In short
- 389 leads, 125 scheduled calls with parents and 3 enrollments inside 14 weeks, on GBP 10.8K, in five markets with no history.
- Parents in these markets did not know what a virtual British school was. The funnel had to teach before it asked.
- Three engines, one job each: Meta traffic to position, Google to compete on search, Meta conversion to book the call.
Past the lead, on purpose
Most paid media case studies stop at leads, because leads are where the flattering math lives. This one goes further down the funnel on purpose. Minerva Virtual Academy's first structured multi country campaign produced 389 leads, and then the part that matters: 125 scheduled calls with parents and 3 enrollments, inside 14 weeks, on GBP 10.8K.
Calls and enrollments are where recruitment marketing usually goes quiet. Here they're the headline.
Selling a new idea in five markets at once
Minerva Virtual Academy delivers accredited British education online. This project took it into South Africa, the UAE, Romania, Spain and beyond, all live simultaneously, with no historical data in any of them.
The audience made it harder in an interesting way. Parents in these markets were largely unfamiliar with online schooling as a concept. Before anyone books a call, they need to understand what a virtual British school even is, whether it's accredited, and how their kid fits.
What this meansInformation first, conversion second. That constraint became the campaign's operating system.
Three engines, one for each stage
The funnel ran as three dedicated engines, each with one goal, all converging on a single landing page.
- Meta traffic
- Did the positioning: 1.72M people reached, 4.76M impressions, and 10.2K landing page views at a 24% view rate, educating an audience that had never considered the category.
- Google search
- Competed for terms like "online school" against local players. A 5.45% CTR at GBP 0.48 per click, with top position held across markets.
- Meta conversion
- Closed the loop: 510 website conversions at a GBP 10.2 blended cost, off a 10.15% landing page conversion rate on Meta's measurement and 26% in GA4.
The search data told its own story. Clicks that cheap at engagement that high mean the searches are informational, parents researching rather than buying, which confirmed the information first read and told us what the landing page had to do.
What this meansWhen search behaves like research, the landing page is the sales conversation. Build it to answer, then to book.
The two creative profiles
One audience needed two different messages, and the data drew the line cleanly. Bold visuals with children and large text won the awareness job, pulling clicks and CTR. Detailed, benefit rich creatives ("British education without borders") won the conversion job. South Africa's "Best of Online British Education" ad alone brought 108 leads at a 3.79% CTR.
South Africa and the UAE emerged as the reference markets, holding CTRs above 1.5% with cost per conversion between GBP 3 and GBP 11, and became the benchmark for how every other region got segmented and designed.
What this meansOne creative set cannot do both jobs. The awareness ad earns the click; the conversion ad earns the call.
The landing page and what happened after the form
Everything converged on one page with an integrated Calendly form, so a parent could learn and book in a single flow. It converted at 26%, on traffic that was 95.3% mobile, and picked up 240+ organic visits in four months as it started ranking on its own.
There is a small number here and we're publishing it anyway, because it is a real bottom funnel outcome.
Three enrollments in week 14 of a category education effort, in markets where the product itself was unfamiliar a quarter earlier. For a school where each enrollment carries a full academic year of tuition, the economics already work, and the 125 calls sitting above those enrollments are the pipeline the next quarter gets to harvest.
What this meansReport past the lead. The call and the enrollment are the numbers the school's finance team can act on.
The takeaway
When your market doesn't know your category exists, the funnel has to teach before it asks, and the reporting has to follow the money past the lead. Minerva's first structured push proved the model end to end: awareness that educates, search that positions, conversion that books actual calls. The next cycle doesn't start from zero. It starts from 125 conversations.
- Give each engine one goal: position, compete, convert
- Write two creative sets, one for the click and one for the call
- Put the booking form on the page that does the teaching
- Report calls and enrollments, with the lead count as context
