Most search marketers are familiar with using Google Tag Manager for analytics, conversion tracking, remarketing and other tasks that provide insights into what visitors are doing on a site. But with a little imagination, GTM can be an incredibly powerful platform that can elevate your SEO efforts. Tom Bennet, Head of Product Development, demonstrates how this largely unknown and powerful functionality can be used to help you make better business decisions.

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Tom Bennet, Head of Product Development, Builtvisible
Google Tag Manager Can
Do What?
MAKING BETTER DECISIONS WITH A
COLLABORATIVE APPROACH TO TRACKING

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Understand and invest in your data.

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61,761,319
websites
66%
of the top 100k sites
Source: SimilarTech

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Credit

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Goals /
KPIs
Collect
Data
Analyse
Data
Make
Changes
Review

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Goals /
KPIs
Collect
Data
Analyse
Data
Make
Changes
Review

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Goals /
KPIs
Collect
Data
Analyse
Data
Make
Changes
Review

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The value of the insights offered by your
analytics software is directly tied to your
investment in data collection.

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Fewer code changes required

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Version control, rollbacks, and preview mode

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Eliminates reliance on development team

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Eliminates reliance on development team
This is a often a bad idea.
(and not just because you’re
playing with a JavaScript injector)

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The value of the insights offered by your
analytics software is directly tied to your
organisation’s investment in data collection.
This includes your development team.

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HTML (content)
Tag Manager (analytics)
The Data Layer

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• At its simplest, the Data Layer is a JavaScript array containing
key-value pairs.
• It’s basically structured data about the current page, separated
from the actual content.
• It can be populated automatically with data from your CMS.
What is the Data Layer?

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The Data Layer sits in international waters…
<script>
dataLayer.push({
'pageCategory': 'account-creation',
'userType': 'high-value’
});
</script>

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• From a marketing standpoint, it’s a digital model of your site’s
attributes and interactions that you want to report on.
• Means data required by your measurement plan is accessible in a
context independent of any one platform or technology.
• Constantly evolving, but decoupled from nuts and bolts of your
front-end and less prone to mistakes.
The Data Layer in practice

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1. Smarter Segmentation

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“Which authors and categories on my blog are collectively
driving the most visits to my sales pages?”

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Add a content grouping to our
pageview tag under ‘More Settings’

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L

25. DOM GA Hit

26. GA Hit
<script>
dataLayer.push({
'blogAuthor': 'Jon Snow’,
'funnelStage': 'Recruitment',
'pubDate': '2018-05-22'
});
</script>

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J

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2. Better Triggering

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“How do users who write product reviews differ in their
purchase behaviour from our wider audience?”

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“What IDs or classes does our button have which I can scrape?”

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dataLayer.push({
'event': 'productReviewSubmit'
});

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“How do users who write product reviews differ in their
purchase behaviour from our wider audience?”
Recap…

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Hit
• Page
• Event Action
Product
• Price
• Category
Session
• Landing Page
• Medium
User
• UserType
(new / return)
Hit scope

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A user submits a review…
…which pushes a custom event to the Data Layer…
…which GTM detects, triggering a normal GA event tag…
…and this hit includes a Custom Dimension
which defines the user as a reviewer.
Recap

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• Are our CTAs being ignored, or simply not
being seen?
• How do product page videos affect
conversions? Do sessions which involve video
plays convert at a higher rate?
• How is our interactive tool / widget being
used, and by who?
GTM’s built-in triggers can be extremely powerful…

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• Structured naming conventions for IDs which
are relevant to tracking requirements
• Dynamically loaded videos trackable with
YouTube’s API JS library
• All relevant interactions (and associated data
points) present in the Data Layer as Custom
Events and variables
…and all are more powerful when used collaboratively.

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3. Better Ecommerce Insights

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Ecommerce tracking requires developer investment.
For this reason, it’s often siloed after implementation.
It’s deployed and then not iterated upon, meaning progressively
fewer people in marketing understand how it works.

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• Relevant information – impressions, add to basket, purchase, etc –
is pushed into the Data Layer by your CMS
• This is then sent to GA by ‘hitchhiking’ on a regular hit, such as a
pageview or an event – no transaction hits with EE
• Data payload must adhere to a very specific and arbitrary syntax,
but GTM lets us side-step this and keep our Data Layer logical
Enhanced Ecommerce: Recap

51. {
"ecommerce": {
"purchase": {
"actionField": {
"id": "123456789",
"revenue": "29.98"
},
"products": [{
"name": "Quad Biking",
"id": "15727899",
"category": "Vehicle Track",
"price": "14.99",
"quantity": 1,
"dimension3": "Bristol"
},
{
"name": "Clay Pigeons",
"id": "16682710",
"category": "Shooting Range",
"price": "14.99",
"quantity": 1,
"dimension3": "Bristol"
}]
}
}
}
{
"pageType": "confirmation",
"activityVenue": "Bristol",
"activityCount": 2,
"bookedFor": "2018-05-22",
"transactionID": "123456789",
"transactionRevenue": "29.98",
"transactionProducts": [{
"name": "Quad Biking",
"id": "15727899",
"category": "Vehicle Track",
"price": "14.99",
"quantity": 1
},
{
"name": "Clay Pigeons",
"id": "16682710",
"category": "Shooting Range",
"price": "14.99",
"quantity": 1
}]
}
Required DL structure
Process with JS function
Our preferred DL structure

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Caveat: This is just a high-level demonstration of the core principles. You
need a clear policy governing your site’s Data Layer, not to mention a plan for
permanent dev-marketing collaboration before planning the practicalities.
Further reading

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Collaboration with your development team is therefore
an essential part of good measurement.
The best only way to reliably collect accurate, relevant
data on the actions which take place on your website
is to encode this information into a Data Layer.

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A gift for your development team…

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58. Full guide available here

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The value of the insights offered by
your analytics software is directly tied to
your organisation’s investment in data collection.

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By demonstrating success and unlocking actionable insight,
you can justify anything you need:
Bigger budgets.
More innovative projects.
Additional development resource.
Whatever you need to do your job better.

61. © Copyright 2018 Builtvisible. All rights reserved. Private and Confidential
Tom Bennet
Head of Product Development
49 Tabernacle Street
London EC2A 4AA
Tom@Builtvisible.com | @TomCBennet
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Tom Bennet
Head of Product Development
49 Tabernacle Street
London EC2A 4AA
Tom@Builtvisible.com | @TomCBennet