You may have heard of Google tag manager from a Digital marketing specialist or some web developer (less chance), right?

So before we know what Google tag manager is, why and how should we use it etc., lets know the basics about tags for those who have no idea about coding.

What are tags?

Tags are pieces of code that you insert into your website’s JavaScript or HTML to provide specific information.

Tag data that marketers require typically includes how long users spend on a page on your site, form submissions, how they arrived at your site, what links they clicked, and even what products they removed from your site.

Each tag follows something different. For example, you can create a tag to track how many people fill out a form on the “Contact Us” page.  This tag can then send more accurate data to Google Analytics, AdWords(Google Ads) or another third-party service.

Html tags look like this. Check image below.

Unfortunately, as you can see, coding tags by hand can be a long and difficult process for marketers like us with little development or coding experience, and filling tickets for the IT department is time-consuming.

Google Tag Manager greatly simplifies the entire tagging process. All you need to do is place the code once on your website pages and Google Tag Manager will encode and implement it every time you want to create and use a tag.

What exactly is Google Tag Manager?

Google Tag Manager is a tag management system that allows you to create and track tags in the user interface rather than having to write new code each time.
Simply paste the Google Tag Manager code on every page of your website. This eliminates the need for manual tag creation, making tracking more efficient and accurate.

In simple terms, Google Tag Manager is a tag management application that acts as a bridge between a website and marketing/analytics technologies. 

Below is the example of Google tag manager code.

You have to paste this code once in your website and then you are done. You can manage all tags by Google Tag Manager user interface and do not have to bother with writing tags inside your website again and again.

Why Should we use Google Tag Manager?

You will be asked to add a piece of their JavaScript code (also known as a tag) to your website every time you want to install Google Analytics or any other web tracking tool. Isn’t that the case?

Hotjar, Google Analytics, or any other tool will require you to add their own code (tag) to your website. When a visitor arrives at your website, the tracking code is also loaded. As a result, the visitor is being tracked.
Adding a tag to your website is not so hard. Simply ask the developer, and he or she will do it (sometimes the same day, sometimes in a few days, but still reasonable since it only needs to be done once).

But there’s a catch.
GA4(Google Analytics 4) initially provides a large number of statistics as well as some automatic event tracking features. However, in order to make truly informed decisions, you must track a lot more: interactions (such as form submissions), sales, and so on.

There are also other tags like:

• Google Ads Conversion Tag
• Remarketing Tag.
• Facebook Pixel code.
• Pinterest tag.
• Twitter Tag.
• LinkedIn Tag.
• Any other custom HTML/Javascript code.

This entails adding multiple tracking codes to your website, which isn’t always a “one-time project”. You must constantly add new tracking codes while also editing/deleting existing ones.

This is the point at which the developer (and the IT department) become a bottleneck. Marketing/analytics activities are frequently second priority as he works on his tasks. That is why you and your team must wait. And wait.

If we point out the advantages of Google Tag Manager:

1. First, it doesn’t burden developers and IT from having to code each marketing tag, allowing them to focus on more important responsibilities.
2. Second, because Google Tag Manager encrypts the tags for you, human mistake is considerably reduced.
3. Google Tag Manager provides your marketing team with complete control over the tags they develop and track. Giving marketers complete control over your tags will enhance efficiency.
4. Furthermore, tagging enhances the analytics system’s accuracy, resulting in higher-quality data and a better grasp of the true online audience. Because Google Tag Manager allows you to test your tracking tags to ensure they are activated when a page is loaded or a button is clicked.
5. Google Tag Manager is free, so you can try it out virtually risk-free.
6. Google Tag Manager includes some useful built-in tags for Google Analytics 4, Google Ads conversions, retargeting, and other purposes.
7. To track events like clicks, form submissions, and other actions, a developer must add unique JavaScript codes to a website. Auto-event tracking is a function that Google Tag Manager offers to make things simpler. When a certain trigger is enabled in Tag Manager, it will begin automatically listening to specific website interactions by visitors.
8. Moreover, if you are unable to discover the tag template you require, check out the community gallery where other users are creating quite useful things. You can also use a Custom HTML tag as a substitute.
9. Thus, a marketer with little or no coding skills can customize tags without the need for sophisticated code or the assistance of a developer.

Consider modifying your tags and how they work without changing the source code of your website.
Instead, you just edit tags in the GTM user interface and publish changes with the click of a button. Sounds easy, right?

Google Tag Manager or Google Analytics:

When deciding which to utilize next, many beginners mix up Google Analytics with Tag Manager. The answer is that these two instruments complement each other rather than replace each other.
Google Analytics is a service that collects visitor data and displays it in a variety of reports, whereas Google Tag Manager is in charge of allowing technologies such as GA4.

To summarize, Google Tag Manager allows you to handle multiple JavaScript tracking codes (also known as tags) on your website. One such tag is the Google Analytics tracking code.

How to Set Up Google Tag Manager

Account Creation

You can create a free account in two simple steps, but it is distinct from any other Google Analytics or Gmail accounts you might have. We’ve documented our account setup procedure so that it will be simple for you.

What you should do is:

1. Create an account.

Click the green “Sign Up for Free” button while you are on the Google Tag Management website. Next, enter details like the country, website URL, account name (business), and the location where you want to use Google Tag (web, iOS, android, AMP). Click the blue “Create” button after you’re done.

2. Follow the code guidelines.

Next, you’ll be given two codes. Add the first one anywhere within <head> of your page and the second one right after the opening of <body> tag. Apply the codes to your website now or at a later time (they are accessible in your dashboard). Click “Ok” once you’re done.

Click here for image of Google tag manager codes.

All the tags will be fired when they are configured, after we paste these codes.

If you’re using a well-known content management system like WordPress, there’s good GTM plugin that simplifies installation of Google Tag Manager and also offers a few extra benefits.

For instance, the incredible GTM4WP plugin for WordPress. It helps install Google Tag Manager correctly, but you can also learn some other information from it, such as page author, page titles, and other things. This data can then be converted into GTM variables and used in tags and triggers.

How To Install Google Tag Manager: Summary

Just follow Google’s instructions.

The best place to paste the Google Tag Manager script portion is in the head of your website. You should paste he no-script portion somewhere in the body, ideally just after the body tag.

This ensures that your GTM marketing tags will be fired as soon as possible without causing too much data loss. The later your tags fire, you risk losing some of your data.

Instructions to Use Google Tag Manager (Your First Setup):

Step-1

The first tag you should create is Google Analytics 4 (GA4). Most marketers and web analysts follow this first. This is identical to GA4’s request that you put their gtag code snippet to every page of your website. Therefore, taking everything into account, we’ll choose the more flexible way i.e., GTM.

Go to analytics.google.com to get started. Click Create Property in the Property section after you have navigated to the Administrator section of the Google Analytics interface by hitting the Admin button in the bottom left corner.

Step-2

Then enter the name of your property. It could be the name of your business, website, brand, etc. Choose the nation, reporting time zone, and primary currency used by your company.

Step-3

Then after pressing next, you will answer some questions about your business, like industry, number of employees, how you intend to use GA4 etc. After clicking create, your property will be created.

After that you need to configure your first data stream. “Events” will be sent to your Google Analytics 4 property from this data source. One property can contain many data sources like, three websites, one Android app, and one iOS app.

For a website tracking, click on first option web.

Step-4

Enter your website’s URL after that (for example, https://www.mywebsite.com). Select protocol (http or https). Enter the name of your website after that.

While creating a data stream in Google Analytics 4, you have the option to enable or disable Enhanced Measurement. Using this feature, advertisers obtain most events in the reports without requiring assistance from developers in Google Tag Manager.

Next, press the Create stream button. After you create a data stream (web), you will see a Measurement ID.

Step-5

In the top-right corner, you will see the tracking ID of your new property. Copy it. We’ll use it in Google Tag Manager.

In GTM interface, select GA4 configuration under Tags > New on your Google Tag Manager container.

Enter the ID that you copied from the GA4 interface in the Measurement ID field. If you wish to automatically track page views, keep the Send a page view event when this configuration loads checkbox checked.

Keep it, enabled. Nevertheless, in specific circumstances, such as for single-page applications, it is advised to uncheck the pageview checkbox and create an independent configuration tag.

Choose All Pages in the Triggering section, then give the tag a name, such as GA4 Configuration – [measurement-id].