Google Tag Manager (GTM) is a free tool that simplifies the process of managing and deploying marketing tags and tracking codes on a website or mobile app. Instead of manually adding code snippets to your site’s source code for every marketing tool, GTM acts as a single container that holds all your tags, which you can manage from a user-friendly web interface.
This centralises and streamlines your data collection, allowing marketers to quickly add, edit, or remove tags without needing a developer to modify the website’s code each time. This leads to faster campaign launches, more agile testing, and improved data accuracy.
GTM operates on three primary elements that work together to collect and send data:
These are the code snippets or tracking pixels from third-party tools. Examples include your Google Analytics 4 tracking code, a Meta (Facebook) pixel, or a Google Ads conversion tracking tag. Tags are what send data to their respective platforms.
Triggers are rules that tell GTM when to fire a specific tag. They listen for user interactions or page events. For example, a trigger could be set to fire a tag when a user clicks a button, submits a form, or views a specific page URL.
Variables are placeholders that store and pass information to tags and triggers. They hold dynamic values that change based on user actions. For instance, a variable could capture the price of a product in an abandoned shopping cart or the text of a button that was clicked.
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The traditional method of adding tags involved a developer manually placing code snippets directly into a website’s HTML. This was time-consuming and could lead to errors, site performance issues, and bottlenecks between marketing and development teams.
GTM solves this by acting as a central control panel. Once the single GTM container code is installed on your site, you can manage all your tags through its interface. You can set up new tracking, test it using Preview mode, and publish it live, all without touching the underlying website code. This empowers marketers to be more independent and responsive to campaign needs. It also includes features like version control that allow you to roll back to a previous working version if a new tag causes an issue.
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Ultimately, Google Tag Manager is a tool for businesses to take control of their digital data. By centralising the management of all your tracking codes, GTM simplifies a complex process, reduces the need for constant developer input, and helps to ensure the accuracy of the data you collect. This setup provides the transparency needed to measure the impact of your marketing efforts and make accountable, data-driven decisions that propel your business forward.
Google Tag Manager (GTM) is used for efficiently managing and deploying marketing and analytics tags on a website or mobile app without the need to modify the code. It simplifies tracking across various platforms, including Google Analytics, AdWords, and third-party applications.
The main difference between Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager is that Analytics is used for tracking and analysing website traffic, while GTM is a tag management system that allows you to implement and manage the tracking code for Google Analytics and other platforms on your website.
With GTM, you should track key interactions that align with your business objectives, such as form submissions, e-commerce transactions, downloads, and user engagement metrics. But once you know it works, you can track any element on a site.
Google Tag Manager is a free tool, that makes advanced tag management accessible without additional cost, though it also offers a paid version (Tag Manager 360) with extra features for larger enterprises.
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