage and implement tags to your website without the hassle of changing the web script. You simply identify your tag and then give it a rule when to fire (more on that in a later blog). I am going to take you through the steps on how to kick-start your very first adventure into this platform.
Step 1 – Create an account
Once you have entered the Google Tag Manager website, you will have to sign up using your gmail account. Once you have signed in, it will take you through a series of steps to make it even more convenient for you as a user. This ensures you navigate through the site in the correct order. They have also added a hit and tips block on the side to help you when you run into difficulty.
Give your account a name. Through a single Google account, you can create and manage many different GTM (Google Tag Manager) client accounts. Just as you will find a list of your client accounts in Google Analytics and Google AdWords, you will find one in your GTM accounts. I like the consistency from Google, as this ensures familiarity throughout all their platforms.
Step 2 – Create a container
Always name the container after the website you want to place the tags in e.g. www.example.com. A container serves as a holding area where all your tags will be located for the specific website. Google has made a couple of tag templates available from the get go e.g. Universal Analysis, AdWords Conversion Tracking and Custom HTML tags to name a few. Because GTM is desktop and mobile app friendly, you have to choose one after naming your container. We are discussing the web version in this blog, but will have a blog up soon for creating a profile for mobile apps. Once you have selected the ‘Web Pages’ option, it will give you an option to add domains (optional) and also to select your time zone.
Step 2 ½ – Container Snippet
A container snippet is provided with each container that is created. It is vital to add this container snippet after the opening <body/> tag on every page of your site. The snippet will look something like this-
Hint – WordPress will need you to install a simple plugin. Further instructions on how to install the container snippet into your WorkPress, please follow this link – http://goo.gl/HA0v4R (Also a link to download the plugin)
Step 3 – Adding Tags
Now that the GTM code snippet is implemented on all pages of your website the next step is to fill up that empty container. As there are so many different tags at your disposal, we will be covering the different tag types in my next blog. To add a new tag, you have to click on a big red button that says ‘New’ as seen below. This will give you a drop down box, where you will click on tag (other options are rule and Macro).
This was a basic instruction manual on how to navigate your way through the first part of becoming a tag master. If you would like to know more about Google Tag Manager, please see the video below. And if you would like to create your own profile, then follow this link and follow my easy steps – https://www.google.com/tagmanager/
Some other great posts:
Matthias Wobrock – Container Tags Can Save Time and Resources
Simo Ahava’s Blog – The Container Snippet: GTM Secrets Revealed
Justin Cutroni – Analytics Talk: Bye Bye JavaScript! Auto Event Tracking with Google Tag Manager
