There has been a LOT of updates to the tag management industry since Michael’s blog post back in September. Emerging tag management companies, better web analytics tracking with tag management systems, and more widely accepted usage. This post isn’t only to encourage everyone to jump on the tag management bandwagon, but really define the true value of tag management.
Tag Management – Overview
Different marketing and web analytics services like Google Analytics or Google AdWords use page “tag” or javascript/image snippets of code to collect data about website visitors and website usage. Quite often a website will have 5, 10, 15 and even more tags collecting various marketing information. The average enterprise website may have up to 150 third-party tags on a site at any given time. Managing these tags individually can be very time consuming and an inefficent system can lead to errors.
Quick plug here: When getting started with tag management, finding marketing tags online (even 150+ tags on 100k+ pages) can seem daunting but our free tool, taginspector.com, does all the hard work for you.
Benefits of Tag Management
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- The ability to manage tags without the help of the IT department
- Shortened time to manage tags by the staff
- Easily enabled privacy tools
- Ability to see all the tags on your site and ensure that they adhere to technical best practices
- Improved page load time by consolidating the variabales used in your tags
- Enforces tag standardization
Tag management systems address common tag implementation challenges and allow users to effectively add, edit or remove tags from the website. Tag mangement saves money as markerters can make changes to the tags without help from the IT department (after initial implementation). Tag management can also help enterprises with multi-brands or multiple web properties manage approved/accepted tags and even create compliance for effective digital presence best practices.
So where’s the value?
Up to this point I’ve described the overview of what tag management systems do and the benefits they provide but as an analyst, I want to know more than that. I want the real value behind a product, promotion, tool or process. Here’s my top 3 value points:
- Less complication with more security.
Websites are increasingly becoming more simplified and easier to use, modify and edit. This is because the value of a wonderful design built on an easy-to-understand source makes companies much more competitive in the digital space. Tag management systems only help move this trend to a “more beautiful web” forward, one website at a time. For larger organizations, having less complexity, more clarity and increased security is vital for any web property. Tag management systems not only centralize all vendor tags in an organized-protected way, most can provide usage statistics on which tags are fired and used more frequently, giving organizations ability to dessiminate effective tags from not-so-effective tags. So the value here: build awesome digital properties but still meet all regularatory compliance restrictions.
- More flexibility to move fast If you’re not growing, you’re dying. Yes, its a harsh reality but many organizations slow down as they grow larger but the need to always have agility in order to survive doens’t change. Digital marketing is even more competitive when it comes to adapting to change and embracing new technologies. Tag management systems not only improve the speed of new technology implementation, they enable orgnizations to quickly make decisions on old tags and determine marketing budgets based off scope, usage and effectiveness of existing tags on site. Plus the benefits of modifying, adding and updating tags in real-time is what has become the status quo for the most successful brands in the world. So the value here: being able to run like a rookie but make decisions like a veteran.
- Build a foundation for the future The future isn’t in tag management, I know, but the future is in a more digital, flexible, always moving world. Tag management systems combined with excellent analytics and forward thinking teams create powerful digital marketing forces. Yes, I’m starting to sound cheesy but the competitive advantage and value of building a solid foundation (in really anything) can take your organization to new incredible heights. So the value here: well, being the best in what you do (with digital marketing).
