Scaling a Psychology School Through YouTube: $225,405 in Revenue and an Advertising Budget of $44,220. ROAS OF 509%

Working on scaling the school of psychology

A key aspect of the project’s success was the impact of the personal brand. Users who were interested and went to the website could turn to social media to find out who the author of the course was. Therefore, we gave additional recommendations to the client on how to work with their brand on social media, such as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Thanks to this, the results of advertising campaigns were constantly improving.

Advertising on Google Ads for a school of psychology

Initially, the work with the client included setting up analytics and other traffic sources for its main product – a course for obtaining the profession of “How to become a family counselor”.

Sales were built through a direct funnel: a person entered a key query in a search engine, went to the course website, and left a request. An important point was that the website did not list the cost of the course, and users had to leave a request to find out the price. This encouraged potential customers to actually visit the site. At the initial stage of working with the client, we discovered that they had no analytics on their website. Thus, we started by optimizing his main landing page, dedicated to a psychological counseling course.

As for the search funnel, it showed good results for 1–3 months. The first month we improved the results in Kazakhstan, and in Europe we achieved zero payback (100-150%). In the second month, the payback was 200%, and then it stabilized at 300% and above.

• An important part of our strategy was to introduce installment payments for expensive courses. For our client, 80% of sales, in particular from Europe and the US, were made by installments. Users initially paid 20% of the cost, and the rest of the amount was distributed over payments.
• We also worked effectively with contextual advertising, starting with Kazakhstan and gradually expanding to Europe, the US and other countries. The client’s efforts to build a personal brand had a positive impact on advertising results. Most users saw him on social media and searched for his website through Google, which increased the effectiveness of advertising.
• In addition, we launched Performance Max, which provided more leads at a lower cost, although the conversion to purchase was lower from search advertising.

As for the work with Google Ads, we focused on the upper levels of the sales funnel, attracting those who are actively seeking information through search queries.

It is also important to understand how the funnel works in Google Ads. There are two categories of audience:

• unconscious – who does not know what they want
• conscious – clearly understanding their needs

We worked with a conscious audience that entered specific queries in the search. The use of remarketing allowed us to attract attendees of auto-webinars back to the site. We increased traffic by launching Performance Max, targeting ads to a new audience.

Overview of the advertising account:
Performance Max across Europe:

• Conversions: 393.40
• Cost: $2,360 (85.1 thousand UAH)
• Cost per conversion: $5.99 (216 UAH)

Search engine advertising in Europe:

• Cost per conversion: $8.93 (322 UAH)
• Conversions: 1.07
• CTR: 11,65%
• Expenses: $9.57 (UAH 345 thousand)

PPC for retargeting:

• Average cost per click: $0.29 (4.29 UAH)
• Conversions: 162,64
• Cost per conversion: $10.06 (363 UAH)
• Expenses: $1,640 (59 thousand UAH)

Performance Max in Kazakhstan:

• Conversions: 147,30
• Cost: $770 (28.6 thousand UAH)
• Cost of conversion: 194 UAH
• Conversion rate: 0.24%

Search advertising in Georgia:

• Cost per conversion: $7.24 (261 UAH)
• Conversions: 41,22
• CTR: 8.44%
• Expenses: $291 (UAH 10.8 thousand)

Search engine advertising, Kazakhstan:

• Cost per conversion: $7.77 (280 UAH)
• Conversions: 16,95
• CTR: 5.11%
• Expenses: $129 (UAH 4.79 thousand)

Based on the advertising results, it was Google that showed similar advertising results. Because on average, it showed the highest return on investment, and it was consistently above 350-400%.

YouTube advertising for a school of psychology

A separate part of our strategy was an advertising campaign on YouTube. It was somewhat more expensive at the start (20-50% higher than on Facebook), but it provided access to a wider audience. It gave us the opportunity to capture the part of the target audience that was not present on other social networks. The initial return on investment was about 700%, then it dropped a bit, but we managed to keep it at about 350%.

YouTube has the highest penetration among the target audience compared to other social networks, so your target audience is definitely on YouTube. As a percentage of the total number of people who use the Internet in a country, how many of them use YouTube:

For effective YouTube advertising, creatives are the key element. The client hadn’t updated their offer/product for a year, so we created new video scripts with different formats and calls-to-action every month, and regularly updated their landing page to maintain high quality advertising.

Effective work with YouTube requires improving three key aspects: the offer, the advertising creative, and the landing page. In the months when the client could not create new videos, the audience quickly lost interest.

We used the 4-2-2 format in creating promotional videos, which involves recording separate video segments. This allows us to combine these segments at the editing stage to create more promotional videos. For this purpose, we separately filmed the following parts:

• 4 videos in the beginning: these videos are aimed at attracting the audience’s attention. They are designed to engage and attract viewers right from the start.
• 2 midscreen videos: these are the videos that introduce the webinar. They provide information about what will be presented in the webinar and aim to stimulate interest in watching further.
• 2 call-to-action videos: These videos are designed to encourage viewers to take a specific action, such as registering for a webinar or visiting a website. They are key to converting interest into action.

This approach to creating video content allows you to use materials efficiently, increasing the number of possible combinations for promotional videos, and optimize the content production process.

We found that at the end of the summer, vertical videos brought in a lot of registrations for a low cost, but the return on investment was low. Now we see that both vertical and horizontal videos are performing well, but vertical videos have a better return on investment.

Overview of the advertising cabinet:

• Shows: 15 361 709
• Views: 1 726 827
• Cost: $26218.87 (943 272.78 UAH)
• Clicks: 94 978
• All conversions: 12 732,78
• Cost: $2.06 (74.08 UAH)
• CPV: $0.015 (0.55 UAH).
• Conversions: 2 795,94
• Cost per conversion: $9.38 (337.37 UAH).

Advertising on TikTok for a school of psychology

Additionally, we advised the client to launch ads on TikTok. Initially, we used vertical videos from YouTube, but they didn’t show good results, which is in line with the peculiarities of working with TikTok Ads.

We know that 60% of the effectiveness of TikTok advertising campaigns depends on video creativity, and the use of horizontal videos is strongly discouraged. TikTok ads should also be as native as possible, i.e., they should resemble content from ordinary users as much as possible.

Due to the fact that advertising videos on TikTok burn out quickly (the average lifespan of a creative is 5-7 days), we created a strategy that included regular video optimization. We launched ads on TikTok in several stages to train the algorithms. For example, at first, we launched ads with the goal of “Landing page view”, and then, after 30-40 conversions, we moved on to ads with the goal of “Conversion on the site”.

• Taking into account the number of target audience segments and their needs, we created at least two variations of the video for each target audience’s “pain”. During the editing process, we prepared 1-2 variations of triggers for different pains. This means that we had at least one video and three editing options for each target audience.
• During the course of the campaign, we found that after 3-4 days it became clear which ads were the most effective. To this end, we re-edited the video to combat creative burnout. Updating the creative on the montage took only 15-20 minutes, and this included changing the font, font color, transitions, and close-ups. We regularly updated the montage on a weekly basis, or twice a week in rare cases, according to the rhythm of the creative’s life on TikTok.
• Another feature of TikTok is that it is more effective to use concise landing pages, as its audience is predominantly mobile users who are not inclined to read long texts. This allowed us to adapt our strategy to maximize effectiveness on this unique platform.

We directed traffic from YouTube and TikTok to new users interested in psychology who attended the auto-webinar and subsequently purchased courses. Although the number of leads from TikTok was not so high, the high cost of the course provided a good payback.

Overview of the advertising account:

• Total cost: $3,250.44
• CPC: $0.29
• Views: 3 258 841
• CTR: 0.35%
• Conversions: 1.13%