What is Google Tag Manager? How to use it?

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What is Google Tag Manager (GTM)?
Google Tag Manager is a free tool that allows you manage and deploy marketing tags (snippets of code or tracking pixels) on your website (or mobile app) without having to modify the code.

Here's a very simple example of how GTM works. Information from one data source (your website) is shared with another data source (Analytics) through Google Tag Manager. GTM becomes very handy when you have lots of tags to manage because all of the code is stored in one place.
How to use it?
According to Google,

"Google Tag Manager helps make tag management simple, easy and reliable by allowing marketers and webmasters to deploy website tags all in one place."

They say it's a "simple" tool that any marketer can use without needing a web developer.

I may get run over in the comments section for saying this, but I'm standing my ground. Google Tag Manager is not "easy" to use without some technical knowledge or training (courses or self-taught).

You have to have some technical knowledge to understand how to set up tags, triggers and variables. If you're dropping in Facebook pixels, you'll need some understanding of how Facebook tracking pixels work.

If you want to set up event tracking in Google Tag Manager, you'll need some knowledge about what "events" are, how Google Analytics works, what data you can track with events, what the reports look like in Google Analytics and how to name your categories, actions and labels.

Although it is "easy" to manage multiple tags in GTM, there is a learning curve. Once you're over the hump, GTM is pretty slick about what you can track.

   
"Google Tag Manager has made the process of managing analytics and marketing tags easier than ever before. With this, most marketers do not realize what Google Tag Manager is actually doing and what happens when mistakes are made.

At Analytics Pros, we never recommend anyone use Google Tag Manager on their live site without a few months of training and experience. GTM is injecting code directly on the site, which means while unlikely, there is a possibility could break your website.

We have seen issues where users have injected plaintext on their pages, broken URLs and broken marketing tags and Analytics. The most successful GTM accounts have both marketing and technical resources involved with configuration, maintenance and updates." – Charles Farina, Analytics Pros, @CharlesFarina
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