What Is Google Tag Manager (GTM) and What Does It Do?
Google Tag Manager is a powerful tag management platform that enables data transfer to various third-party tools through websites and mobile applications. Without GTM, you would need to directly modify source code for every data tracking implementation on your site or app. With Tag Manager, you can manage all these code snippets from a single centralized panel and easily define which tag fires under which condition.
In addition to the practical user experience it offers, Google Tag Manager has become one of the indispensable tools in the digital marketing and data analytics world. For businesses that want to keep pace with rapidly evolving technology, GTM provides significant savings in both time and cost.
How Does Google Tag Manager Work?
On websites, Tag Manager works through a container tag integrated into the site. This tag is placed on all pages of your site, so all changes made from the central panel take effect immediately. For mobile applications, the same management convenience is provided through Firebase SDK integration for both Android and iOS operating systems. You can add many third-party tags to the container, including Google Ads and Google Analytics, and manage the functions of existing manually written code on your site from a single point.
To get full efficiency from the system, you first need to create a tag corresponding to the interaction or event you want to track. The GTM panel offers ready-made templates for many popular platforms. Among these ready-made templates are the following tools;
- Google Ads
- Google Analytics
- Google Optimize
- Criteo
- Hotjar
- Quora
For tools not listed above, you can use the Custom HTML tab to run any code through GTM without issues. After completing the tag addition step, you need to define a trigger to determine which user interaction will activate this tag. Selecting the appropriate trigger for each action to be measured is of great importance for data quality.
A single Tag Manager account allows you to manage multiple websites and mobile applications simultaneously. You can open as many GTM accounts as you want with a single Google account. However, as a general practice, creating a single Tag Manager account per organization or brand is the most appropriate approach for management convenience.
How to Set Up Google Tag Manager Step by Step?
The Google Tag Manager setup process is quite practical and quick. To complete the setup, you only need to add two code snippets to your website. Below, we explain in detail how to perform the GTM setup step by step.
Website Setup
1. First, go to https://tagmanager.google.com and create a new Tag Manager account.
2. After creating your account, access the code snippets by clicking Admin > Install Google Tag Manager from the admin panel.
3. Add the first code you see on the opened page right after your website’s <head> tag, and the second code right after the opening <body> tag.
4. Once the codes are correctly placed, your Google Tag Manager account becomes active. From this point on, you can manage Analytics, Facebook Pixel, Hotjar, and many other third-party tools without needing to add code to your site.
Once the necessary code integrations are completed, data starts flowing within a short time, allowing you to gain in-depth insights about your site’s user behavior, conversion rates, and overall performance.
Mobile App Setup
Google Tag Manager works integrated with the Firebase infrastructure during the setup process for mobile applications. This way, you can manage tags for both Android and iOS apps from a centralized point.
For setup, go to tagmanager.google.com and create a new account or log into your existing account.
After logging in, create a new container for your mobile app. At this stage, you need to select the Mobile Apps option as the target platform.
Select the appropriate SDK version for your app’s operating system and complete the setup steps in order.
What Are the Advantages of Google Tag Manager?
Google Tag Manager is a tool that significantly simplifies digital marketing processes and streamlines website management. The key advantages behind the growing number of businesses choosing GTM in recent years are;
- Tag Manager primarily reduces the workload of development teams significantly. While the traditional method requires modifying source code for each tag, with GTM this process is entirely managed through an interface. This allows developers to focus on more strategic technical topics instead of tag operations.
- It minimizes the risk of errors during tag implementation. In manual coding, even a small typo can cause data loss. However, thanks to GTM’s structured system that works on a copy-paste logic, the margin of error is nearly zero.
- It also provides a detailed audit and control mechanism through tags. You can define multiple tags for pages or products you want to highlight, quickly collect your data, and shape your marketing strategies based on the insights you gain.
