Google has been extremely busy in 2012 with new acquisitions, product enhancements and product developments. One of latest product is Google Tag Manager which was launched last week. Read more about the launch of this product here. This is a great move by Google, Google Tag Manager is set to rival with similar products that has already been in the marketplace such as Adobe TagManager and SuperTag by Datalicious. The best thing about the new product, it is completely FREE.
If you work in the digital marketing space, you will be familiar with the concept of tags. If you don’t, shame on you! Tags are snippets of codes that you embed on to the website to capture useful insights and provide accurate measurement of performance of digital campaigns. Some of the different tags are analytics tags, conversion tags, floodlight tags, remarketing tags and the list goes on.
Working in a digital marketing team, I have heard endless conversations among work colleagues about challenges/frustrations dealing with IT or the web team on getting tags implemented correctly and timely. This video from Google sums up the product perfectly:
As soon as they announced the release, I jumped on it immediately; here are the steps I took to get Google Analytics & Google Tag Manager implemented on this blog.
Step 1: Sign up to Google Tag Manager
Go to www.google.com/tagmanager/ and sign up using your Google Account. If you don’t have an account, create one.
Step 2: Follow Instructions
Google has given some pretty good instructions throughout the setup process. But here are the screenshots of the process:
Step 3: Add a New Tag
Step 4: Publish the Tag
Go to Versions > Overview > Click on 1
Step 5: Check to Make Sure that GA Tag is Firing
Use Firebug Net Panel and look for the Google Analytics tracking pixel:
Spot check the rest of the website using the same technique to make sure the tag is firing on all pages.
Conclusion
Easy peasy, it only took me 15 minutes to set this all up. I am looking forward to rolling this out with my clients and help them solve all their tagging frustrations.
I hope you have found this post useful. Feel free to ask me any questions through the comment box below.