A tutoring business built online
How a founder-led A-level tuition programme filled its calendar with parents ready to enrol, generating a 13.5x return on ad spend while keeping customer acquisition costs to just 7% of the programme fee.
of the programme fee was spent on marketing to acquire a new student
Cost per lead only tells part of the story. For a year-long tuition programme, the number that really matters is what it costs to acquire an enrolled student relative to what that student is worth.
What happens for every 100 calls booked
- 97 are attended.
- 87 reach a clear yes or no.
- 66 result in an enrolment and deposit.
A 3% no-show rate tells us something important: these weren't casual enquiries. Parents were arriving informed, engaged and serious about the programme.
The goal was never more leads
Physics Pathway sells a year-long A-level tuition programme. Students don't enrol online. Every sale happens after a call between David and a parent, which makes his calendar one of the biggest constraints on growth.
And this isn't an impulse purchase. Parents choosing tuition for their child's A-level year research their options, discuss the decision at home and want to understand exactly what they're paying for before committing.
What we inherited
The account relied on a single prospecting audience, with retargeting added during intake periods. Campaigns were built around enrolment dates rather than the parent's buying journey, then switched off between intakes.
The result was an account that repeatedly had to rebuild momentum from scratch. There was no lookalike strategy, no always-on remarketing and very little accumulated learning between cohorts.
What we solved for
David can only run so many calls in a week, and every wasted slot is capacity that can't be recovered. Success couldn't be measured by enquiry volume. It had to be measured by how many calendar slots were filled by parents who actually turned up ready to make a decision.
That reframed the account around one number: the cost of acquiring an enrolled student.
Three campaigns. Three jobs.
We rebuilt the account around the way parents actually make the decision, while keeping campaigns active between intakes so we could retain momentum and continue building useful audience data.
Broad prospecting
We deliberately kept targeting broad. Parents of A-level students aren't a reliably identifiable Meta interest audience, so rather than guessing at interests, we gave the platform room to optimise towards the conversion signal. It became the account's primary source of scale and its lowest-cost source of new customers.
0–10% lookalike
This audience was modelled on parents who had already booked a call, rather than weaker signals such as page views or video engagement. Its role is to maintain acquisition quality when broad targeting begins finding cheaper but less valuable traffic.
Always-on remarketing
Parents rarely make a decision about a year-long A-level programme after one website visit. Remarketing therefore runs continuously at a low budget, bringing Physics Pathway back in front of parents who researched the programme but weren't ready to book immediately.
Conversion at every step
Three months of delivery, measured against the client's own enrolment records rather than relying solely on platform-reported conversions.
Traffic quality doesn't show up in your click-through rate. It shows up in what people do after they click.
A 3% no-show rate is exceptional for lead generation. It shows that parents weren't booking calls casually. By the time they reached David's calendar, they understood the programme, saw enough value to give up part of their Saturday and were seriously considering enrolling their child.
Of the parents who attended and reached a decision, 75.8% enrolled. That close rate belongs to David, not to us. Our job was making sure the right parents were on the other end of the call.
- Booked calls attended
- 97%
- Attended calls reaching a decision
- 89%
- Close rate, decided calls
- 75.8%
- Close rate, all calls held
- 68%
- Leads that became students
- 33%
- Customer acquisition cost vs programme fee
- 7%
- Return on ad spend
- 13.5x
Source: Meta Ads Manager, 1 May to 31 July 2026, combined with the client's own enrolment records. Meta is the client's only paid channel. Absolute figures withheld at the client's request.
What changed at media level
Comparing the full period under previous management against the full period since we took over. Same account. Same product. Same market.
| Metric | Before | After | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost per click | £1.16 | £0.89 | −23% |
| Click-through rate | 0.61% | 0.70% | +15% |
| Cost per thousand impressions | £7.06 | £6.21 | −12% |
These are media efficiency metrics. They don't reveal the client's total spend, pricing or revenue.
Twelve months on
The three-month intake above shows one part of the story. This is what happened across the full year since we took over the account.
P5: capacity sentence goes here Example of the shape this should take, do not publish as written: "The business has taken on additional tutors to meet demand and now runs a waiting list for its September cohort."
P6: client quote goes here Two sentences from David on what changed for the business, rather than how good the ads were. "I've had to turn students away" is much stronger than "great results".
Physics Pathway
P9: one line on what the programme actually is Ask David to write this himself, or send him your draft to approve. Example of the shape, do not publish as written: "Physics Pathway runs a year-long A-level physics programme for students across the UK, taught in small groups by a specialist team."
Most people land on this page because they're interested in improving their own advertising. But if you've arrived here with a teenager sitting A-level physics next summer, Physics Pathway is worth the detour. David takes every enquiry himself, and you'll get a straight answer on the call about whether the programme is right for your child.
Your ads should be generating customers, not just leads.
We work with businesses spending £10k+ per month on paid media. Start with a free account audit and we'll show you what you're really paying to acquire a customer, where budget is being wasted and what we'd change.