Væbi
Kicking ass for Taekwondo
Turning “we don’t know what’s working” into measurable growth for a major martial arts academy
The situation we inherited – marketing without direction
De Silva Taekwondo is a long-established martial arts school in the UK. They have venues across London, but have been struggling to fill their Wembley centre.
They had already invested heavily in Google Ads but faced a frustrating problem:
Enquiries were happening… but nobody knew why, where from, or how many were actually driven by advertising.
From a business perspective, this is the worst possible position to be in.
Spending money without measurement means you can’t optimise, scale, or even decide whether marketing is profitable.
So when we were brought in, the goal was simple:
Make the marketing measurable — then make it profitable.
What we found – marketing that looked fine, but failed
On the surface everything looked correct:
Google Analytics installed
Google Tag Manager installed
Consent banner installed
Google Ads running
Booking forms working
In reality, the setup had evolved over time through multiple plugins, partial implementations and good-faith attempts to follow tutorials.
The result was a system that looked complete but functionally contradicted itself.
The core issues
We discovered overlapping tracking layers all firing independently:
Direct Google tags
WordPress SiteKit tags
Google Tag Manager tags
Booking plugin scripts
Consent banner logic applied after tags fired
This created a cascade of hidden problems:
1) Analytics silently blocked
Consent settings were applied after tracking loaded, meaning GA4 rejected data entirely.
Result: traffic existed, but analytics showed zero users.
2) Conversions invisible
The booking form did not load a new page — it changed content on the same page.
Standard conversion tracking could never detect it.
3) Attribution broken
Some tags fired twice. Others not at all.
Google Ads could not reliably link a click to a booking.
4) False conclusions
Because reporting was empty, the business assumed:
Ads weren’t working
Or results were random
Or conversions were organic
None of these were true — but there was no evidence either way.
Building a measurable growth engine
Rather than tweaking settings, we rebuilt measurement from the ground up.
Step 1 – Single source of truth
Step 2 – Legal & functional consent
Step 3 – Real conversion detection
Step 4 – Ads attribution repair
Step 5 – Verification
For the first time, the business could trust its numbers.
The result – ROI and predictable growth
Once measurement worked, performance became clear almost immediately.
Ad spend after rebuild
£400
Measured bookings
32 confirmed booking submissions
Historical comparison
Before Væbi:
£1000s spent
Outcome unknown
After Vaebi:
£400 spent
Fully measurable results
- Around 9x ROI
What Væbi changed
Before:
Data existed but couldn’t be trusted
Marketing decisions were guesses
Spend felt risky
After:
Every booking measurable
Clear attribution
Scalable acquisition channel
This wasn’t about “better ads” (although we did create much better ads!)
It was about building a measurement system that turns marketing from a gamble into an investment.
Key takeaway
Most struggling ad accounts are not failing because of targeting or copy. AI can do that pretty well, and in all honesty, you could get by with AI tools.
They fail because the measurement layer is unreliable.
Once the business can trust the data:
optimisation becomes possible
scaling becomes safe
ROI becomes predictable
That’s exactly what happened here.
And that’s what gives De Silva the confidence to expand.
