One week it says “Organic drove everything”, the next it’s “Direct”, and your paid team is convinced the platform is stealing credit. Meanwhile, sales are closing deals 60–180 days after the first touch, and your reporting window is basically shrugging and guessing.
This is exactly the kind of messy, real-world measurement problem we help teams untangle at Totally Digital — not by chasing a perfect attribution unicorn, but by building something you can actually trust week-to-week and quarter-to-quarter.
Let’s fix it.
Why GA4 attribution breaks in long buying cycles
In lead gen, your “conversion” (a form fill) is rarely the business outcome. The real outcome is:
- Qualified lead
- Sales accepted lead
- Opportunity created
- Closed-won revenue
Those steps often happen weeks or months after the first click — and the longer that gap gets, the more likely your tracking, cookies, consent, and device switching will wipe out the thread.
Two UK-flavoured reality checks:
- The average B2B customer journey has been reported at 211 days (around 7 months).
- 78% of UK B2B marketers say sales cycles are getting longer.
So when you’re trying to measure a 30–180 day cycle with default analytics settings, it’s not surprising things look… off.
The GA4 limitation you need to know about (and what to do with it)
GA4 has an attribution “lookback window” (sometimes called the conversion window). That’s how far back it will consider touchpoints eligible for conversion credit.
- For most conversion events, GA4’s default lookback window is 90 days (and the selectable options are typically 30/60/90 days).
- User acquisition vs traffic acquisition also behave differently because they’re scoped differently (new users vs new sessions).
Here’s the catch: if your deal closes at day 120, GA4 can’t magically “see” touchpoints from day 1 in standard attribution reporting. Your best move isn’t to panic — it’s to design a measurement that matches the journey.
That means:
- Treat GA4 as your behaviour + lead capture truth
- Treat your CRM as your pipeline + revenue truth
- Stitch them together so you can analyse the full cycle without relying on wishful thinking
Step 1: Define what “success” really is (and stop calling everything a conversion)
If you only track “form_submit” as your primary success metric, you’ll optimise towards the easiest-to-generate leads — not the best ones.
Instead, build a simple conversion hierarchy:
- Enquiry submitted (top-of-funnel conversion)
- Qualified lead (sales-ready)
- Opportunity created
- Closed-won
In GA4 terms, that means:
- Track “Enquiry submitted” as a key event for day-to-day optimisation
- Bring “Qualified / Opp / Won” back into GA4 as offline events (more on that below)
If you want help setting this up cleanly (and in a way your stakeholders won’t misread), this is exactly what we do within Google Analytics Agency London.
Step 2: Fix the classic attribution leaks in lead gen tracking
Most attribution problems aren’t “GA4 being bad”. They’re data hygiene problems.
Leak A: your forms don’t capture attribution data
If your CRM record doesn’t store attribution identifiers at the moment the lead is created, you’ve already lost.
At minimum, capture and store:
- UTM parameters (source/medium/campaign/content/term)
- Landing page URL
- Referrer (where available)
- Timestamp
- GA client ID (from the _ga cookie) and/or user ID (if you have login)
- GCLID (if you run Google Ads and want clean paid matching)
The goal is simple: you want every lead record to carry enough context to be analysed later, even when cookies expire or the user comes back on a different device.
A well-built Tag Manager setup makes this dramatically easier, because you can standardise how those values are collected and pushed into hidden fields (or passed into your backend).
Leak B: “Direct” traffic is stealing credit
“Direct” in GA4 often means “we don’t know”, not “they typed your URL”.
Common causes:
- Email links without UTMs
- PDF clicks without tracking
- WhatsApp / Slack / Teams shares
- iOS privacy behaviour
- Cross-domain journeys not set up properly (e.g., booking platforms, third-party forms)
Fixes you can actually implement:
- Standardise UTMs for every outbound campaign (including newsletters and sales outreach)
- Make sure your forms live on your domain or are properly cross-domain tracked
- Track key document downloads (brochures, spec sheets) with meaningful events
If your website stack is a bit more complex (subdomains, embedded forms, booking engines), it’s worth pairing analytics fixes with broader Data & Analytics Agency work so you’re not patching symptoms.
Leak C: you’re looking at the wrong report (User vs Traffic)
A lot of “paid search isn’t working” arguments are caused by comparing apples and oranges.
- User acquisition attributes everything to the first user source (how they were acquired).
- Traffic acquisition attributes based on the session source (what brought them back this time).
In long cycles, both views are useful — but for different questions:
- Want to know what introduces new prospects? → user acquisition view
- Want to know what nudges them back to convert? → traffic acquisition view
If your stakeholders don’t understand this, your reporting will get undermined in meetings, no matter how good your campaigns are.
Step 3: Make GA4 work with long cycles by tracking “progress”, not just the final lead
When the buying cycle is long, measurement improves massively when you track meaningful milestones.
Examples of mid-funnel milestones that matter in B2B lead gen:
- Pricing page view (or high-intent service page view)
- Case study view
- “Book a call” CTA click
- Calendly / booking step started
- Download of a technical PDF
- Webinar registration
- Return visit within 14 days
You’re not doing this to inflate dashboards. You’re doing it because these signals:
- Help you see whether the right people are moving forward
- Give you leading indicators weeks before revenue shows up
- Let you compare channel quality without waiting 180 days
And if you’re using SEO as a growth channel, combining this kind of GA4 behaviour data with Search Console is incredibly useful — see GA4 + Search Console SEO Audit: Turning Data Into Fix-First Actions.
Step 4: Close the loop by importing offline outcomes into GA4
This is the biggest unlock for long buying cycles.
If your real outcomes happen in a CRM, you can bring those outcomes back into GA4 as events (so GA4 isn’t only measuring “lead created”, but also “lead qualified” or “deal won”).
GA4 supports importing events (including from systems that don’t send real-time events) and processes them as if collected via SDKs or the Measurement Protocol.
What this looks like in practice:
- Someone submits a lead form
- Your CRM stores attribution identifiers (UTMs, client ID, gclid where relevant)
- When the lead becomes “Qualified” (or “Won”), your system sends an event back into GA4 with a timestamp and identifiers
- GA4 can then report on quality outcomes by channel, not just raw leads
This doesn’t magically fix every edge case — but it dramatically improves what you can defend in reporting, especially when marketing is being asked to prove ROI.
If your internal team doesn’t have the engineering time to do this cleanly, it’s usually best handled as part of a structured measurement programme rather than a “quick GA4 tweak”.
Step 5: Align attribution settings — but don’t overpromise what they can do
Yes, you should review your attribution settings, but here’s the honest truth:
- GA4 lookback windows are still capped (commonly up to 90 days for most conversion events).
- A 180-day buying cycle will always require CRM + modelling, not just GA4 settings.
So what should you do?
- Use data-driven attribution where it’s appropriate (it tends to be more realistic than last-click for multi-touch journeys)
- Set your lookback window deliberately (and document it)
- Keep it consistent so month-to-month comparisons are meaningful
Then fill the 90→180 day gap with pipeline reporting that comes from your CRM.
Step 6: Build reporting that stakeholders actually trust
Attribution reporting fails when it’s:
- Too complicated to explain
- Too easy to “argue with”
- Too disconnected from revenue
A simple reporting structure that works well for long-cycle lead gen is:
1) Leading indicators (weekly)
- Qualified sessions
- High-intent page engagement
- Key mid-funnel milestones
- Lead volume (with quality checks)
2) Lagging indicators (monthly)
- Qualified leads
- Opportunities created
- Pipeline value (£)
- Cost per opportunity (£)
3) Revenue outcomes (quarterly)
- Closed-won revenue (£)
- Revenue by channel group (with clear assumptions)
- “Time to close” by channel (median + range)
If you want to make this “board-friendly”, pair GA4 data with cleaner commercial context via Insight & Strategy so you’re not just reporting what happened — you’re explaining what to do next.
Step 7: Decide what GA4 is responsible for (and what it isn’t)
You’ll sleep better when you draw the line clearly:
GA4 is great for:
- On-site behaviour and journey analysis
- Lead capture performance
- Channel patterns at the point of conversion (within the lookback limits)
- Identifying friction in key pages and forms
GA4 is not enough on its own for:
- True 180-day attribution
- Offline-heavy sales processes
- Multi-touch revenue allocation across long cycles
For that, you’ll combine GA4 with:
- CRM reporting
- Offline event import
- Consistent UTM governance
- (Often) dashboards that blend sources
And yes — if you’re investing heavily in acquisition, this should be joined up with your Paid Advertising Agency London work so performance conversations aren’t happening in separate silos.
Step 8: Don’t ignore the site experience (it changes attribution outcomes)
A quick reminder: attribution isn’t just “marketing measurement”. It’s also a mirror of what your site is doing.
If your conversion rate is low or inconsistent, attribution will look noisy because fewer users reach the point where tracking “locks in” a meaningful result.
So alongside GA4 fixes, it’s worth pressure-testing:
- Landing page clarity and CTA alignment (especially on mobile)
- Page speed / technical friction
- Internal linking paths to conversion pages
- Lead form UX (fields, validation, errors, confirmation)
That work sits naturally alongside SEO Performance Agency and, when needed, SEO Web Design.
A practical “30–180 day attribution fix” checklist
If you want something you can action immediately, use this as your baseline:
- Define conversion hierarchy (lead → qualified → opp → won)
- Track lead-submit as a GA4 key event
- Capture UTMs + client ID + gclid into your CRM at lead creation
- Standardise UTMs across all channels (especially email + outreach)
- Fix cross-domain and form tracking leaks
- Track mid-funnel milestones that predict quality
- Import offline outcomes into GA4 (qualified / won events)
- Document your attribution settings + lookback window
- Build blended reporting that uses GA4 for behaviour and CRM for revenue
- Educate stakeholders on User vs Traffic acquisition differences
When you’re ready to make attribution boring (in a good way)
If your buying cycle is 30–180 days, the goal isn’t “perfect attribution”. The goal is reliable decision-making — so you can invest with confidence, defend performance in meetings, and stop guessing which channels actually drive the pipeline.
If you want a second set of eyes on your setup (or you’re ready to properly close the loop between GA4 and your CRM), get in touch with Totally Digital. We’ll help you clean up the tracking foundations, build a measurement framework that reflects the real journey, and turn your reporting into something your team can actually trust.
If you’re tired of traffic that doesn’t convert, Totally Digital is here to help. Start with technical seo and a detailed seo audit to fix performance issues, indexing problems, and lost visibility. Next, scale sustainably with organic marketing and accelerate results with targeted paid ads. Get in touch today and we’ll show you where the quickest wins are.