In the past, I’ve posted on the emagine B2B Blog about the importance of Google Tag Manager for Marketers. If you’re “sold” on Google Tag Manager, and are considering taking the preverbal plunge into the world of tag management, I would recommend that before you dive in that you take a step back and put some time into a well-thought-out plan for implementation.

As the saying goes, “If you don’t have time to do it right the first time, when are you going to find the time to redo it a second time!?” Time spent planning now will save you precious time in the future. Here are a few point to consider before you move forward:

How should set up the GTM account? Who should have access?

Best practice is that the company that owns the website- rather than their Agency- creates the GTM account. The reason for this is if your company is in charge of the GTM account via a design, you have the power to monitor the account and control access. Giving everyone in the company access to the GTM account might be a little dangerous- well more than a little. I would recommend that you keep your list of those users with access to your GTM account small so it’s easier to track who is in there making changes.

Also, if you are the owner of your GTM account, and you have an agency that manages your GTM tags for you, then you have the ability to control their access. Meaning, if you move away from that agency you are not at their mercy.

What tags are already deployed on your website? And where?

Remember tags are tracking code snippets that collect data from activity on your website collected in Google Analytics, from Google Adwords activity, from Campaign-related activity, etc. Before launching Google Tag Manager, you might want to consider creating a list of already deployed “tags,” like your Google Analytics tracking code, and their locations. Go through the list and determine if these tags are up to date. In addition to creating a list of your tags and your locations, we would recommend that you also make a list of the information that you want to collect via new tags that need to be created.

You also need to determine how your tags will fire. Will they fire on page load, or on a button or link click? If you can fire you tags off of the click of a link, you might be able to implement your GTM tracking without the need of a developer. However, if your tags are going to fire off of a click, but you can’t use just a page URL for your tag, you might need to bring in your developer and allow extra time for him/her to add classes to your on-page elements so you can use them to fire your tags.

Do you manage multiple domains?

You only need one container per domain, but if you have multiple domains that have similar tags and firing rules then it might be better to manage them in one container so when you make a change you aren’t doing redundant work. If you need to apply changes to just one of your domains at a time then you are better off with multiple containers because when you publish a container you are publishing all tags, rules etc. You can’t selectively publish tags within one container.

User permissions are at the container level, so if you want to limit access to a certain domain then you will need multiple containers.

If you are going to have a lot of tags in one container then you might want to consider having one container per domain. Having one container per domain will help keep the confusion down when managing your account.

It doesn’t really matter if you have a very basic or a more complicated implementation of GTM on your site, time spent planning now can save you time and headaches further down the road.