Google Tag Manager Tutorial // Lesson 1 // Getting Started with Google Tag Manager

hey there i'm benjamin from loves data in this video i'm going to show you how to start using google tag manager to streamline the management of your tags we'll begin with an overview of what google tag manager is we'll cover terminology you'll see inside google tag manager including tags triggers and variables and i'll show you how to get started by adding google analytics to your website using google tag manager i've also included a quiz at the end of the video so you can test your google tag manager knowledge google tag manager lets you manage all of your marketing and analytics tags in one place it acts as a layer between your website and the different platforms you're using it also allows you to streamline the management of the different tags you're using for example you might want to add a google analytics tag to all of the pages of your website and then you might decide to add a google ads conversion tag and a facebook event to an individual thank you page you could hard code the google analytics tag in your website's template and then add the google ads tag and facebook event tag to the specific page however this will quickly become difficult to manage and it's easy to lose track of where tags have been installed with google tag manager we add one piece of code to all of the pages on our website this is the container we then configure google tag manager to fire tags on particular pages or for particular actions so that's really the key benefit of google tag manager it lets you centrally manage all of your tags now let's cover some important terminology first tags in most cases a tag is a piece of javascript code they typically collect data and then send it to a particular platform like a google analytics tag which collects information about the people viewing our website or we can also use a tag to add additional functionality to our website for example we could use a tag to add a social sharing widget to our blog or we could use the google optimize tag to personalize the content people see on our website next are triggers triggers let you control when a tag should or shouldn't fire on your website for example we could use the built-in all pages trigger to add a tag to every page of our website and we can also create our own triggers maybe we want to track people clicking the announcement banner we have featured at the top of our website or maybe we want to fire a specific tag on a thank you page we can do this by creating and applying triggers to our tags then there are variables variables are placeholders for information that we can use in google tag manager for example we might want to capture details about a link someone has clicked on our website we can then use this information in our tags triggers and even other variables there is a range of built-in variables that let us access information automatically and we can also create custom variables and then we have our container a container stores all of the tags triggers and variables for our website when we add google tag manager to our website we're adding the google tag manager container code you can find your container code by clicking the unique id at the top of the window it will start with gtm dash we're now given two pieces of code the first one is the most important this is the javascript container code and you'll need to add this to all of the pages of your website this code should be placed inside the head tag on your website and ideally should be one of the first things in your head tag the second piece of code is the no script version of the container this will load if someone has javascript disabled since almost all of the tags we use in google tag manager are javascript this won't improve the accuracy of the data we collect so if you can't add this extra no script code to your website it won't have a major impact now it's time to add the code to our website there are different ways you can add the container code depending on how you've created your website for example if you're using wordpress then you can use a plugin to add the container to all of your pages let's head to wordpress to take a look this is the sitekit by google plugin for wordpress it's just one of the plugins you can use to add the container code to all of the pages of your wordpress site to add google tag manager let's install the plugin and activate it now you'll need to follow the steps to authorize access to your google account now we need to connect google tag manager to do this we select settings and then connect more services we can then connect google tag manager we select our account and container and now our google tag manager container has been added to all of the pages of our wordpress site if you're using a different website platform then i recommend searching the support documentation from your platform provider this should give you details on how to add the google tag manager container code and if you'd like me to create a video covering your platform then let me know in the comments below okay now that we've added google tag manager to our website it's time to configure our first tags let's head to google tag manager we're going to start by adding google analytics to our website so let's create a new tag let's name the tag google analytics ga4 and let's select tag configuration we're going to start by selecting ga4 configuration as the tag type this is for the latest version of google analytics which is google analytics 4 or ga4 in this video we're just going to focus on adding the tags but if you would like to learn more about ga4 then i've included a link in the extra resources in the description below this video now we need to get our measurement id so let's head to google analytics this is the admin area of a ga4 property and i'm going to select data streams and then i'm going to select the data stream for my website you can now copy the measurement id for your data stream on the top right corner and now we can head back to google tag manager let's paste our measurement id and now we need to select a trigger for our tag we're going to select the all pages trigger this will fire our j4 tag on all of the pages of our website this will mean we can report all of the pages people see when they visit our website now let's save the tag and we're going to add another tag let's create a new tag and this time we're going to name the tag google analytics ua let's select tag configuration and we will choose universal analytics as the tag type this is for the older version of google analytics but google is still recommending we use both types of properties to track our website so i want to take advantage of both versions of google analytics we're going to leave page view as the track type for the tag and we're going to select the option to create a new variable using the drop down under google analytics settings let's name the variable google analytics ua and now we need to head back to google analytics this is the admin area for a universal analytics property let's select tracking info and then tracking code we need to copy our tracking id which is at the top now let's head back to google tag manager let's paste our tracking id into the variable and let's save the variable now we need to add a trigger to our universal analytics tag let's select the all pages trigger again and let's save our tag i'm going to cover best practices for previewing tags in another video so if you haven't already don't forget to subscribe to be notified when i release more videos covering google tag manager there's also the option to publish the changes you've made to your live website this is the submit button i do want to point out that if you already have the google analytics tag on your website you will want to remove this at the same time you publish your changes otherwise you'll have the tag from google tag manager and your existing google analytics tag on your website so two identical tags which isn't good so i will also be covering migration in more detail in another video for now you've successfully added your first tags to google tag manager and you understand the difference between tags triggers and variables that's our introduction to google tag manager are you ready to test your google tag manager knowledge you can find a link to my google tag manager quiz in the description below this video if you'd like to learn more about google tag manager then subscribe to my channel because next week i'll show you how to add more tags to your website we'll cover the google ads remarketing tag adding google optimize and adding the facebook pixel i'll see you in the next video

Channel: Loves Data

Views: 17,594

Rating: 4.9469028 out of 5

Keywords: Google Tag Manager Tutorial, GTM Tutorial, Google Tag Manager, GTM

Id: 4nXYvFXzxV4

Length: 11min 2sec (662 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 18 2021