In today’s digital world, two of your businesses most powerful tools are your website and the information you receive from the analytics tracking code on your website.
Most commonly used, Google analytics is a vital tool you should be using if you are not already. While it collects a large amount of useful information, it can be hard to sift through it all and retrieve what is most beneficial to your business.
What are the important actions people make on your website? Is your marketing driving people to those interactions and are they actually being completed?
Often you have no way to know this unless you take the time to complete some additional setup apart from simply installing the Google analytics tracking code.
Using google tag manager, you can setup “events” within Google analytics which track actions that your visitors take such as: watching a video, calling a phone number, clicking a button, downloading a file, and much more.
All of these actions can help you figure out how website visitors are interacting with your site and what “conversion actions” they are completing.
Without this knowledge, how will you know which digital advertising / marketing efforts are actually successful?
Once you have Google tag manger setup, you can see where users came from (Facebook, Linkedin, Google Ads, email, etc.) and if they actually followed through and performed a meaningful action.
What is Google Tag Manager?
Google Tag Manager is a tag management system that allows you to update tags and code snippets on your website or mobile app, such as those intended for traffic analysis or marketing optimization.
This allows you to add “tracking code” without actually having to add or know how to code.
This system is one of the easiest ways to track user actions on your website. It’s simple to set up, and it helps you test and troubleshoot your tracking.
How Do I Get Started with Google Tag Manager?
Here are the basic steps to setting up Google Tag Manager:
Create a Google Tag Manager account and install the code on your site: https://www.google.com/analytics/tag-manager/
It’s best to use the Google account that you use for all of your Google Products like Gmail, Analytics, Google Ads, etc.
Follow the steps to set up an account and container and install the Google Tag Manager code on your website. For more details, go here.
Now that the container is installed on your site you’re ready to start making tags! (But I’ll dive into how to set up specific tags in a later blog.)
Once your tags are set up, you’ll have the benefit of knowing exactly how many people are converting and where they are coming from so you can understand how your audience is interacting with your business online.
It’s a great way to track your marketing efforts so you can see what referral sources are bringing in leads and adjust your marketing accordingly.
If you have questions or would like more information on setting up tags, you can email me at [email protected].
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