Reflections on our 2nd Birthday

The first two years of Fusion75 have been a wonderful experience. When someone asks me how things have been going, my standard answer is that it's fun, rewarding, nervewracking, challenging, and exciting (or some combination of these adjectives) all at the same time - and that I wouldn't trade it for anything. Opting for entreprenurship while leaving behind a nice steady paycheck plus benefits and a good group of people to work with is not a decision to be taken lightly. Throw a toddler and another child on the way into the mix, and it's borderline insane. Even with that said, I have no doubts that this was the right move.

If an entrepreneur tells you that everything has been perfect and under control, I have oceanfront property in Kansas to sell you. While business has been overall very positive, there have been slow periods, and there have been times where I didn't set the right expectation with a client. Outside of business, life does happen. Just 4 months after starting Fusion75, my mother passed away unexpectedly, and less than three months after that, my wife and I welcomed our second son into the world. There's no manual on how to perfectly handle life while starting a business, but each of those events somehow has helped me grow and made me a better man, father, husband, friend, and business owner.

Through it all, we're still standing after two years, and I'm personally excited for what the future holds. While I'm extremely proud of what has been achieved so far through my vision of a consultancy to help marketers do their jobs better, I could not have done it without the support of a number of people. To everyone I've ever managed directly or indirectly, I thank you for giving me the honor and privilege of your trust in me. To Ken Robbins, thank you for hiring me as a 24-year-old who still hadn't found my career footing two-years-removed from college. To Kit Hughes, thank you for giving me the opportunity to help get the media team started at Look Listen. To David Secrest, thank you for our honest conversations over the years. And finally to my loving wife, Michelle, thank you for supporting me through everything. You're a fantastic wife and the perfect mother for our two children.

Thanks for reading!

COVID-19 Resources

The novel Coronavirus has changed just about everyone's life in a short amount of time. A global pandemic was not on the minds of those who have lost loved ones to this ugly virus, and businesses preparing for 2020 could not have anticipated the current state we're in. All that said, while we are practicing social distancing, we have listed some resources as well as some thoughts on some things to do in order to make the most of this uncertain time.

Resources for Those in Need

Everest Effect is an online marketplace that puts critical resources directly into the hands of impacted individuals to accelerate their recovery in order to help individuals and communities recover and rebuild after a disaster strikes. If you're someone greatly impacted by the pandemic, you can request items, and if you’re someone who wants to help others in need, you can actually purchase these requested items for individuals.

Mental Health Check

For those who need someone to talk to during this trying time, Talkspace and Betterhelp are two services that allow individuals to find and talk to a licensed therapist online.

CDC & COVID-19 Testing

If you want to know more about testing for COVID-19 and would like to see if you should be tested, see this resource from the CDC: Testing for COVID-19.

Job Resources for Displaced Analysts

For those who have lost their jobs in the Analytics space, a new free service exists to connect independent contractors with companies looking to hire analytics talent. This was started by Michael Helbling of AJL Analytics (and co-host of the Digital Analytics Power Hour) and Evan LaPointe of Core Sciences. The service, which is called JOIN, can be found at this link: COVID-19: How We Can Help.

More Job Resources

Candor.co has published a list of companies who are currently hiring, in a hiring freeze, and those who have laid off employees due to the novel Coronavirus. They also have created a nice chart that shows an aggregate view of industries with companies actively hiring vs. those with hiring freezes and layoffs.

Stats and Vizzes for Data Nerds

For data nerds, there are a number of good dashboards that visualize the trends and global impact of COVID-19. Two of the better ones we've come across are the Johns Hopkins Map and the Domo Coronavirus (COVID-19) Tracker.

Small Business Resources

Financial Assistance and Loans

The Small Business Association (SBA) has launched an application for businesses to apply for a COVID-19-related disaster loan of up to $10,000. In addition, businesses can apply for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) which gives aid to SMBs in order to enable businesses to keep paying employees for the next 2-3 months. The application can be downloaded here and then submitted to your SBA-participating financial institution.

Advertising Grants and Credits

Facebook Boost

Facebook has put together a great resource to help businesses manage through the current crisis. Facebook is also offering grants and ad credits during this time.

Google Ads Grants

Google is giving SMBs worldwide $340 million in ad credits, which can be used at any point until the end of 2020 across Google Ads platforms.

Take Inventory

For those who are still employed, but have some extra time due to working remotely, I strongly encourage you to take inventory of everything you do on your job and see if anything can be done better or more efficiently. If you're copying & pasting or manually entering data into an excel report, it may be time to automate that process. If you're auditing hundreds of landing pages on your e-commerce site because online shopping is booming, it may be time to automate that process. During a recent talk, I heard the speaker say "copy and paste is a case for automate." If you can reduce time spent on repetitive tasks, that gives you much more time to provide valuable insight that drives action with fresh data. There are a number of ways that we can help with this, so don't hesitate to reach out.

New Website Launch!

3…2…1…LIFT-OFF!

The new site is up! I hope you like it, and I'd love your feedback. While opinions don't matter (numbers do), I wanted to have a site that better explained our service offering and the types of companies we serve, a site that looks great on both widescreen monitors and mobile phones, AND a site that I felt better about driving some paid advertising to while we grow.

Hopefully the new site can answer these questions better!

In addition to putting our best face forward, we also want to remain top of mind. The blog will be updated more regularly, and we'll be sharing educational content (like this), how-to guides (like this one), templates, thought leadership, industry news, and other original content a lot more frequently on social media and other publications. Please be sure to follow the page on all networks (LinkedIn | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram), and I'd really appreciate your likes, comments, shares, retweets, reposts, etc.

Thank you for your support thus far, and be on the lookout for more content! And always, if you or someone you know needs help with data, marketing technology, web analytics, etc. please send them this way!

-Aaron

Giving the Technical Marketer Some Love

Oh technical marketer, you da real MVP. You are the unsung hero. You hack growth and don't just hashtag about it. You are the results-driven professional that everyone puts in their LinkedIn headline. We appreciate you!

You don't complain (publicly) about the goals that your CEO or investors set for marketing. You just figure out how to get there, and then you get there. You make the impossible possible. Your whiteboard is messy, and you have a million thoughts competing for your attention. You may be a team of one or a team of ten, but you always could use a few more hands.

You're not afraid of a big spreadsheet, and you make a killer presentation to executives and/or clients. You know some SEO, Social Media, PPC, email marketing, and programmatic; and you’re responsible for these channels plus five others. The web developers love working with you because they know exactly what they need to do after meeting with you. You don't click suspicious links in emails and put in a lot of tickets with IT.

Everyone loves you, but you are overwhelmed. You don't know how all of these campaigns are going to get launched in such a short window. We are your ally. Whether you work in an agency or on the brand side, we understand what you're going through. Just stay the course, and know that you'll always come out on top.

Google Tag Manager - Getting Started

**This article has been updated in January, 2021 to reflect the change that replaced Preview Mode with Tag Assistant. For familiarity’s sake, this post shows how to install the Google Analytics 3 (Universal Analytics) tag. Once GA4 becomes more ubiquitous, we will update this article again to install GA4 via GTM.

Everyone has already told you that Google Tag Manager will make your life easier, but how do you get it on your site? Luckily it's very easy to install Google Tag Manager (GTM). We'll discuss how to set up your Google Tag Manager account, install GTM on your site, and adding & publishing the Google Analytics Universal Analytics tag.

Setting Up Your Google Tag Manager Account

Go to Google Tag Manager and make sure that you're signed into the Google Account that you want to use (or create a new one here).
Click the Create Account button to create a new account

Fill in the appropriate information for Account Name and Container Name; select the Target platform (Web if this is for your website) and click the Create button

Read and accept the Google Tag Manager Terms of Service Agreement. At this time It is also advisable to check "I also accept the Data Processing Terms as required by GDPR."

Installing Google Tag Manager to your Site

After creating the account and container, you will immediately be greeted with a prompt to copy & paste some code onto your site. Follow the instructions and paste the code from the top window as high in the <head> as possible on every page of the website. Next, paste the code from the second window immediately after the opening <body> tag.

A couple of words to the wise…

1. DO NOT SEND THIS CODE IN THE BODY OF AN EMAIL!

2. DO NOT SEND THIS CODE AS A MS WORD ATTACHMENT!

 If you must email this code to someone else, paste it into Notepad and save as a Text (.txt) file before attaching to email. Sending in the body of an email or in a Word document may result in formatting that breaks the code.

Google Tag Manager and your Content Management System

Since we are well-past the Web 1.0 era of static websites, chances are that your site is built on a Content Management System (CMS). The process for installing GTM to your CMS may vary, but in most cases the process is straightforward. In many cases, your CMS may have an easy integration with Google Tag Manager, and you only need to copy the container ID (looks like GTM-XXXXXXX) into your CMS to get started. See below for some helpful links on installing GTM on popular CMS platforms:

• Wordpress
• SquareSpace
• Shopify
• Magento
• Drupal
• Joomla

Installing the Google Analytics tag to your GTM container

Now that Google Tag Manager is installed on the site, let's install your first tag. I'll assume that you already have created your Google Analytics account, or you are using an account that already exists. If you still need to create your account, go to Google Analytics create your account before proceeding.

In your Google Analytics Account, click Admin at the bottom of the left-hand-side panel.

Then click Tracking Info >> Tracking Code and copy the Tracking ID that you see on the screen. It will look something like UA-123456789-1.

Go back to your Google Tag Manager window. We now need to create the Google Analytics Settings variable using this tracking ID. To do so, click Variables on the left-hand-side panel, and then the New button in the User-Defined Variables box.

Next, give the variable a unique name like GA Settings, and then click inside the Variable Configuration box to select the variable type. After you do so, a panel with a list of different variable types will show up on the right side of the screen. About 3/4 of the way down this list will be Google Analytics Settings.

Click on it. Then input your Tracking ID that you just copied from Google Analytics. Then click Save.

Next, we must create the Google Analytics Tag. On the left-hand-side panel, click Tags, and then click the New button.

Give this tag a unique name like GA Universal Page View, and then click the Tag Configuration box to select the tag type. Next select the Google Analytics: Universal Analytics tag which should be the first option in the right panel.

Leave the Track Type as Page View. In the second drop-down menu, select the variable that you just created.

Next, we'll need to apply a trigger to tell this tag when to fire. Since this is our universal page view tag that should appear on all pages, we will select the default All Pages trigger that is already created in your GTM account.

Now our tag should look like the below. Click Save.

Tag Assistant (Formerly Preview Mode) - Your Bestest Friend in the Whole World

Almost there! It's always a good idea whenever adding a tag to verify that the tag is firing before publishing it to the live website. A 2020 update has changed (for the better) how we QA our tags. We perform this QA by using what is known as Tag Assistant. Tag Assistant records the entire session across pages instead of showing you what happens individually on the current page. To enable Tag Assistant, simply click the Preview button near the top right of the page in GTM.

Next, a new browser tab will open, and you will be prompted to enter a URL. Enter the URL where you would like to QA your tag(s), and click the Start button. You should also leave the box checked that says "Include debug signal in the URL" unless adding this parameter would break your website.

In a third tab, you'll be taken to the page that you entered. You will notice that gtm_debug=x has been appended to your URL if you left the box checked in Tag Assistant.

Also you'll notice that there is a message that pops up in the bottom-right of your browser window that says "Debugger connected."

Now you are ready to verify that tags are firing. Back in the Tag Assistant tab, you should see a panel taking up the majority of your window. In that panel, you should see a summary of the tags that have been fired on this page, and the tags that have not been fired on this page. Since we configured the GA Universal Page View tag to fire on all pages, this tag should appear under the Tags Fired On This Page section.

To further verify that it is firing on all pages (and that GTM is installed on all pages), go back to the tab with your site and navigate through a handful of pages. After going to a few pages, go back to Tag Assistant and confirm that the tag appears in the "Tags Fired" section for each page. Seeing activity for each page is as easy as clicking on the page title as it appears on the left-hand side of Tag Assistant.

NOTE - after you're done QAing your tags, don't forget to exit Tag Assistant by clicking the X at the top-left of the window and then clicking "STOP DEBUGGING."

In order to save yourself a step for next time, check the box that says "Keep the domain [yourdomain.com] enabled for debugging."

After you've verified that GTM is installed, and your Universal Analytics tag is firing properly, it is time to take a deep breath and publish to the live container on the website. To do this, click the Submit button near the top right of the page.

Then enter a name and description summarizing the changes you made, and click Publish.

That's it! Now that you've installed Google Tag Manager and deployed the Google Analytics Universal Page View tag, you're able to see data populating in your Google Analytics account when users begin visiting your site.

 You now also have the ability to add more tags, triggers, and variables. Google Tag Manager is a very powerful platform, and once you understand how it works, you can use it for so much more than just adding the GA Page View tag to your site. Our team has been installing and customizing GTM for years and can help you take your site tracking to the next level.