Google Tag Manager: How Marketing People Can Stop Annoying IT People
Dear Online Marketer: Does your IT department hide from you when you want them to implement yet another new website tracking code? Does IT think that tracking codes are a low priority, or that installing them will break the website, so you have to wait for weeks or even months before anything gets done? And have you lost important data and delayed key marketing decisions as a result?
If this situation sounds familiar to you, you might be interested to know that Google recently announced the launch of Google Tag Manager, a free tool designed to make both your life and the lives of your IT colleagues a lot easier.
Google Tag Manager at a Glance
Google Tag Manager allows you to conveniently add, edit or remove tracking codes without needing any tech-savvy web developer’s help. All the IT folks will need to do is intall the Google Tag Manager on the website once. Then you’ll be able to manage your various tracking codes from the GTM Interface whenever you want, giving you the flexibility you need while freeing up the time of your IT workmates.
The new tool has built-in tag templates for Google AdWords Conversion Tracking, AdWords Remarketing, Google Analytics and DoubleClick Floodlight.
Image courtesy of http://www.clickinsight.ca/about/blog/tag-management-google
Main Features and Benefits
- IT friendly – the tool was designed specially for marketers, but techy people will love it too.
- Easy testing – you can verify the tags are working properly, as well as checking errors before publishing any changes live.
- Empowers agencies – I personally love this one. At E-Web we use Google Tag Manager to manage our clients’ tracking codes, without having to bug our clients’ web developers.
- Rule driven – you can create custom rules to collect the information you want at the right time.
- Plays well with others – it supports both Google and non-Google measurement and marketing tags.
Interested? How to Set Up Your GTM Account
Before you begin, please consider these points.
Now, follow these steps:
1. Go to Google Tag Manager and create your account.
2. Create a container for your site in the account you set up.
3. Get one of your tech-savvy colleagues to implement the container snippet to your site (just once) and remove any existing tags (this is very important!).
Once the above has been done, you can start adding, editing and deleting tags at the right time to get the information you need.
Important Things to Know
- Migrating to GTM will not make you lose any historical data captured by existing tags
- You can create tags on buttons, URLs, clicks and referrals
- There are different access levels, so make sure you give the appropriate access level to the people involved to avoid security issues
A Note to the IT Department
Are You Already Using GTM?
Please share your experiences with it in the comments! 🙂
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