What is Google Tag Manager?
Google Tag Manager (GTM) is a tag management system that allows you to quickly and easily create and manage tracking codes and related code snippets known as tags. For example, a tag is a piece of code from Google Analytics or Meta.
Without GTM you would have to place all these pieces of code separately in your ticket shop. However with GTM you can just paste your codes into the tag manager, and add the GTM ID to your ticket shop. This keeps you organised, and allows you to update your tags in your ticket shops easily, all at once.
We highly recommend that all Stager users set up a Google Tag Manager account and add a container ID to their ticket shop, so they can track their visitor’s behaviour. Since ticket links to the Stager domain can be also used by event publication channels, such as Spotify, adding a GTM container ID to your ticket shop is useful even when using server-side tracking.
Key terms
A trigger tells GTM when to fire a tag, for example, when someone purchases a ticket in your ticket shop, or when a button is clicked.
A variable is a piece of information that GTM can use, like a page URL or user ID. This helps you make tags and triggers more specific.
A data layer is a JavaScript object on your website that stores data GTM can access and use to trigger tags and pass data to tools like Google Analytics
A container holds all your tags, triggers and variables. Install it once on your website, and manage the tracking from inside Google Tag Manager.
Note: To be able to send data to Google Tag Manager, the cookie consent banner on your website must be accepted.
Get started with Google Tag Manager
In this article, we assume that you already have a Google Analytics and Meta Business Suite account. If this isn’t the case, we recommend that you create these accounts first. You can read how to do this in the following articles:
To start, you first will need to create an account with Google Tag Manager. Go to Google Tag Manager and log in with your Google account. Click on ‘Create account’ in Google Tag Manager.
Give your account a name. Enter your country. Give your container a name, and click on ‘web’ under the target platform. This is how you create a container for desktop and mobile web pages. A container is the place where all tags and codes are collected.
Click on ‘create’ and accept the terms. You will now see a screen from which you can copy the code. You can ignore this.
Give your account a name. Enter your country. Give your container a name, and click on ‘web’ under the target platform. This is how you create a container for desktop and mobile web pages. A container is the place where all tags and codes are collected.
Click on ‘create’ and accept the terms. You will now see a screen from which you can copy the code. You can ignore this.
Connect Google Tag Manager with Stager
Now we will integrate the Google Tag Manager code into Stager. To do this, follow these steps:
Go to ‘Administration’ in GTM and copy the container ID. It looks like this: GTM-XXXXXXX
Open a new tab and go to the Stager backstage environment.
Navigate to Settings > Ticketing > Ticket Shops. Select a Ticket Shop and navigate to the Marketing tab.
Paste the container ID in the Google Tag Manager ID field
Click Save in the bottom yellow banner.
Your GTM container is now linked to the ticket shop.
Tip: If you want to quickly check if there is a Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager code on a website, use Google Tag Assistant. This is an extension in your taskbar within Google Chrome. This also allows you to see whether something is duplicated.
Your next steps after setting up GTM
What you next do is now dependent on if you use server-side tracking (which we recommend) or not. This will change the containers and code that you use.
Are you planning on using server-side tracking from your own domain? Then go to this article on implementing tracking containers from our partner TAGGRS.
Will you instead use client-side tracking, either on your own domain or on the Stager domain? Then go to this article to implement the pre-made container from our online marketing partner Afdeling Online.