Digital Analytics MiniDegree from CXL — every marketer must try — Part 7 Review
Reviewing CXL Institute’s Digital Analytical Mini degree. As always I start by saying analytics is the sexiest word, for at least the professionals who understand it, most of the students and professionals are following this as a career, rather for the pay than its actual understanding and passion. Let’s not argue over this, since it has lots of points balancing on either side of the equation.
Before I go any further I will just give a brief on myself, I am Nischith a sales & marketing professional working in the health sector. I live in Bangalore India and I am from Mysore, City of Heritage.
The information shared below is based on the learnings from CXL Institute, you need to have a bare understanding of what Digital Marketing or Google analytics is, as CXL themselves say their courses are not for beginners. Let’s dive in, I hope I give you a good insight into their teaching.
Today's review is on Part 2 of Google Tag Manager, right from creating the first tags and triggers, scripts and pixels, tracking clicks, times, scrolls, youtube videos.
Let's start from the beginning
Getting Started: Creating Your First Tag
- Create a Google Analytics Pageview Tag
The idea of Google Tag Manager is to replace the Google Analytics tracking
Having this understanding you need to go to Google Tag Manager and create your first Tag, we will just start out with the basic settings
* Go to Tags, select new in the right top side
* then, select Tag Configuration it leads to a side pop up window showing different tag types
* select, Google Analytics — Universal Analytics
* Now select, Page View under track type
* from Google Analytics Settings select Custom Variable which you will have to create first hand as below
2.Understand the “Google Analytics Settings” Variable
As understood earlier, variables are quite an important part of placing multiple values. Here we are creating a variable that is user-defined for google analytics with GA id.
* Under user-defined variables create New
* then when you click on variable configuration, it leads to a side pop up window showing different variable types.
* Under Utilities, select Google Analytics settings
* Once done it will ask you for Tracking Id, which is nothing but Google Analytics Id
* Let the cookie domain remain the same: Auto
* Then Save with the appropriate name
The next thing is we need to create a trigger
3.Connect the GA Tag to GTM’s Default Trigger
* Click on New under triggers and Trigger Configuration
* Select the basic setting that is Page View
* There you get 2 options,
a.All Page Views b.Some Page Views
* then save with the appropriate name
Are we done?, NO
In tags, we need to connect the trigger below the tag configuration
4.Test & Publish
Finally, are we done, yes, but the last thing you need to do is test what you have set.
*Go to the overview, click on the preview button which is on the top right side
*This step is crucial, the application starts to debug if the tags and triggers are working properly.
*When you click on the preview button, there is a new window — Tag assistant and there you need to enter your website domain name.
*This leads to your website and now you will be able to understand whether the domain and tag is connected,
*Any activity on the domain will create a hit or event in the Tag assistant window.
*Firing the GA Page View Tag makes the settings seem working.
Then submit the version of creations and changes in the overall view, with the proper name and description if required.
Yes, we have created a variable, a trigger, and a tag. we have tested them and published the same.
You can further refer to these links:
Google’s Guide to Deploying Google Analytics
Google’s Guide to Google Analytics Settings Variable
Scripts & Pixels:
As told earlier Google Tag Manager also supports foreign application platforms, I mean platforms apart from google applications and webs.
Let's consider Facebook as an example, here you need to follow the same for triggers, and for Tags, you need to choose something different tag type as a Custom HTML.
*First of all, you need to manually copy the scripts or the so-called pixels from the Facebook event manager.
*then paste it in the Custom HTML space.
Then test it through preview and submit, there you go its done.
You can further refer to these links:
Google’s Guide to Deploying Google Ads Tags
Google’s Guide to the Conversion Linker
Facebook’s Guide to Installing Pixels Using GTM
Facebook’s Pixel Helper Chrome Extension
Let’s see how to set tracking clicks, scrolls, measuring times, youtube videos,
To do all these we need respective triggers selected,
let's start with Clicks
*Go to Triggers
*Trigger Configurations
*There you have 2 options under Clicks
All elements and Just Links(Will explain the difference)
*Now select Just links
*Under Just links, there are 2 links
All Link Clicks and Some Link Clicks
*According to the requirement use anyone and save the trigger.
All element clicks: Track clicks on any element on a page, e.g. links, images, buttons, etc.
Just Links: Track clicks only on hyperlinks or HTML links that use the
Scroll Depth Trigger:
Same as other triggers now under User Engagement
* Select Scroll Depth
*You can select either vertical scroll depth or horizontal scroll depth
*There are further few options here to check the scroll depth depending on the percentage of page scroll depth[20,50,75,90] or pixels.
*Then you can select either All Pages or Some Pages
*Save it with an appropriate name
Youtube Video Trigger:
Similar to other triggers now again under User ENgagement
*Select YouTube Video
*Then you get few options under capture like
Start, complete, pause/seeking/buffering, progress[features to measure the video]
*You can select appropriate ones and select trigger fires on All Videos and Some Videos.
*Save the trigger
There is one thing you need to do, with all the configurations you make is Trust by Verify, yes you would do the same in the preview but make sure you do the same in the respective platforms if speaking about google analytics platform, there are reports in real-time where you can identify if the configurations set is reaching the platform here google analytics.
Please find below references for scroll and Youtube Videos:
Google’s Guide to the Scroll Depth Trigger
Google’s Guide to the Youtube Video
This is just a gist of what I was able to learn from the CXL Institute,
Every investment you make in CXL Institue to learn digital marketing pays you back, worth every penny.
Thanks to Mercer, the trainer. His explanations are clear and comfortable to follow.