From Google, the Google Tag Manager is a tag management application that facilitates creating, embedding, and updating tags across websites and mobile apps, thus gaining the benefits of data standardization and speed of deployment. Google touts an agency friendly system with multiple user access, and tools to improve tags performance like debugging, and rules, macros or automated tag firing. The Google Tag Manager also integrates with Google product DoubleClick. Moreover, Google Tag Manager is…
Google tag manager is free to use and is a Google product so it works seamlessly with any Google tool such as analytics or optimizes. I haven't found features that this tool is missing compared to the paid options available. I am able to do everything I need with GTM.
Verified User
Program Manager
Chose Google Tag Manager
GTM is very user-friendly, cost-efficient, and easy to implement, and it also provides the features needed for our team to be more efficient and agile.
I am not sure if you can fully consider using Bitly as an alternative for Google Tag Manager, but similar tracking efforts can be achieved by creating custom links for specific actions on your website. It is much easier to implement and viewing the statistics in the bit.ly …
We have used GTM for its natural integrations and the cost is free. The fact that we have to learn the program was an upside as it has made our team smarter and savvier when discussing what can and cannot be tracked.
Heap on the other hand is a paid service that has a fully …
I actually didn't use any other service. The Google Tag manager service is so good for websites and web apps that I never had a reason to look elsewhere. And it's free as well, so no reason to look for a more cost-effective solution.
Tag Manager works in conjunction with Google Analytics. I would describe analytics as a 101 level course, and Tag Manager as a 401 level course. Both are good, both are relevant, but one will far outpace the other as far as practical application and things that you will benefit …
We typically default to GTM since it is free and provides a majority of the benefits you are looking to achieve by implementing this kind of tool. The paid solutions are great but typically reserved for a more niche client base that has very specific needs.
Google Tag Manager is a little different than the other software we've used. This not only gives us the means for tracking our websites but it also tells us if we've implemented the tag correctly and how well the website has been performing after the tag has been implemented …
My subscription with Adobe comes with the full suite of their products, including DTM. I tried using their tag manager but found that it was much more challenging to use than Google Tag Manager. It also seemed more limited in the way it worked with our AdWords account, which …
If you are using Google Analytics, then it only makes sense to use Google Tag Manager. GTM has better Event Tracking, data layer handling, and modularity. It is well documented and easy to find solutions and community support for almost any imaginable use-case scenario with …
I think Google Tag Manager is hard to beat, given that it is a free service Google offers. It also requires you to implement most of the integrations manually, it doesn't have many built-in. Segment, in contrast, is much easier to get up and running and "just works". However, …
Google Tag Manager does what others can't for Google Ads, for example. That's why it's a must-have for any website owner who plans to market their website. In addition, it makes the implementation of various other tracking tools very simple.
Google Tag Manager has many training resources online that our team relied on when recommending to clients why they should use GTM. It's one thing to share a recommendation with a client, it's another to be able to train them on it. I haven't seen these available resources for …
I've used other tools like Hotjar for website performance tracking and Tag Manager is nicer because it ties in with Google Analytics and allows you to specifically create the tags you want rather than watching to see what happens.
GTM is really good at monitoring usage of the entire website and tracking customer journeys. This leads to site optimization and a reduced funnel path for consumers, which drives up conversions. The biggest benefit is that it allows marketers more access to changing these tags …
Verified User
Strategist
Chose Google Tag Manager
As far as I know, Google Tag Manager is the only program that provides this service.
Google Tag Manager is used hand in hand with Google analytics. I do favor Adobe Analytics over Google's free version, though I have not used Analytics 360. Adobe does not have any limitations on the number of dimensions applied to a metric. This can be stunting when trying to …
Digital Strategy, Marketing Automation, Online Marketing, CRO, Branding, Wordpress Development
Chose Google Tag Manager
Hotjar is a little different animal but is still very useful in terms of tracking. I think using Hotjar along with Google Tag Manager can provide additional levels of insight into user behavior and optimization opportunities that might otherwise be missed. I think these tools …
Google Tag Manager is well suited when the marketer or marketing team does not work closely with the developers. In this scenario, it means that the marketer can deploy 3rd party tools such as live chat widgets, advertising pixels, and much more themselves in a timely manner. Google Tag Manager may be less relevant in an organization where the marketer is also the developer or has a strong development background, where they can implement the 3rd party tags directly on the site when they need. But even in this instance, there's still great benefit in using Google Tag Manager.
Selecting elements on a site [object, class, cookie, etc] (to later fire an event, send some data, etc) is very easy with triggers. Want to add an event when someone clicks on a button? Super easy. It was many many DOM selectors and you can even add custom functions if you need to do something more specific
In general, firing events in different circumstances is very easy mixing triggers and tags. You can track almost any element of the DOM and do whatever you want with it.
Testing is a great functionality. Only you can see what's on the site and you can debug it easily by seeing which events or tags were triggered and all the DOM elements involved (and why they matched the trigger).
Working in environments (staging, production) and versioning is easy to do, deploying changes in 2 clicks.
There are several good integrations, but there can always be more. Native tracking for call tracking solutions, analytics providers, non-Google advertisers would be top of my list.
Documentation is just dreadful. Luckily there are some awesome folks out there doing crowdsourced tutorials (shout out to Simo Ahava) but by and large the Google Tag Manager instructions are worth what you pay for them.
Google Tag Manager makes tracking traffic to our websites effortless, which enables our developers to focus on other tasks. Setting up a new instance takes only minutes and additional scripts can be added/modified without touching the source code of a site in production. This enables our marketing directors to coordinate tests and experiments with minimal effort.
Google Tag Manager is the definition of a learning curve. At the beginning, you can barely do the minimum and it can seem questionable as to why you would use it. However, as users begin to learn its offerings and see how it can do much more, they will have a moment where GTM becomes a tool that empowers their ability to track and efficiently collect data for important business questions.
Planning and communication will help greatly with an in-house implementation. If there are large teams, try to limit the number of people involved to 1-2 developers (back-end dev may be necessary depending on your platform), one analytics marketer and one project manager.
We moved to GTM from a standard Google Analytics implementation. GTM is much more flexible and easier to make changes, especially as the changes relate to multiple sites and environments. While there is a learning curve when figuring out how to use GTM, I believe the change has been worth it because it helps us understand at a more fundamental level how our tracking works and gives us a lot more control over what we track and how.
GTM is very useful to determine if a particular element on the site is useful (i.e. is it being watched, is it being clicked, does it help customers navigate through more pages). As an SEO person, I can use this information to decide what to optimize for but also to track progress and see improvements in engagement.
With the use of Google Tag Manager, I was able to easily inject an A/B testing tool which lead to several improvements in lead generation.