Two years, ₹3.88 lakh of managed spend, and 4,156 leads for an education brand. The number that moved most was the one the client actually pays for.
What a lead cost
64% reduction
Oct 2024, festive peak
₹137.11
Lifetime average
₹93.43
Aug 2026, restructured
₹48.64
Best structure
₹37.09
Across comparable campaigns, Oct 2024 to Aug 2026.
CLIENT TYPE
Education & Skill Development, North India
SERVICES
Meta Ads, Creative Testing, Lead Optimisation
TIMELINE
Ongoing since April 2024
THE CHALLENGE
Everyone is bidding on the same intent, in the same season, to the same age band.
Education is one of the most competitive lead-gen categories on Meta. Early campaigns were producing leads, but at a cost that made the maths difficult to scale.
Cost per lead peaking at ₹137 during high-competition festive periods
Wide variance between campaigns with no clear explanation for why
Creative fatiguing quickly with no structured testing pipeline
No systematic learning carried from one campaign to the next
Our Approach
Four changes, in the order we made them
Nothing here was a single clever campaign. It was a baseline, then a testing habit, then structure.
01
Establish a Real Baseline
Before changing anything we established the actual cost per lead across every live campaign, so improvement could be measured against a number rather than a feeling. That baseline sat at ₹89.73 across the first nine months.
02
Structured Creative Testing
We moved from one-off launches to a continuous testing pipeline. Video, testimonial and offer-led formats tested against each other on controlled budgets, winners scaled and losers cut quickly.
03
Account Structure Discipline
We tested campaign architecture as deliberately as creative. Testimonial-led video against a consolidated structure consistently outperformed broad multi-ad-set builds.
04
Separate Awareness from Acquisition
We split top-of-funnel reach from lead capture. Reach campaigns now run at ₹14.75 CPM, 60% down on the ₹37.14 the account started at, so awareness stopped competing with acquisition for budget.
Results That Matter
What two years produced
Headline result
₹137.11 to ₹48.64
Cost per lead, from the Oct 2024 festive peak to the restructured Aug 2025 account. A 64% reduction across comparable campaigns.
4,156 leads
delivered across ₹3,88,315 of managed spend
₹37.09
was the best structure’s cost per lead, against a ₹93.43 lifetime average
60% lower CPM
on awareness delivery, from ₹37.14 down to ₹14.75
61.5 lakh people
reached, with 1.49 crore impressions served
Before and After
The same account, two years apart
Before
After
In a competitive lead category, the winning campaign is rarely the clever one.
It is the fourteenth version of a structure you have already tested.
Next step
Paying too much per lead?
We’ll audit your account and show you where the cost is actually coming from.