Overview

Our client, based in the Worcester, MA, area, combines Montessori pedagogy with S.T.E.A.M.-based education to provide a unique learning environment for students K-8. This client came on for Facebook Ads in May 2021 looking to increase awareness, website clicks and enrollment in their school and various programs such as their summer program and distance learning option.

We’ve seen prior success promoting Montessori schools through traffic campaigns and chose this route for our client as an inexpensive way to drive visitors to the site in promotion of their various service offerings. This strategy works really well for a client with a well-developed website that can take over the lead process once someone lands on the site. This client came to us with a $400/month budget for Facebook Ads.

Audience Information

We initially created a location-based, detailed targeting audience to nail down a demographic of parents searching for this type of school for their children. We targeted people between the ages of 27-55 with a college level education in the top 10-20% income bracket who are interested in pursuing Montessori education for their children ages 3-12. We also included a variety of interests in our targeting such as “art” and “outdoor enthusiasts” in an effort to find the type of person who would be interested in Montessori philosophy.

One week into this campaign, the client provided their customer list, which we used to create a second audience. We combined this list with a 2% lookalike audience based on those individuals to widen our reach.

Creative Information

We created our graphics based on the client’s branding guidelines using the appropriate fonts, colors, and styles to match the school’s existing marketing materials. The client provided photos from inside their actual classrooms and we selected some of those mixed with stock imagery. We wanted these graphics to feel fun and engaging, encapsulating the energy you might find in a Our client classroom!

Results & Ongoing Work

During our first 2 months, our ads brought 1,154 unique link clicks at an average of 80 cents per click.

Google Analytics shows us that during this time period, social media was able to bring in 26.2% of the total traffic to the site with 99.47% of that traffic coming from Facebook!

As this campaign continued to learn, we made adjustments to broaden the targeting and improve overall results of the campaign. We found that, since this school provides such a niche offering, we needed to remove some of the targeting to widen our net and prevent the audiences from hitting “learning limited.” This is a warning we receive when Facebook is having trouble finding enough people within the given audience to serve ads.

Aug.6 – Sept. 27

Moving into fall, we turned off the summer program ad and replaced it with a middle school enrollment ad at the request of the client, who wanted to push enrollment for this age group. We also switched up the creative for the current ads to keep things fresh and performing well!

Audience Information

At this point in the campaign, our pixel had collected enough data to create a retargeting audience aimed at those who have clicked on ads or visited the site. We added this audience to our current customer list and lookalike audience to broaden its reach.

Results

During this time period, our ads drew 1,003 link clicks at an average of 80 cents per click. We were pleased to see that we were able to keep our link cost average at 80 cents per click by freshening up the creative and swapping relevant ads according to the season.

Conclusion

Our Facebook campaign for Our client has maintained a steady reach and cost-per-click average and has been successful in promoting school enrollment as well as the school’s other offerings such as their summer program and distance learning option.

We will continue monitoring our traffic campaign and keeping our ads relevant to the season and needs of the client! With the data we now have available to us, we are working on optimizations to bring our cost per click down even lower.

The client is pleased with the success of Facebook Ads so far and is now heading into their sixth month with us! Moving forward, we are working on creating a lead generation campaign to target those interested in applying for teaching jobs. A lead generation campaign keeps the user on Facebook versus taking them to a website. Clicking on an ad leads the user to fill out a form with basic information. This will be a perfect way to get the word out about current job opportunities and capture leads who are interested in applying at Our client!