We marketers need to move at the speed of the internet. That pace is getting faster and faster every day. Unfortunately the larger and more robust your website is, the more difficult it can be to work with the IT team to push out new updates and changes to the code for your marketing needs. Code freezes while new site features are being deployed can ruin time sensitive campaigns. Some marketers have complained it can take up to 9 months before they are ready to consent to your requests. What do you think that kind of delay can do to your productivity as a marketer?
Its because of these hardships a solution called Tag Management has started to creep up the Marketer’s bag of tools. What Tag Management does is give you the ability to control the code on your website without needing to rely on your website administrators to make those changes. Tag Management works by placing a single piece of code on the website that works as a Container in which you can insert many different tracking tags. Once you have the Container tag placed on the website, you manage the tags that go into that container from a tag management interface elsewhere. Here you can load up several tags and write custom logic rules so that the Tag Management solution knows whether or not to fire the tracking tag code.
Late last year Google released their own Tag Management tool accurately named Google Tag Manager (GTM). This is completely free and if you think your business might benefit you may want to check this solution out. It’s not quite as matured as other Tag Management solutions out there now but they do have a list of features they promise are coming soon.