The Magic of Using Google Tag Manager with Google Analytics
If you installed Google Analytics (the current version is known as Google Analytics 4 or GA4) recently — or even a while back, but you’ve logged into your dashboard only occasionally — you might have stopped at this report view. You probably looked at this screen and thought, “Not a lot of value here,” and moved on to something else:
GA4’s Reports > Examine user behavior > Events view by default
The value missing from the Events report if you only use Google Analytics
The main hurdle for webmasters as well as marketing directors and managers looking at the Events report is that they need to spend more time in GA4 to add additional columns to this report in order to even start to understand things like, “Which pages generated the page_view event?”
However, even after adding dimensions like page URLs and traffic source, some events are still not clear — such as which specific calls to action on your website, like buttons and email links, generated each “click” event.
Google Tag Manager supplements Google Analytics to fill in the blanks
I’d like to thank Google for keeping both Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager (GTM) free. After all, adding GTM to the mix delivers a ton of value for a $0 investment when it comes to both apps (except for time).
How does this value manifest in a webmaster’s or marketer’s day to day? Here is how one of our client’s GA4 Events report looks with custom events that we set up in GTM and then live-tested in their GA4 property (account) to ensure that they work for their website visitors moving forward:
GA4’s Reports > Examine user behavior > Events view populated with custom events that we set in Google Tag Manager
If this screenshot were extended to the right to show the first column of data (Event Count), you’d see in GA4, for a date range that you can customize:
The number of phone number clicks in the sidebar of their website design (“click_phone_number_sidebar” events)
The number of Make An Appointment button clicks from the website’s top menu (“cta_click_topmenu_maabutton” events)
The number of Make An Appointment button clicks from a key audience demo landing page (“cta_click_ssc_maabutton” events)
In addition, if the screenshot were extended down, you’d see several of what I consider as the most powerful event that GTM allows you to add to the GA4 Events report: generate_lead events. (This event type isn’t included in GA4 by default.) In this client’s case, we set up generate_lead events for Contact page form submissions as well as appointment bookings made in Calendly, via new “event booked thank you” pages we added to their WordPress website.
The magic that adding and configuring GTM provides to your GA4 Events report
I view substantial time savings as magic for a client’s business — because that’s time that the business owner or marketer doesn’t need to spend in GA4 to adjust report settings in order to get to the final report they want to save or download to use with their CRM.
GTM provides this magic in spades. Once GTM is set up and customized in tandem with GA4 for your business’ specific conversion event tracking, our clients need only do the following in their GA4 property:
Log in
Navigate to the Reports > Examine user behavior > Events screen
Change the report date range
Add a column for Demographics, Geography, Page/Screen, Platform/Device, or Traffic Source data
Save or download the report
That’s it! No additional time in GA4 is needed and it’s back to business for our clients.
If you only use Google Analytics, let’s transform your Events report by integrating the free Google Tag Manager app
We help both businesses that have never used GTM, as well as those who set it up a long time ago and need to reset their website GTM tracking code to the current format in order to properly track custom conversion events in their GA4 moving forward. Learn more about what we offer here.
