Training · In-house teams
Stop guessing what isinside your container.
Practical Google Tag Manager and GA4 training for the people who actually own the tracking in-house. Taught on your own container, with your own site, so you leave having fixed real things rather than having watched a demo account.
Your container, day one
previewTypical session size
4-15
Marketing and web teams together
Who this is for.
Usually the person who inherited the tracking and has been quietly hoping nobody asks about it.
Marketers who own the container
You can add a tag by following a guide, but you cannot confidently say whether the whole setup is right, and you would rather not find out during a board meeting.
Teams who inherited a mess
The agency set it up in 2021, nobody has touched it since, and there are tags in there firing to accounts you no longer own.
Web teams asked to implement tracking
Developers who can push to the dataLayer but were never told what marketing actually needs, so tracking requests arrive as vague tickets.
Anyone about to replatform
The best time to learn this is before the new site is built, when the measurement plan can still shape what the developers deliver.
How the session works.
Taught on your container, not a demo one
Every example uses your site, your tags and your actual problems. It means the session doubles as an audit, and you finish the day with real fixes deployed rather than notes about what you might do later. It also means I have to prepare properly, which is the point.
- I review your container and GA4 property before the session
- Exercises built around your real site and your real conversion actions
- Fixes deployed in the room, with the team doing the work
- A written list of what remains outstanding when we finish
Same container, end of day
previewEnough theory to make decisions, not to pass an exam
The parts that matter are conceptual: what an event actually represents, why the dataLayer is a contract rather than a container, and how consent changes what you are allowed to collect. Get those right and the interface is the easy part.
- How tags, triggers and variables really relate to each other
- Why event-based triggers survive redesigns and CSS-based ones do not
- What GA4 is actually counting, and why it disagrees with the ad platforms
- How to debug systematically instead of changing things until it works
Where teams usually feel weakest
Format
Half or full day
In person or remote
What the session covers.
Adjusted to your team’s level after a short scoping call.
- How GTM actually works: tags, triggers, variables and the data model
- Reading and understanding an existing container
- The dataLayer explained from first principles
- Writing a dataLayer specification for your developers
- Event-based triggers versus fragile CSS selectors
- GA4 event modelling for your business
- GA4 e-commerce and the items array
- Conversion tracking for Google Ads and Meta
- Consent Mode v2 and what your cookie banner is doing
- Testing every consent state properly
- A repeatable debugging methodology
- Preview mode, Tag Assistant and browser dev tools
- Naming conventions, folders and version notes
- Common mistakes and how to spot them in a container
- When to escalate to a developer or specialist
- Documentation your successor will thank you for
You keep the written materials, checklists and templates, and there is a follow-up window for questions once your team starts applying it.
Taught by someone who still does the work.
Not a full-time trainer. I build and repair these setups for clients every week.
7 yrs
Building and repairing GA4, Universal Analytics and Google Tag Manager setups
30+
Distinct actions tracked through GTM on a single site, feeding a full Power BI reporting stack
4-15
People per in-person session across analytics, Google Ads and paid social
GDPR
Compliant implementations with no cookies before consent, so the consent module is practical rather than theoretical
Client names withheld under agency and contract terms. Happy to talk specifics on a call.
How a session gets organised.
Two short conversations and a date in the calendar.
A scoping call
Twenty to thirty minutes. Who is attending, what they already know, and what specifically has been going wrong. Free.
Preparation
You grant read access to your container and GA4 property. I review it and build the session around what I find, which is usually more useful than any generic agenda.
The session
Half day or full day, in person or remote. Hands-on throughout, with your team working in the container rather than watching me work in it.
Follow-up
Materials, checklists and a written list of outstanding items, plus a window for questions once people hit real problems with it.
Whether training or doing it for you is better.
Sometimes the honest answer is that you should just hire someone to fix it.
This is a good fit if
- Somebody in-house owns the tracking and will keep owning it
- You make regular site changes and need tracking maintained, not just built once
- You want to stop paying an agency for every small tag change
- You are replatforming and want the team able to shape the measurement plan
- You have two or more people who need the same knowledge
Call someone else if
- Nobody in-house has time to own this afterwards — a build and handover is better value
- You need it fixed by next week — training is not the fast route
- You have a one-off complex build like server-side GTM, which is a job rather than a lesson
- Only one person is attending and they are leaving the business shortly
- You want certification specifically, which I do not issue
Trainingquestions.
Something not covered? Ask me directly — you will get a straight answer, not a proposal.
How technical does the team need to be?
Comfortable in a browser and willing to look at a bit of code on screen. You do not need to be a developer. Mixed groups of marketers and web people work particularly well because they finally hear each other's constraints.
Half day or full day?
Half a day covers the fundamentals and a container review. A full day gets into GA4 event modelling, consent testing and debugging with time to actually practise. Most teams get better value from the full day.
Can we do it remotely?
Yes, and it works well split into two shorter blocks so people can absorb it between sessions. In person is better for larger or mixed-ability groups where I can look over shoulders.
Do you provide materials?
Yes. Written notes, a debugging checklist, a naming convention template and a measurement plan template, all yours to keep and reuse.
What if we get stuck afterwards?
There is a follow-up window for questions by email, which is when most of the useful questions arrive anyway. Beyond that, I am available for ad hoc consultancy without a retainer.
Can you fix our tracking instead?
Yes — that is the main service, and for a lot of businesses it is the better value option. Plenty of clients do a build first and training afterwards so the team can maintain it.