Google Tag Manager Tutorial: A Go-To Training Guide

Check out our Google Tag Manager tutorial to discover how to fully utilise the must-have tool for business owners and marketers.

Helping to track and measure analytics and traffic, GTM is the perfect bit of kit to attribute your marketing success across multiple platforms.

Not only does GTM ensure your digital marketing is as optimised for success as it can be, but it also saves you an incredible amount of time. How? By facilitating the process of deploying tags such as Facebook Pixels and Google Analytics onto your website.

What is Google Tag Manager?

Google Tag Manager is a rare case of a marketing tool doing exactly what it says on the tin. No nonsense. It is essentially a tag management system that enables users to upload, update and amend tracking codes deployed on their website(s) without editing your site's HTML code.

As most marketers, website owners and web developers know, codes and tags can be a rather complicated process. Google recognised this as a common, recurring pain point, and collated the process for each separate tag in one simple, easy-to-use tool. Negating the need to amend code saves so much time and stress, too.

Google Tag Manager Tutorials

How to install Google Tag Manager

To create a tag, you'll obviously need to add it to your site. This is a straightforward task that should not take more than a couple of minutes. If you follow these instructions carefully to get up and running, this should be one of the last times you ever need to use HTML code to install a tag!

1. Create a Google Tag Manager account or log in to an existing account.
2. After creating your account, a new container is automatically created. FYI, in the words of Google, a "container snippet is a small piece of JavaScript and non-JavaScript code that you paste into your web pages. It enables Tag Manager to fire tags by inserting gtm.js into the page (or through the use of an iframe when JavaScript isn't available)."
3. Follow these steps to copy and paste the Snippet Container in the correct places on your site.

Once you have completed the above steps, GTM should be firing on every page of your website. Next comes the exciting bit...

How to add a tag using Google Tag Manager

Tags are pieces of code that help you integrate and deploy various products - mostly marketing - onto your website. Largely used to measure and track user activity and the performance of your digital assets, content and campaigns, they can range from Facebook Pixels to Google Optimize and Analytics.

To install tag configuration onto your site, follow these steps:

1. Log in and select "New Tag".
   
2. Choose your desired tag in the "Tag Type" drop-down menu.
   
3. Select your desired "Track Type". The simplest of these types if Page View. The other options link up with the campaigns, goals and conversions you have set up in Google Analytics and/or your social platforms.
4. Next, you'll need to select your "Trigger". Again, this depends on the goals you have set up in Analytics. A trigger is essentially what fires the tag. Think about what you want to track: clicks, forms, and so on.

What Marketing Tags Should My Website Have?

GTM has many supported tags, and it's important to know which ones you should prioritise for your business.

Marketing is all about results. Everything from your content marketing to your digital strategy should present you with measurable data. This way, you can learn what channels and methods are most worth your time. Here are the tags we recommend for business owners to get the ball rolling:

• Facebook Pixel Google Tag Manager - This is a tag that helps you measure the effectiveness of your Facebook marketing. It tracks activity on your website from people who have arrived from Facebook. This way, you can measure conversions and other business goals against your marketing choices on the social network. Learn more about the Facebook pixel here: Facebook Pixel Guide.
• Google Ads - Track conversions and use remarketing with the help of Google Ads tag.
• Google Analytics - This integrates with your Analytics account to ensure that all the relevant marketing data for your website is fully tracked.
• Google Optimize - Test and edit your site without the need for coding expertise.

Google Tag Manager Extension

To double-check your tags are firing on all cylinders, we recommend installing the Tag Assistant Chrome Extension.

Tag Assistant enables you to track and troubleshoot tags on your webpages, helping you to identify and fix any issues preventing your tags from firing.

Once you've installed the Chrome Extension, head to your site, click the blue Tag Assistant logo in your extensions, and select 'Enable', before refreshing the page. This will set the wheels in motion.

Here, for instance, we can see that the Google Analytics tracking ID, Google Optimize and GTM are all installed on this page.

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