CXL Institute Digital Analytics Minidegree Review #7
I’m not huge keen on learning any type of programming but I it’s a skill that I need to learn, like and do for projects. It’s important to learn Google Tag Manager to be a part of the top 1% of marketers. Google Analytics, Facebook analytics and Google Data Studio weren’t too difficult to learn. Big Query and Tag Manager requires programming knowledge and that’s why it’s hard.
Out of all the tools that I’ve learned, one of the most useful and important things that I needed to learn was Google Tag Manager. I have learned and have done things with Google Ads, analytics, Facebook ads, etc. Google Tag Manager is one thing I had no clue about. It looked difficult and confusing. I’m glad to be learning the basics in this course taught by Mercer. CXL has a very good beginner course for analytics and tag manager. I have a better idea of tag manager now than before with Mercer’s explanations. I thought tag manager was something for developers. It is, but not necessarily. Tag manager allows me to do everything under one umbrella rather than installing a bunch of script on my site and then making it run slow. I’m still cautious to use it since I’m using code and I feel like I can easily make mistakes and mess things up.
Tag manager is a little complicated still and it’s something that I need to invest more hours into. Practice and time is what I need and I think I’ll eventually become good at it. Mercer makes the course more friendly to approach and to learn from. Even then, it’s still pretty challenging to learn something brand new. He goes kind of fast but explains things pretty well. I know I’ll have to go over GTM several times. Probably invest at least 100 hrs to get comfortable with it. Even though I did a little programming in school, I was always lazy and a bit intimidated in doing any type of programming work for marketing. What I learned in Google Tag Manager beginners course isn’t too bad. It’s a bit complicated and hard to understand but I think it will take some time to fully grasp everything. I’ve come thus far and can’t stop learning new skills now.
Everything that I’ve learned in Google Tag Manager has showed me there are other ways to advanced strategic online marketing. Here are the things that I’ve learned in this section. Tags provide the what, Triggers provide the when, and Variables provide the information. A tag would be like FB Pixel and you set up a trigger event and set up variables that will you give information. I like how you can preview the changes you made and check to see if it works or not. I’ve also learned about scripts & pixels, click and scroll events as well as video engagement, storing details, reading details, cross domain tracking, tag sequences and formatting variables. You can do a LOT of things with Google Tag Manager. It’s has so many functionalities. I’m barely touching the surface.
I wonder what else I can do with GTM. I guess I have to keep testing and playing with it to figure out more use cases. This course so far was probably one of the more complicated ones to understand and it was pretty lengthy. This course was almost as long as the Google Analytics course by Mercer. Hopefully in the future I’ll be on my way to becoming a Google Tag Manager expert. I want to become a specialist in commerce websites and figure out how to properly set up and use both Tag Manager and Analytics.
Overall, I’ve learned that tags are basically like scripts. What the tags need to do. There’s a lot of integrations in Google Tag Manager. I can use my live chat, analytics, marketing automation and more to connect with Google Tag Manager. I like that there are a lot of integrations and templates that we can import/download. There’s Hotjar, mouseflow, Quantcast and many more Tags that we can choose inside tag manager. Triggers are like hits. They are what needs to be done and when. When/where do you want to track it? You can set the following as triggers: Page view, link clicks, form submissions, video tracking, scroll depth, and more. You can even create custom event triggers using JavaScript. Data Layer stores details. It’s like a file cabinet. You store all your details. Variables are info that tag manager needs to do things. You should track whatever you think is important to you and your business. There are built in variables like event, page host name, page path, page URL, Referrer, just to name a few. Little confusing to understand.
I’ve seen a lot of Google Tag Manager beginner courses on platforms like Udemy, skillshare, etc. but this is definitely one of the best. I thought this was a great course for beginners. I think it’s more fleshed out compared to other Google tag manager beginner courses online. This was more challenging than Google Analytics for sure. Not only I have to analyze data but I have to track it appropriately. With Google tag manager, I learned that I can track visible elements, video plays, site scrolling and much more. It gives me a more in depth idea of what can be done to measure the actions on a website. Google Analytics isn’t enough. Tag manager helps it even more by setting up more accurate data and actions of users on a website. And if it’s a bigger website, more things have to be done with tag manager. Setting up live chat, tracking your visitors, using marketing automation tools, and other 3rd party tools that use JavaScript.
Mercer has made this course more fun and interesting to learn. He gives you an idea of what can be done with Google Analytics. Google Tag Manager is something you need to play around with like a toy or puzzle and figure how things work and what you can do with it. This is something that I need figure out with my website and set it up properly. Then test and play round with it. There’s a lot more work I need to do with my website and my clients websites.
