Wouldn’t it be great to track exactly how your audience is engaging with your marketing? Luckily, financial advisers have more power to do so than ever before.
The tool we’re going to be looking at here is called “Google Tag Manager.” It’s somewhat similar to Google Analytics, which allows you to track important information such as your users’ average time on your web pages, your most popular pages, main sources of traffic, and more.
Of course, this is hugely powerful. What Google Tag Manager (GTM) does, however, is it takes this all to the next level.
Suppose, for instance, you want to track how many people clicked on your phone number to call you, while visiting your financial website on a mobile phone. With GTM you can do this.
Or, suppose you want to track the number of views of your business video on your homepage. Perhaps you want to base the conversion tracking on the view duration as well. Again, with GTM you can do it.
How To Implement Google Tag Manager
So how do you actually “put Google Tag Manager on” your financial website?
Most financial advisers do not have a technical background, so if you’re not feeling confident doing this yourself then it is well worthwhile getting a marketing agency such as ourselves to help you.
If you’re interested in doing it yourself, or curious about how we do it, follow these steps:
#1 Get your Analytics Tracking ID
First, you need to make sure you have a Google Analytics account. If you haven’t set one up yet, then it’s quick and easy – just follow this link here: https://analytics.google.com/.
From here, you will need the Tracking ID. This will appear at the beginning of the Analytics set up if you are creating an account.
Otherwise, log into Analytics and go to Admin, then Tracking Info, then Tracking Code. Your tracking ID will look something like this:
UA-XXXXXXXX-1
Make a note of your ID, then go to Google Tag Manager at https://tagmanager.google.com/.
#2 Set up your Tag Manager account
Chances are, you do not yet have a Google Tag Manager account for your financial adviser marketing. Luckily, setting one up is easy and free.
Using the link above, navigate through the steps to set up your account. When you reach “Set up Container”, make sure you select “Web” and name your container something appropriate.
The “container” part will make sense soon. Next, agree to Google’s terms and conditions. From there, you should reach a page showing your Google Tag Manager code.
Looks scary doesn’t it? Don’t panic. You do not need to understand what is going on in these lines of code. You just need to put it somewhere on your financial website. Keep this page open for now.
#3 Open your WordPress website
We work mainly with WordPress here at CreativeAdviser, and assume your financial website is built on the same platform. If your website uses a different CMS, follow along anyway. Chances are, the steps will be somewhat similar to what we discuss here.
Navigate to your WordPress login area and enter your details to get into the website’s back end (e.g. www.testadvisersite.com/wp-admin).
From here, in the column on the left hand side select “Plugins” and “New”.
In the search bar, you’re going to search for “Google Tag Manager”. You are looking for a plugin called “DuracellTomi’s Google Tag Manager for WordPress”. For us, it appears second in the search results.
Install and activate the plugin. Go back to the overall Plugins list, and find it there.
Click on “Settings”. Where it says “Google Tag Manager ID” under the “General” tab, you are going to need the ID from the large, intimidating block of code in Step 2 above.
If you look carefully, you will see that there is a short line of code towards the end of the first block of code (just before the </script> tag). In the example below, it is “GTM-KGQ4MWB”:
Copy your own ID down, and then paste it into the field mentioned above in the plugin.
Press “Save Changes” and you’re good to go!
Set up Your First Conversion!
If you have gotten this far, well done! Getting the GTM code onto your financial website can be a challenge even for experienced marketers.
Now, it’s time to set up your first conversion so you can track your website visitors’ engagement more accurately. First, go to “Variables” within your GTM account.
In here, press “Configure” and tick everything on the list in the “Clicks” and “Forms” sections. When everything has finished loading, go to “Triggers”.
It’s now time to set up your first bit of tracking in Google Tag Manager. When this is done, you will be able to track visitor behaviour on your website, and go from there to build your conversions!
Click on “New”, and give your trigger the title: “PageViews – All”.
Click on “Trigger Elements” in the centre of the page, and select “Page View” from the list that appears:
Make sure where it says “This Trigger Fires On”, that it is selecting “All Page Views”. Press Save.
Now, go to “Tags” on the left hand side.
Press “New” and call it “GA – Pageviews – All”. Press “Choose a tag type…” and select “Universal Analytics” from the list (it usually appears at the top).
Make sure the “track type” is set to “Page View”. Underneath, where it says “Google Analytics Settings”, click on the drop down and select “New Variable”.
In the window that appears, title it “Google Analytics Code”. Where it says “Tracking ID”, you need to get your Google Analytics code from Step 1 above, and drop it in here.
Note, this is not the same code as your Google Tag Manager Code from step 2. Your Google Analytics code looks like this: UA-XXXXXXXX-1. Your Tag Manager code looks more like this: GTM-XXXXXXX.
Press “Save” to store your Google Analytics code in Google Tag Manager. On the page you return to, click on the space where it says “Triggers” and select the Trigger you created earlier (PageViews – All).
Press Save. Once you are back in the Workspace area, click on “Submit” at the top left to publish!
Summary
By following the steps above, you should now have some basic familiarity with how Google Tag Manager works.
You now know how to define Variables, Triggers and Tags – which gives you the essential building blocks you need to construct conversion tags for your financial website.
To find out more, stay in touch via our blog – we’ll have more to show you in the coming weeks!