3 Ways Tag Managers are Changing the Online Marketing Landscape Tracking Conversions for a Better ROI

Ashley Hite

10 minute read

Summary

Traditional advertising wasn't easily trackable and left businesses just hoping the phone would ring more. With advanced conversion tracking, digital marketing has leveled the playing field to give businesses an unprecedented look at their return on investment. 

Conversion Tracking: You Need to Do It.

When it comes to marketing your business online, there are few things more important than accurately tracking what actions your site visitors take while on your website. How else will you know if your marketing efforts are working?

Conversion tracking can be tricky, though. Having your marketing metrics spread out across multiple channels is a good way to set yourself up for missed opportunities and, worst of all, incorrect tracking.

Tag managers enable marketers to set all their tracking parameters in one place, which saves time, money, and resources in addition to keeping things nice and tidy. In fact, for businesses who engage in many different marketing efforts, tag managers have become an essential component of conversion tracking.

  • 1

    You don't have to edit the code of your website.

    Messing with code on your website is always tricky business. One wrong keystroke and you can conceivably break the whole thing. With tag managers, all the conversion and event tracking code goes into the tag manager, which then implements it on the website for you. The same goes for other bits of code or script that you need to implement, like non-standard fonts or call tracking.

    Confession time: We weren't entirely truthful when we said you don't have to edit the code at all. Installing the tag manager does involve copying and pasting two simple pieces of code into the website-but once that's in place, you're golden.

  • 2

    Your Site Loads Faster.

    Speaking of less code, having all of your conversion tracking within a tag manager eliminates a lot of the scripts that you would otherwise have to place on your site. More scripts can bog down your site performance and contribute to a poor user experience. Placing all your tags and with a tag manager can really make a major difference when it comes to site speed-which we all know is a major factor in organic search rankings.

  • 3

    You Get In-Depth Conversion Tracking.

    These days, it's not just about what your site visitors do on your website-it's how they interact with it on every single level. Page views and bounce rates are important, but wouldn't it be nice to also track how many people watched the video on your landing page and how far into the video they got? What about tracking how far they scrolled down on your product page, or items they added to their cart before leaving your site?

    Truth be told, much of this was possible before tag managers existed, but it was so code-heavy and time-consuming that only major corporations with dedicated full-time marketing teams had the time and resources to do it right. Tag managers have leveled the playing field so businesses big and small can get this granular with their data.

Where's the Data?

Tag managers interact with the platforms you already use. That is to say, they won't replace reporting from the Google Analytics or Facebook ads platforms, for instance. What they will do is add many additional layers of data in a simple and organized way.

Don't Try This At Home.

At Cougar Digital Marketing & Design, we began using Google Tag Manager for ourselves and our clients after many, many hours of training, practice, and honing our strategy. While they certainly make a marketer's job easier and can result in unprecedented amounts of data, tag managers are not for the faint of heart. We don't recommend attempting to use one if you're not familiar with the technology.

What Are You Learning from Your Digital Marketing Efforts?

Take a look at your current digital marketing efforts. Are you really getting meaningful data? If not, get in touch with us to find out what advanced conversion tracking can do for your business.