I see this often with companies that sell high-value products or services online. Courses, memberships, programmes, or B2B services. Demand exists. People want what’s being sold. But when revenue slows down, no one can explain why.

A real example

Take Positive Success Group, a business that sells accredited professional courses.

Before I started working with them, they were making sales – but they had no way to understand how those sales happened.

They were running Google Ads.
They had a website.
They had an online store.

But none of it was connected.

When a sale came in, there was no visibility into:

• where the lead came from
• which ad triggered it
• what the buyer saw before purchasing
• or why one campaign worked better than another

If a month was good, it was assumed marketing was working.
If a month was bad, it was assumed marketing wasn’t.

There was nothing in between.

What they were (and weren’t) measuring

They weren’t even measuring the wrong things.

They weren’t measuring anything.

Sales either happened or they didn’t. That was the only signal.

There was no lead data.
No follow-up tracking.
No way to see drop-off points.
No way to improve performance incrementally.

So when sales slowed, there was nothing to adjust. No lever to pull. No insight to act on.

Why this is dangerous

The courses sell.
People want them.
In many cases, people need them because they provide accreditation.

So the problem was never demand.

The problem was that there was no system connecting:

• ads
• to leads
• to follow-up
• to sales

Without that, you can’t improve anything.

You don’t know if the ad is wrong.
You don’t know if the message is unclear.
You don’t know if people are interested but hesitant.
You don’t know if sales are lost because of timing, trust, or follow-up.

You’re guessing.

What changed when tracking was put in place

I had to go back to basics.

Not to “do more marketing” – but to make their marketing measurable.

That meant:

• rebuilding the website so it clearly explained the offer
• capturing leads properly using structured forms
• routing those leads into email sequences
• creating a webinar as a clear conversion step
• tracking every step from ad → registration → email → sale

Now, even when sales are slow, we know exactly what to work on.

Are people clicking the ad?
Yes.

Are people register interest?
Yes.

Are people engaging with the emails?
Yes

Are they buying?
Not as much as we would like, but we are now at the last bottleneck

Why most businesses avoid this

Proper revenue tracking is hard.

It requires:

• access to websites and hosting
• integration between ads, forms, email, and checkout
• the right software
• time spent testing and fixing
• and a willingness to see uncomfortable truths

Many agencies talk about “tracking,” but what they mean is surface-level reporting. Clicks, impressions, traffic, engagement.

Tracking ads and leads all the way to revenue is more complex. It’s slower. And it removes excuses.

But without it, marketing can never be improved properly.

The bottom line

If you can’t track your marketing activity back to revenue, it isn’t marketing - it’s just activity that becomes almost impossible to scale.

Once revenue is visible, decisions become obvious.
Budgets stretch further.
Teams argue less.
And growth becomes something you can work on deliberately, not hope for.

If you’re spending money on marketing but can’t clearly see how it turns into revenue, that’s the first thing to fix.

If you want to talk through your current setup and see where tracking is breaking down, get in touch. We can book a call and look at your system - not to sell tactics, but to understand what’s actually driving (or blocking) growth.