What is Google Tag Manager?

Google Tag Manager (GTM) is a free tag management application by Google that makes it easier to manage and deploy tracking codes & tags on a web page. It enables go-to-market teams to add numerous tracking codes & tags for data analytics, marketing, and other third-party applications to track and collect essential user data without having direct access to the website’s codebase. 

GTM works by injecting a single container tag on the page, which loads and maintains all tracking codes & tags. This allows you to manage several tags from a single location, rather than having to update the code of the website each time a new tag gets added or deleted. Google Analytics, AdWords, Facebook Pixel, and many more tags are supported by GTM.

A further benefit of Google Tag Manager is that it automatically codes the tag for you—the code you receive that you must place on your website is independently written by GTM. This eliminates a significant amount of human mistakes and accelerates the entire process.  

These tags enable businesses to employ one of their preferred functions, such as:

A. Ad platform tags – These are also known as advertising tags, enabling marketers to insert tracking codes of digital advertisement platforms and facilitating the connection of websites with ad platforms. 

B. Retargeting tags – These enable marketers to monitor website visitors and later target them with advertising.

What are the benefits of Google Tag Manager for SaaS Founders?

There are several advantages of adopting Google Tag Manager for SaaS founders. Here are some of the most powerful utilisation of GTM: 

1. Improved and simple website tag management: You can quickly install and maintain tracking codes and tags using Google Tag Manager, delivering more precise and complete data for assessing marketing campaigns, discovering user behaviour trends, and optimising conversion rates. With Google Tag Manager, you become that developer, capable of quickly implementing the tag (code). Google Tag Manager makes this procedure simple, rapid, and accessible to anyone who does not know how to code. 

2. Enhanced flexibility: Google Tag Manager enables SaaS teams to simply add and delete tracking codes & tags without modifying the website’s codebase. This makes it easy to try out new tools or techniques and adapt to evolving marketing or business requirements.

3. Reduce development expenses: Google Tag Manager is an application that you can utilise for free. Embedding tracking codes & tags directly into the coding of a website can prove time-consuming and costly, particularly for SaaS businesses with limited development assets. Google Tag Manager can help save these expenses by making it easier to add and manage tracking codes and tags.

4. Improves website performance: Google Tag Manager can help boost website efficiency and loading speed by asynchronously loading the tracking codes & tags directly incorporated in the website’s codebase, which can lead to enhanced user experience and better search engine results.

5. All tags are in a single location: When you use Google Tag Manager, you store all of your codes in one place. The days of locating the different JavaScript code snippets in the source code of a website or app in order to make additions, modifications, or removals are long gone. Everything is now in one location, and mistakes such as missing codes and incorrect data are no longer possible. So implementing changes and updates to a single tag affects all of the other tags.

6. Simple & automatic event tracking: GTM has a feature known as auto-event tracking, which automatically records events (such as clicks, submissions of forms, and time spent on a page) without the use of special JavaScript code. With auto-event tracking of Google Tag Manager, you can automatically monitor the website activities of visitors. 

7. Improved data security: Google checks all scripts and stops them instantly if you coincide with an unauthorised domain, internet protocol, or URL. By restricting access to the website’s coding, Google Tag Manager adds an extra degree of protection. Founders can provide selected team members or suppliers access to manage tracking codes & tags without jeopardising the privacy of the whole website’s codebase. GTM also supports whitelisting and blacklisting commands, which provide an additional level of security and protection to your SaaS website.

How can you set up Google Tag Manager for their company?

Setting up an account in Google Tag Manager is a simple two-step procedure that is distinct from your Google Analytics or Gmail accounts. Let’s have a quick look at how easily you can set up your GTM account for your business! 

1. Create an account in Google Tag Manager:

To begin, you should go to GTM & click on the green “Sign Up for Free” option. It will prompt you to provide your account name (business name), location, website URL, and in which platform you wish to utilise Google Tag (web, Aneroid, iOS, Android). When you’ve completed the process, press the blue “Create” button.

2. Create and Install a container:

After creating an account, you must establish a container for your website. A container is a code snippet that must be added to the website’s HTML in order for Google Tag Manager to handle tags. By selecting the “Create Container” option in the Google Tag Manager dashboard, SaaS owners can develop a new container. Once this is created, you can copy and paste the container code snippet into the web pages HTML, just after the opening <body> tag.

3. Add tags to the container:

Once the container code has been installed, you can begin adding tags to the container. This is useful for providing detailed reports on your audience’s behaviour, but it might become wasteful if your tags are not correctly organised. Tags such as Facebook Pixel, Google Analytics, AdWords, and many more can be added. Let’s look at how to create a tag now:

A. Click the “Add a New Tag” button, within your GTM dashboard.

B. Label your tag, followed by selecting a tag type by clicking anywhere in the “Tag Configuration” box. Then select a tag type. There are several kinds of tags (which can also be customised).

C. Assume you’ve picked Google Analytics as your tag. If you want your tag to be tracked in Google Analytics, enter your Web Property ID from your GA account. Then, choose a “Track Type” to specify the actions you want to be tracked on your website.

D. Next, select a trigger, which indicates when you want your tag to be recorded. Then pick the web pages for which you intend for this tag to be active (you can alternatively select ‘all pages’ if you prefer this tag to be active on all pages).

E. When you’re content with your tag and trigger, press the “save” button.

4. Test & publish the container:

After adding all of the tags to the container, you should test it prior to publishing it to the web page. To see the tags in action, click the “Preview” button and then open the website in a new tab. Check that the tags are triggering properly and collecting the appropriate data. After you’ve checked and validated everything, click the “Submit” button to publish the container to the website.