Richmond Hill, Ontario
Meta Ads + organic
2 months, ongoing
After twenty years running entirely on word of mouth, Discovery Academy had never run a single paid ad. In two months — and the work is still live — we built their marketing from the ground up: real content, new landing pages (pages built to do one job, not a homepage trying to do everything), and a Meta funnel that’s brought cost per lead from $100 down to an average of $35, with around 90% of leads the school says are worth their time.
Avg. cost per lead · down from $100
Leads the school calls worth their time
Paid campaigns run before this, in 20 years
Live and still running
Client
Discovery Academy
Industry
Private school
Service in focus
Enrolment — a separate campaign per program
Market
Richmond Hill, Ontario
Period
2 months, ongoing
Channel
Meta (Facebook & Instagram) + organic Instagram, Facebook, TikTok
What we did
Built the school’s marketing from scratch — content, site, landing pages, funnel and campaigns
Budget
$3,000 / month on Meta
Discovery Academy had been open for twenty years and had never run a single paid ad. Every student who walked through the door got there the same way — someone told someone. That had worked, but the school had a number to hit: 70 new students, and word of mouth alone wasn’t going to get there fast enough.
There wasn’t much of a marketing system to build on, either. The website was old, there wasn’t a single landing page, social media wasn’t really running, and there wasn’t any content or strategy behind any of it. This wasn’t a tune-up. We were building the engine from nothing.
First, choosing a school isn’t a five-minute decision. A parent is weighing a dozen things at once — the people, the classrooms, the kids who already go there — and none of that comes through in a stock photo or a line about being “nurturing.” What actually helps a parent decide is specific: class sizes, who’s teaching, what happens to students after they graduate. Discovery Academy had twenty years of that kind of proof sitting behind it. None of it was visible anywhere online.
Second, Discovery Academy isn’t one offer. JK/SK, the older grades, Night School, Summer Camp — each is a completely different parent making a completely different decision. Blend them into one campaign and the budget quietly drifts toward whichever direction looks cheapest on paper, not whichever one the school actually needs filled. Each program needed its own campaign, its own budget, and its own results to look at.
Before anything else, we went to the school and filmed on location — student interviews, real classes in session, behind-the-scenes moments. That footage is still what runs the school’s social media today. We also built a simple content calendar so the social media manager always knows what to post and why, instead of guessing week to week.
We wrote the brief for the school’s new look online — updated visuals and a proper landing page for each program. The original plan was to send all the new traffic to a brandnew domain. We caught that before it went live: a brand-new web address starts with zero trust, with search engines and with people. We updated the school’s existing website instead, keeping everything it had already earned, and built the new visuals and marketing tools — fast contact forms, email follow-up — on top of that foundation.
Once the new landing pages were live, cost per lead dropped from $100 to $50. Better — but still too expensive for what this needed to be. The problem was what we were asking for. The original ask was heavy: “book an assessment,” “book a tour” — a big commitment from a parent who’d just found you. We stripped it back to a short form. Someone fills it in, and a real person from the school calls to talk it through and answer the simple questions. That one change brought the average down to around $35 a lead — it varies a bit by program — and, by the school’s own count, about 90% of those are worth their time
The campaigns run as separate streams per program, so budget for Night School can’t quietly drift toward Grade 9–12 just because it looks cheaper that week. The next move is video creative, aimed at bringing that $35 down closer to $20–$25.
We own the leads — what happens after a parent picks up the phone is the school’s own admissions process, and that’s exactly as it should be. So here’s our honest piece of it: cost per lead went from $100, to $50, to an average of $35, and about 90% of what comes through is something the school can actually work with. The owner tells us enrolment is filling up steadily toward their goal of 70 new students — they haven’t shared the exact number with us, and that’s fine. Some things are the school’s to hold.
Lead quality: ~90% workable, per the school. · Period: 2 months, live and ongoing. · Next target: $20–$25/lead via video creative.
Built the school’s entire marketing approach from a cold start — no prior paid campaigns, landing pages, or content system to build on
Filmed on-site content — student interviews, real classes, behind-the-scenes
Built a content calendar the social media manager still runs from
Wrote the brief that became the school’s new visuals and program-specific landing pages
Caught and corrected an early plan to launch on a brand-new domain, keeping the trust already built into the existing site
Added marketing functionality — fast contact forms, email follow-up
Structured Meta campaigns separately by program, so budget stays where the school needs it
Iterated the funnel from a heavy “book a tour” ask down to a simple form + phone consultation
Running the campaigns day-to-day, ongoing
The approach — real on-site content instead of stock photos, a separate page and campaign per program, and a light first ask — transfers to any education offer parents compare carefully: private schools, tutoring centres, language schools, camps and early childhood programs.
“Book a tour” is a big commitment for a parent who found you five minutes ago. A short form plus a phone call from a real person at the school lowers the barrier without lowering quality — the conversation does the qualifying that the heavy form used to scare people away from.
Discovery Academy runs on $3,000/month spread across several programs. A single program can start leaner — but each program needs its own campaign and enough data to optimize against, so spreading a small budget across everything at once is the one thing we’d advise against.
First leads arrived within weeks of launch. The $35 average landed after two months of iterating the landing pages and the ask. Expect a similar 60–90 day ramp — and treat the first number you see as a starting point, not the ceiling.
30 minutes.Three concrete fixes.
Whether we work together or not.
