How Do You Set Up Google Tag Manager? Full Tutorial

Why is Google Tag Manager worth setting up?

Because it lets you track almost any event on your website, including visitors, clicks, conversions and phone calls, and it is one of the most useful tools available to an ads professional or any business.

You can install your base code for Facebook event tracking, for Google Ads tracking, and all sorts of other tracking through Tag Manager. This is the dashboard you land on once you have created an account, after signing up to a couple of terms and conditions, and from there you have a full suite of tools available to use.

How do you start tracking an event in Tag Manager?

By creating a new tag and deciding what you are trying to track, for example clicks on the home page, then configuring that tag against something like Google Ads, remarketing, analytics or another event type.

In this example I am tracking from Google Ads, which means I need a Google conversion ID, so the next step is to go into the Google Ads account itself.

How do you set up the conversion in Google Ads first?

By choosing website conversions and defining the event, for example a phone call, then giving it a value so Google has something to learn from.

I am adding a contact event, in this case a phone call received as a conversion from s.media, and giving it a value of fifteen pounds per conversion, because I want to encourage Google to optimise towards it. I want every instance of that event tracked, and I also want to know if someone saw one of our ads and came back within thirty days, using a last click attribution model at the point they convert. Google then gives the option to install the tag directly, email it, or use Google Tag Manager, which is the route I take, along with the conversion ID and conversion label that Tag Manager will need.

How do you bring that conversion into Tag Manager and set a trigger?

By linking the conversion ID and label from Google Ads to a tag in Tag Manager, turning on conversion linking, and setting a trigger based on the pattern in the site's phone number links.

Conversion linking needs to be on so that if someone browses around the site, leaves, and comes back, that journey can still be tracked. The trigger I have set up relates to clicks that include tel colon, because if you inspect the site's code, you can see that phone number elements on the page use that pattern. Whenever someone clicks one of those phone numbers, it registers as an event.

How do you confirm the trigger is actually firing?

By using Google Tag Assistant in preview mode, which shows you the tags firing in real time as you interact with the live site.

Clicking preview in Tag Manager brings up Tag Assistant, where you enter the domain name and start the session, then browse the site as normal. Tag Assistant shows which tags have fired, and in this case I can see the phone call tracking tag for the home page firing correctly. Going to the contact us page, scrolling down to the phone numbers, and clicking one, in this case the Doncaster number, though on a desktop it just prompts you to pick an app to make the call, since this is really built for tracking calls from mobiles where people tap a live number. Going back to Tag Assistant and looking at events confirms the link click, showing the exact URL clicked, including the tel colon pattern that makes it unique to a phone number click. Because that has now been tracked in Google Analytics, Tag Manager and, most importantly, Google Ads, I can see that a phone call resulted from the advert we placed.

What else can Tag Manager track beyond phone calls?

Pretty much everything on a site, including pop-ups and even clicks on text that people mistake for a link.

It is well worth exploring properly. If you want to know more, get in touch and I am happy to talk it through.