The Power of Google Tag Manager

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Α British-American theoretical physicist and mathematician, called Freeman Dyson, once said:

There is a great satisfaction in building good tools for other people to use.

And that’s exactly what Google did! They built one of the most important tools in the web world, Google Tag Manager.

It’s 2024 and Google Tag Manager is one of the most crucial tools, as it helps websites to track events in an easy way. It is a tag system that mostly a simple logic:

Create a Tag (ex. Purchase) – Use a Trigger to fire this tag (ex. event -> purchase)

But of course, Google offers more functionalities within Google Tag Manager, as it allows you to implement more advanced features like JavaScript coding, Data Layer Variables (which is one of GTM main features), Regex & Lookup Tables etc.

Why use Google Tag Manager?

The reasons can be many, but below I have a list of the top reasons I believe Google Tag Manager should be used in a web (and app) project:

1. Google Consent Mode v2
   Consent Mode v2 is a new must-use framework designed to integrate website visitor consent preferences with Google’s advertising and analytics tools. By the end of March 2024 all websites within EU & UK are required to implement this mode in order to track down and store data of their users behavior. Websites can implement consent mode v2, by using cookies technologies and Google Tag Manager.
2. Tracking conversions
   Tracking conversions is crucial in order for Websites/e-Shops to be competitive and possibly successful. Conversions helps you understand your performance and how close you are in achieving your goals. So, if you have a digital marketing strategy and have already set your goals, you can use Google Tag Manager to track events that are important for your ads performance (like add to cart or purchase events) and send this data to your campaign in order to improve it.

3. Tracking secondary goals
   Even if you track events like the completion of a new order, you can always track secondary goals that might help you deepen your understanding of users behavior. Google Tag Manager allows you to create custom events when certain criteria are met. For example, if you have a one-page website, it might be important to track weather a user scrolled down to the bottom of the website. With GTM you can track this event and send the results to Google Analytics. Then you can use the data gathered to measure the performance of the landing page.
4. Data Layers
   Pushing Data Layers is a cool way of sending data from your website (mostly by using code in your website) to GA4 or G.Ads via Google Tag Manager. It’s an easy process if you have coding skills or by hiring a developer.

5. JavaScript
   GTM allows you to import JavaScript functions which can make your life very easy, especially if you know JS. GTM is powerful as it is but by using JavaScript this tool climbs to the next level!

As far as I am concerned, Google Tag Manager is a must have tool.
If you use it wisely and in collaboration with other platforms like Google Analytics and Google Ads (or Meta Ads) you will see great results in you overall performance.