What Is Google Tag Manager and Why Should You Start Using It

By now, you have likely heard of Google Tag Manager and may wonder what it is and why you should consider it as a website manager. We are here to explain everything about this exciting and handy tool, including what it is, who should use it, how you should use it, and other essential information. 

What Are Tags?

Tags, or web tags, are bits of code, transparent pixels, or images added to web pages that tell third-party applications what to do with those pages. Tags can tell another application to perform a task related to marketing, data collection, tracking, or content.

Most tags come from the vendors of other applications who want to integrate with a website somehow. Most commonly, this integration is for analytics purposes. When a website receives a visitor, the tag can share information with third-party analytics software regarding that visit.

Who Should Use Tag Management?

If you are a website manager with more tags and integrations than you can handle, you should be using Google Tag Manager. Tag management involves creating, integrating, maintaining, tracking, and marketing tags on your website. 

While you can manage your tags independently, this requires refined skill and technical know-how. As a result, most website managers instead opt to use a Tag Management System (TMS) to manage tags on their websites. A TMS is an application that helps you handle tagging for the multiple technologies that interact with your website via tags.  

Tag Management and Consent Management

Your TMS should integrate with your consent management platforms. These platforms interact with your TMS by deploying tags that visitors to your website agree to receive.

Consent management platforms keep website visitors from receiving trackers or cookies until they agree to receive them. Once users agree to these trackers or cookies, your consent management platform allows your website to fire tags that set cookies. If you’re using a TMS, you set cookies on your tags within your TMS.

A TMS is vital to data collection, analytics, and online marketing efforts. With so many potential tags, trackers, and integrations, website managers must effectively and efficiently manage tags to streamline their processes.

Getting Started with Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager is a free TMS and is somewhat easier to use when compared with other potential TMSs.

To use Google Tag Manager, you embed pieces of tag management code throughout your website, ensuring there is tag management code on each page. Once you’ve signed up for Google Tag Manager, you will select a container name. A container is a code you will add to your website that allows Tag Manager to do its job.

Once you’ve selected a name and chosen the appropriate platform for your site, you will see the piece of the container you must add to each of your website pages. Google Tag Manager will instruct you where to place these container snippets on your website pages.

Once you have embedded this code on each of your pages, you can create and manage all of your tags through Google Tag Manager rather than coding each tag yourself manually.