The Ultimate Ads Growth Guide for Education Brands

Some paid ads insights in education I wish I knew earlier

This post is mostly to inspire marketers in education verticals but also share insights that you can apply in your vertical.

I’ve been in the education vertical since 2014, and eventually expanded to SaaS, DTC, and now health and wellness, too.

Education and health have a huge impact on people’s lives, and I want to contribute indirectly.

My clients and I made roughly $20+Mn in revenue so these lessons are worth sharing. 

My younger self would have paid $5K for these insights. But you get it for free. 

Anyway, here are my paid insights from the last 10-years of running growth and paid marketing in education vertical:

Ads Insights

1. It’s all about the transformation with storytelling

I sell mostly to parents. But I have seen this across the board: People buy the transformation.

How getting an education about X topic impacts my child. They’re looking for a clear outcome.

Here’s an ad that I created does that well:

Here’s an example of a program that focuses on adults, called Dream Studio Course.

He is only selling transformation, which is clearly visible.

So, remember – outcomes and transformations. 

2. Users need to sell, not the buyer

My primary buyers are parents but the users are kids. If your students have seen the transformation, the videos featuring them will always outperform any ad with an adult.

Here’s another example of the same product (Apollo):

It took me a while to learn this. But sometimes, parents and students do work together as well, this ad ran for almost 2 years for us:

3. Authentic & ugly – works!

Both together have worked like a charm.

Here’s an example:

DMs, emails, WhatsApp or iMessage – all have worked like this:

Key insight: This example has a desire that most people want to have. So, it worked as is (ugly and authentic).

4. Text-heavy ad format 

As you can see, text heavy ads that have some real good copywriting promising an outcome or claim have given me positive ROI.

The best part? They’re easy to make and iterate on.

Here’s an example:

Ads Targeting

5. Your buyers are smart but emotional

In education ads, I’ve mostly sold to moms. They’re the smartest buyers. They see these types of ads in their feed.

Whenever I have made fake ads, I’ve never seen a good response.

If the copy came from an authentic user review however, it worked.

6. Age targeting

On Meta or TikTok, you can’t simply go broad. You need to target above a certain age on Meta to optimize the algorithm. 

Another thing, you should definitely test:

  • Detailed targeting: Parents

  • Lookalike

  • iOS device only

Most of my customers came from Feed but I kept the placement broad.

7. Say yes to mega-influencers, say no to micro-influencers

When it comes to organic or paid, I’ve seen influencers with at least 500K followers and they talk about the product as if they have tried it. But only if they are the “topic specialist” then I have seen it work, especially a topic that closely aligns with their business.

E.g. Coding companies should sell through moms who code.

We’ve boosted with ads and it did turn out to be a good long term solution.

Most importantly, use whitelisting and create an authentic audience from them.

Conversion rate optimization tactics that worked 

8. Low AOV, immediate sell

If your product costs less than $100, then don’t waste time in the multiple step funnel, focus on getting the user to buy or try immediately.

9. High AOV, educate & elongate

I’ve sold products from $700 AOV to $4000.

Here’s what worked in general in terms of CRO:

  • Let them read the landing page first before selling them anything.

  • Have a floating CTA that scrolls with the page.

  • VSL for 3-5 minutes are critical

  • Written + video testimonials do make a difference, specially screenshots

  • Add objects in your ads/landing page related to:

    • Schedule

    • Price

    • Money-back guarantee

    • Content

    • Instructors

10. Add a founder letter like these to increase trust & conversions: 

Stalking visitors on Hotjar I found out that almost all visitors clicked on “about us” page. Don’t make them lead to another page. Add in the sales page.

Example #1 – Personal experience and problems

VVC LP

Example #2 – Your mission

Dream Studio LP

11. Add content/what’s inside section

You need to tell people clearly what they will learn and what they will get out of this course or product. 

Lara’s Literally Academy

12. Don’t miss out on “Who it is for/not for”

If you have a sales team, they will thank you for disqualifying people on your website.

VVC LP

13. Make your page longer

Make the page for the 3% of your audience who are going to buy and ignore everyone else. 

I’ve seen longer sales pages that have converted better than shorter sales pages.

14. Show real testimonials from real people

I’ve seen that authentic testimonials have always helped increase conversions.

Here’s a good example:

Dream Studio LP

Or this:

10X Study Website

15. You need a secret sauce

Anyone on the internet can now claim that they’re the experts or authority on something. You need to teach your prospects that you have something different based on the experience. This takes a while to get the hang of, but this is why people buy.

In Synthesis, we had many secret sauces but the one that worked was the one that came from Elon’s SpaceX academy.

With Apollo, we had a unique way to deliver lectures.

You need to find and share it.

16. Money-back guarantee is a MUST

Info or education products might have similar content. You can’t go without offering a money-back guarantee. It’s table stakes right now.

The other insights

17. Onboard differently

Selling digital products online is hard. Everyone can offer the same experience. But you can be different.

In education, I have seen following tactics work with different clients:

  • Add an onboarding postcard or hard copy of program info 

  • Sending an actual gadget that connects to your product

  • Offering AMA with founders once or twice a month

  • Invite to your “private” community

  • Create in-person city based events for new customers 

  • A free-course that’s worth $100 or more

  • Creating a physical conference but offering discounted packages to customers

All of these onboarding tactics gave my clients’ audience the impression of overdelivering.

18. Stop discounting, add more value

Most digital products can easily offer discounting products. Here’s what I have seen the best ones doing well:

  • Giving additional courses for free

  • 1:1 personalize mentorship for free

  • Making a paid webinar or event but giving existing customers for free

  • Making a paid product but offering your customers for free

  • Offering a valuable product for an irresistible offer like $4 for life 

All of these tactics add more value.

Discounting simply isn’t the answer.

This is what I have learned.

19. If you want to grow, offer more products

The best info or education products are growing fast because they’re offering multiple products once they have a scalable first product.

This is how you increase your AOV and additional revenue streams.

20. Don’t start paid ads without PMF

I learned this the hard way. One of my highest paying clients paid me for 16 months to run their ads but most of their products didn’t have a strong Product-market fit. They had a good product market fit in certain products but not all.

We eventually found out that paid can only help if the groundwork has been properly laid.

You have to sell the product that is a need, not just nice to have.

And for the rest of you, I hope there was an insight you can apply.

If you like, these insights and you are from SaaS/App, DTC, and Health & Wellness verticals. Respond with your vertical. I’ll make a guide like this one.

Thanks to our partners who support this newsletter.

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Happy Growing with Paid Social,

Aazar Shad

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