Goals aren’t only made on the court or in the field. With the right type of rules and measurements, they can also be achieved in the office. Google Tag Manager (GTM) enables marketing professionals to add, modify, and manage tags for their websites and mobile apps while bypassing advanced web development and code integration. Marketers can use tags to track web traffic data and capture events that are triggered by certain actions on a website. This creates a streamlined approach for businesses to measure goals and make informed decisions about their web strategy. Here are three ways GTM can help you measure success!

1. The Blog is in Their Court

If a website is focused on generating content, it might be a little harder to determine which articles perform better than others. GTM makes this easy with pre-set features that allow marketers to track “Time on Page” and “Scroll Depth.” These metrics improve marketers’ understanding of where users are spending time during their visit and what content is the most engaging. Once data begins to flow through, it can be used to develop benchmarks and allow teams to communicate about successful content more effectively.

One of Infinity Marketing’s retail clients is currently taking advantage of this approach by monitoring a variety of website actions. These include “Free Quote” and “Click to Call” buttons, a link to email articles or share them on social media, and blog completion (tracking “Scroll Depth” and “Time on Page”). The data from these events can aid in determining what content is encouraging users to take action. Since the beginning of the year, content around “2021 home décor trends” has driven the majority of “Free Quote” events, which may lead the marketing team to push some of the newer and trendier products in future content.

2. Most Valuable Events

Website actions are the key to understanding the user journey, lead generation, and ROI. Tags can be created to register video completions, form submissions, PDF downloads, product sales, and more. The hardest part can be determining what actions are contributing to your business goals. If the purpose of your website is to sell a specific product, GTM provides a means of tracking completed purchases. This data can be compared to your marketing budget and help determine ROI. But sometimes, it might not be so easy. If the purpose of your website is to persuade visitors to make a call or request information, those would be the most important actions for a user to complete, despite having an established value. Before setting up tags in GTM, it is important to establish a primary objective and identify the events that contribute to its progress. These events will carry you to home plate!

We have healthcare clients that use different kinds of electronic health records to track scheduled appointments. Sometimes these systems, along with HIPAA privacy regulations, create challenges for tracking. That is why tracking other event actions is critical for determining success of marketing efforts. One such client has included a Health Risk Assessment on certain service pages in order to provide specified health content for visitors who complete this form. As a result of tracking this action, we have modified their campaigns, specifically for paid search, by creating an HRA ad group, that drives straight to the form. This increased paid search conversion actions by 475% in 2020, furthering campaign success.

3. Par for the Funnel

Google Tag Manager is compatible with a wide variety of sources and is undeniably valuable when measuring conversions from platforms such as Facebook, Google Adwords, or the Trade Desk. But just like in sports, it works best on a team. The Google team to be specific. Google Analytics (GA) provides the optimal companion when visualizing information from GTM. This connection makes it easy to set up tracking and organize data in an easily digestible way.

Funnels are one example of the data visualization capabilities in GA, and GTM can be used to build out each funnel element. If there is a specific path a user needs to take to complete the website objective, this can be mapped in GA and analyzed for optimizations. For example, say the website objective is product purchases. Users would need to browse a product page, add to cart, submit payment details, and complete their purchase. Each of these steps can be tagged through GTM to create Goals and Events in GA. From there, GA provides a space to arrange these steps into a funnel and see what steps can be improved in order to drive more purchases and optimize website strategy to reach business goals.

A finance client is currently using this approach to develop a retargeting campaign based on where users exit in a loan request process. Each page of the process has been set up as a step in the funnel. From here, they can see where applicants are dropping out and use a retargeting campaign to encourage them to return and complete the application. This strategy focuses marketing dollars on users who have already expressed interest — they are more valuable because they are more likely to complete the actions that achieve established goals.

To conclude, there are many ways to leverage GTM to drive success and measure goals, so if you are looking to get a website organized and need assistance in strategizing your goal tracking, reach out to us! Our Analytics team thrives on data generation and developing the best approach for organizing and understanding new information.

Links and Case Studies

Powerful Analytics Maximize SSM Health’s Digital Campaign

Analytics Big Ideas – What You Should Already Be Doing

Get Better Data in 5 Simple Steps