If you are new to Google Analytics and AdWords, you may find a couple of things a bit tricky and difficult to understand. The most commonly faced issue is adding Google analytics code to the website. Although it is the simplest task for those who have complete knowledge of digital marketing and SEO, but those who are new to the digital world may find it daunting. Some of the common fears related to Google Analytics and AdWords that makes individuals step back include:
- Putting a code snippet in the wrong place
- Forgetting where are the other code snippets
- Putting in the wrong code snippet
- Not being sure how to make the changes required in the first place
- Changes to your website might break the links between your website
There is a special tool by Google, which is underutilized and can be used to fix the above mentioned issues. It is known as Google Tag Manager. It is a framework that can be linked to your website once and allows you to pull and edit custom tags to track any type of interactions, page views, event and much more.
GTM or Google Tag Manager is one of the best things that have happened to the field of data driven marketing in the recent years. It replaces complex tags used for marketing, analytics and testing with dynamic tags that are easy to implement and update. GTM has completely streamlined the process of creating website tags. Now with GTM, you can add scalability to your website and get enough space to create complex yet customized tags without spending much time.
There are several other reasons why every marketer should use Google Tag Manager and how it could prove beneficial to them.
1. Easy To Use
With GTM, you can add new tags and update them quickly and easily without involving complex code changes to the website. You don’t need the help of developer as your team members can themselves test each and every code change and deploy them when ready. This will streamline the process without spending much time. You can focus on more and larger projects instead of wasting your time on website improvements.
2. Future-proof your website
It may be possible that you may need to spend same time and put similar efforts in upgrading to Universal even on implementing GMT. But it will make future enhancements and upgrades simpler as modifications can be done through GMT and not through each website page.
3. Preview changes and debug them
There is a “Preview” option in GMT tool, which allows you to visit your website after making changes to it and check for the bugs or issues. It is necessary so that you can check that the tags you have built are working exactly the way want them to. It will give you all the information that is being transferred in real time. If you are happy with the changes you have made on the website, you can publish your changes. But if you are unhappy, then you can revise the changes made without setting your website live.
4. Version control
When you make changes to your website through GTM and publish them, a new archived version is created. It saves all the previous versions along with the latest one which makes it easy to rollback to former version at any time. This feature of GMT is ideal as it will keep tags organized, make troubleshooting easy and allow you to make changes frequently and undo them to get back to where you were.
5. Event Tracking
GMT allows you to track all kinds of things happening at your website like clicks, frm submission and video engagement. Earlier, the process of tracking was manual, but GMT auto-tracking feature doesn’t involve manual tagging to each link that you want to track. Instead, you can tag links by using attributes that already present on the link. All the data related tagging would be visible within Google Analytics.
6. Built-in tags or code-free
There are several built-in tags that comes with GTM, which makes you free from leaning complicated syntax or coding. These tags are available for classic and Universal Analytics, AdWords conversions, remarketing, etc. Creating tag has become fairly simple as you just have to enter information into form boxes. There are triggers that activate tags, which are also easy to set up, giving you maximum possible customization.
7. Functions with Google Analytics
In order to perform basic implementation of Google Analytics, GMT is essential. You can use GMT to send data to Google Analytics like events and page views. It is also compatible with the older codes that allow domain tracking.
8. Users and permissions management
It is completely under the control of GTM to assign permissions to the individual users. It controls internally who can make changes to the website and help with creating macros, tags and rules.
No one can deny the fact that Google Tag Manager is a very powerful and valuable tool. Though there are several ins and outs of this tag manager, but its usefulness completely overshadows all its shortcomings.