Now is the perfect time to learn more about website tag management. Google Analytics (GA) Academy recently released their new Google Tag Manager (GTM) Fundamentals course, an excellent way for anyone to learn more about using this free tool.

Why should I care about understanding tag management?

Don’t Care. Take me to the guide, man.

For everyone else – Imagine if every company with a website had someone who could handily manage site tags. User experience across the entire internet would be faster, simpler, and ultimately more enjoyable. Remember, this is all about actually using the organizational awesomeness that is tag management, for good. Not for lazy, half-baked, half-effective evil.

So why am I posting shortcuts to pass an exam? Because I want to help create better analysts in digital marketing.

The course contains four segments of interactive video tutorials, each one ending with an assessment (their friendly word for “test”). If you’re in a time crunch, no sweat – I’ll point out the parts of each segment you should focus on to pass the tests.

I’m not going to give you the answers – that’s weak sauce. I will, however, provide hints as to where you should devote more of your focus in this course.

Tag Manager Assessment 1

Goal: Develop your tag implementation strategy and master the basics of a tag.

• GTM can fire 3rd party tags. It’s not limited to GA or Adwords; GTM can fire almost any tag out there.
• Think about what sits inside a GTM container. It’s more than just a bunch of code.
• Define the purpose of the container snippet. We know it contains Javascript, but what exactly is its purpose?
• Define the triggers in GTM. They’re related to tags, but you’ll need to know how a trigger affects its respective tag.
• In lesson 1.4, there is an excellent visual walkthrough of the anatomy of a trigger. Make sure you can name the main parts of a trigger.

Tag Manager Assessment 2

Goal: Implement the Google Analytics tag and learn about the importance of cross-domain tracking via GTM.

• Make sure you know where the container code should be placed on each page of your site.
• There are multiple ways to access the container code in your account. Take note of these locations.
• Remember the 3-step naming convention for tags.
• Think about where the Data Layer needs to be placed so that when GTM is triggered, it can grab the information it needs from that Data Layer.
• Recall how variables are declared in the Data Layer.
• The Data Layer doesn’t maintain across pages automatically.

Tag Manager Assessment 3

Goal: Master the use of custom dimensions and metrics, and learn about event tracking for Google Analytics.

• The push method pushes data from X to Y. You’ll need to know what X and Y represent.
• GTM can capture many actions, but not all of them. Certain actions like opening and closing new windows in the browser cannot be captured.
• When you send in custom dimension/metric data into GA, you’ll need to add the index number to your respective GTM tag.

Tag Manager Assessment 4

Goal: Implement the AdWords Remarketing tags and set up Dynamic Remarketing. (This stuff is super important. It’s 2015 – anyone with paid ads MUST be able to remarket properly!)

• There are four steps to set up AdWords remarketing. Remember what they are from the live demo.
• Most of the business attributes information around remarketing can be found in the Google Analytics Help Center.
• When setting up a variable for Dynamic Remarketing, it needs to be captured by the Data Layer.
• If you want a tag to fire on a specific page, the page hostname will not be helpful.

As a bonus, after completing these exams you’ll get a fancy certificate so you can brag to everyone in your workplace (at least that’s what I do with mine).

To learn more about tag management, stay tuned to the Portent blog. And don’t worry, I’ll be posting more 101 level material for folks out there looking to break into the tag management world, or use it to up their digital marketing game.

Good luck!