Throughout the last five to seven years, digital marketing has seen huge advancements in both it’s capabilities, and how sophisticated it has become. Because of this, there is now a wide selection of tools for internet marketing professionals to utilize. These tools allow marketers to connect with their audience and industries faster and more effectively, while providing more complete insights, and a more comprehensive web experience while doing so. However, many of these next-generation marketing tools, such as remarketing, conversion tracking, and web analytics, depend on providing additional “tags” to the marketer’s site, which assist in enabling the most sophisticated way marketing to market online.
Marketing tags are small lines of code which aid in supplying helpful insights, however they also have their own challenges as well. Currently, it is recommended that a user limits the amount of tags they use, this is key, as too many can bog down a site. Additionally, if the tags are incorrectly applied, they can alter your measurement. This means you’re devoting countless hours of IT assistance to install new tags to make up for the miscalculation. This means a lose in conversions, data, time, and of course, money.
Over the last couple months and years Google has been working hard to make this process easier. This came full circle this week when Google announced the launch of their new Google Tag Manager.
Google Tag Manager, launching first in English, with other languages following, is a free marketing tool which aims at consolidating a website’s tags by utilizing one small piece of code. This will allow users to manage everything from one single web interface.
With just a few small clicks, this tool allows users the ability to update and install their own marketing tags, without the fear of slowing down the site or pestering the IT department. Flexibility is the name of the game, as this allows webmasters to focus in on other duties. Check out below to see how simple it is to create an account and tags:
Designed to manage all tagging needs, Google Tag Manager works in conjunction with Google tags, as well as non-Google tags. Features for the Google Tag Manager include:
- Asynchronous tag loading—This allows for tags to fire off faster while not getting in the other’s way, or slowing down any of the user-visible aspects within the page itself
- Easier tag templates – This allows marketers to quickly install tags by using Google’s web interface, in addition to supporting custom tags
- Error-preventative tools such as Preview mode – This allows users to see any proposed alterations before they are implemented. Other tools include a Debugging Console, as well as a Version History which guarantees any new tags installed don’t break your on site
- Additions like the multi-account functionality, and User permissions allow for marketing teams to work together to implement and monitor activities
Countless companies have began to use Google Tag Manager, and are already starting to see quality results.
The goal was to take one big, time consuming aspect of the tagging process, and eliminate it. According to Google higher-ups, what used to take 2 weeks, instead now takes only a day, in some cases only hours.
Streamlining the process, now campaign managers can install the tags themselves, eliminating the need to pester an IT department. Creating an account for Google Tag Manager is both simple and quick, by just adding one line of code on your website, then just start to manage your tags.