Google Tag Manager (GTM)
Google Tag Manager (GTM) is a powerful, free tool designed to simplify the process of managing and deploying marketing tags (snippets of code or tracking pixels) on your website or mobile app without having to modify the code.
What Is Google Tag Manager (GTM)?
GTM acts as a middleman between your website or mobile app and third-party tracking tools, allowing marketers to collect data and analytics by injecting various tags for conversion tracking, site analytics, remarketing, and more, directly into their digital properties. This centralized tag management system streamlines the process of adding, editing, and disabling tags, making digital marketing efforts more efficient.
What Is Google Tag Manager Used For?
As mentioned above, by using GTM, you can manage and deploy marketing tags on a website without having to modify the code. You can also integrate easily with other marketing tools and platforms such as:
- Google Analytics
- Google Ads
- Hotjar
- Amplitude
- CRM Platforms
But what can you do with these integrations? Yes, they help you to track almost any kind of event or user behavior you can think of. Here are some examples of commonly tracked events:
- Link clicks
- Button clicks
- Form submissions
- Conversions
- Shopping cart abandonment
- Adding items to cart
- Removing items from cart
- File downloads
- Scroll behavior
- Video views
- Call to action (CTA) performance
- Table of contents (TOC) clicks
- Custom events
What Constitutes Google Tag Manager?
We should keep in mind 3 main elements of GTM, which are Tags, Triggers, and Variables.
Tags
They are the snippets of JavaScript or tracking pixels from third-party tools that you want to implement on your site or app. In other words, they are like observers you put on your website. to keep track of what users do, like clicks or impressions.
Some of the examples are Hubspot, GA4 tracking code, Salesforce or Airbridge’s tracking links.
Triggers
They define when and where tags should be executed or fired. Every tag must have at least one trigger so GTM knows under which circumstances to fire the tag. For example, you may only want your support chat to fire on pages in the checkout funnel. In this case, you could add a variable telling the tag to only fire on page views of pages with “/checkout/” in the URL.
Page views, Link clicks, Button clicks, Form submissions, File downloads, Scroll depth are all examples of Triggers.
Variables
They are used to store and retrieve values that tags and triggers can use, providing additional flexibility and control. It means they help define precisely what the tag or trigger is supposed to do. Let’s take “Page URL” - a common variable, as an example. If you wanted to track page views of your checkout page, you’d have to assign the “Page Views” trigger. But to specify the checkout page, you’d have to assign the Page URL variable and add the URL for your checkout page.
Some more variables that you can refer to are Click URL, Click ID, Click Class, Page Path, Form ID, Scroll depth threshold
Benefits Of Google Tag Manager
Despite requiring a bit of technical savvy, GTM is still worthwhile for advertisers (partly because it is free!) because of these following reasons
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Simplified Integration of Popular Tools: Facilitates the addition of various tools and tracking tags to your site through easy-to-use code snippets or templates available in the Community Template Gallery, such as those for Google Analytics and Google Ads.
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Efficient Testing and Debugging: Offers capabilities to preview, test, and debug changes prior to live implementation, minimizing errors and eliminating the necessity to test on live environments.
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Controlled Access: GTM ensures that only approved users can implement or endorse modifications to the marketing configurations.
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Centralized Tag Management: GTM serves as a single repository for all marketing tags and tracking codes, streamlining their injection into your site's code. This centralization aids in adding, removing, and updating tools and tracking codes more accurately and with fewer mistakes.
Google Tag Manager And Google Analytics 4
Overall, GTM helps implement GA4 on your site but they serve different purposes; GTM facilitates tag management while GA4 focuses on data collection and analysis. They are different in many facets:
- Purpose: GTM is a tool for managing and deploying tags efficiently, whereas GA4 is an analytics service that analyzes user behavior and site performance.
- Functionality: GTM facilitates the inclusion of third-party tracking and marketing tools on a website without coding. GA4 provides detailed insights into how users interact with your site or app, enabling data-driven decision-making.
- Data Collection vs. Data Analysis: GTM is instrumental in the data collection phase, acting as a conduit for various data points to be captured and sent to analytics platforms. GA4, in contrast, takes this data to perform comprehensive analysis, offering actionable insights into user behavior, conversion tracking, and more.
- Integration: While GTM and GA4 are distinct tools, they are highly complementary. GTM can be used to deploy GA4 tracking code on a website, illustrating how both play critical roles in a holistic digital marketing strategy.
Put these concepts into practice
See how Airbridge helps teams implement mobile attribution strategies at scale.