Before we continue: The Pre-Tag-Management World
Before we dive deeper into what Google Tag Manager is, let’s take a quick look at the world we used to live in (a.k.a. “without tag management”). Whenever you want to install Google Analytics or some other web tracking tool, it prompts you to add a piece of their JavaScript code (a.k.a. tag) on your website. Pretty standard, right?

It can be Hotjar, Google Analytics, or some other tool, but they all ask you to add their code (tag) to your site. When a visitor lands on your website, that tracking code is also loaded. Therefore, a visitor is tracked.

Adding that one tag to a site isn’t a big deal. You ask a developer, and he/she will do that (sometimes on the same day, sometimes over several days, but still reasonable because this has to be done only once).

But here’s the catch. Out of the box, GA4 offers plenty of metrics and some automatic event-tracking capabilities. But to make really good and thoughtful decisions, you need to track much more: interactions (e.g., form submissions), sales, etc.

This means that more tracking codes must be added to a website. And usually, this is not just a “one-time project”. You must constantly add new tracking codes and modify/remove the current ones.

That’s where the developer (and the IT department) becomes a bottleneck. Since he/she is working on his/her own tasks/projects, marketing/analytics tasks are often a B priority. Therefore, you and your team have to wait. And wait a bit more. And more.

That’s where the GTM saves the day, and this Google Tag Manager tutorial will show you how.

What is Google Tag Manager?
Google Tag Manager is a tag management solution that is a middleman between a website and marketing/analytics tools. All you need to do is add your tracking codes to GTM and then configure rules when they should be activated(on page load, click, form submission, etc.).