As online marketing technology progresses, so do the number of tags that must be implemented onto a website. These marketing tags can serve a number of different purposes, all of which can be critical in growing your business. Many sites will have tags for site analytics, paid search, an affiliate network, remarketing, display advertising, and more.
The way that these tags work is that they are implemented on the site and then collect data about a visitor’s interaction with the website. This data is then sent back to the marketing vendor where it is compiled into reports. From there, a marketer can use the reports to make data-driven decisions to increase KPI’s.
While having access to the information that is generated from having marketing tags on your site can be very useful in planning marketing strategies, a pain point that often arises is during the implementation and maintenance process. Traditionally, the marketing team must rely heavily on the IT team to get new tags placed onto the site which can often be a slow process. Different tags must be placed onto different pages of the site and anytime that the site is updated, tags must also be updated.
With the help of Google Tag Manager (GTM), a marketer has the ability to add all of their tags to a single container and be in control of how the tags will fire through a web interface. This helps alleviate the amount of implementation and maintenance work from the IT team, and gives a marketer the flexibility they need to make decisions quickly.
Besides reducing the amount of time spent on writing and implementing code, GTM has a number of other benefits. One of the biggest perks of GTM is being able to test and debug tags before they get pushed live. The debug feature allows you to breathe easy knowing that your tags are firing correctly without having to test using production data.
Another great feature that GTM opens up is being able to easily modify when a tag will fire. For example, imagine that the site’s layout changes. With GTM, you can alter the firing rules to change when and where a tag will fire. As an example, if you update the design of your site and the URL to your Thank You page changes, you can make the necessary adjustments in GTM to alter where your tags will fire.
As GTM continues to grow, so do the number of new features and built-in templates, making it even easier to add and adjust your measurement and marketing tags.