Case studies / Education
Google Ads · SAT tutoringThe student takes the test. The parent buys the tutoring.
TutorBee sold SAT preparation. Nobody in the target market was searching for it: a sixteen-year-old doesn't look up tutors and pay by the hour. Their parent does, on a deadline set by the test calendar. So we built the account around the person paying and the dates that made them pay.
A tutoring platform selling to a buyer who never searched.
TutorBee was an online tutoring platform connecting students with qualified tutors. This engagement focused specifically on SAT preparation, marketed to families through Google Ads.
The student sat the exam and had the tutoring sessions. The parent researched it, compared it, worried about it, and paid for it, which meant the account had to be built around a buyer who was never the one typing the search.
The user and the buyer are different people.
In most categories the person searching is the person deciding. In test prep they almost never are. The student sits the exam, has the tutoring sessions, and experiences the product. The parent researches it, compares it, worries about it, and pays for it. Advertising written for the student reaches the one person in the household without a credit card.
Accurate, and aimed at nobody who buys.
Messaging about study techniques, practice tests and confidence on exam day. It describes the product well. It speaks to a teenager who is not searching for tutoring, does not control the budget, and is unlikely to be the one filling in the enquiry form.
- Who reads it Student
- Who searches Rarely the student
- Who pays Someone else
- Message lands with The wrong person
Scores, deadlines, and college.
What a parent actually cares about: the score target, how many weeks remain before the test, what a higher score does for admissions and scholarships, and whether this is worth what it costs. Same product, described in terms of the outcome the buyer is paying for.
- Who reads it Parent
- Who searches The parent
- Who pays The parent
- Message lands with The decision maker
A tutoring platform in a crowded, seasonal category.
TutorBee was an online tutoring platform connecting students with qualified tutors. This engagement focused specifically on SAT preparation, marketed to families through Google Ads.
Four things shaped how the account had to be built.
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Demand is set by the test calendar
SAT preparation isn't wanted evenly across the year. It's wanted urgently in the weeks before a test date and barely at all the week after. An account that spends the same amount every day spends most of it when nobody is buying.
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The category is crowded with large brands
National test-prep companies bid heavily on generic SAT terms with budgets a single platform can't match. Competing on the broadest keywords means paying their prices for their customers.
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Tutoring searches attract tutors
People looking for tutoring work use much of the same vocabulary as people looking to hire a tutor. On a platform that recruits tutors too, that overlap is constant and has to be managed.
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$2,000 a month doesn't go far in education
Spread across a year, that budget is thin against well-funded competitors. Concentrated into the weeks that matter, it becomes meaningful.
Four decisions about who and when.
Most of the account's design was about timing and audience rather than bidding.
Write every ad for the parent
Keywords, ad copy and landing page messaging built around what parents search and care about: score improvement, time remaining before the test, and what a better score means for college applications. The student is the subject of the ad. The parent is its reader.
Messaging aimed at the person who makes the decision.
Run the account on the test calendar
Budget concentrated into the weeks leading up to each SAT test date, rather than spread evenly across the year. That's when a parent moves from "we should think about test prep" to "the test is in six weeks." Outside those windows, spend was pulled back rather than left running into low demand.
The budget arrived when the buyers did.
Target the top of the pipeline deliberately
Rather than fighting national test-prep brands for the most expensive high-intent terms, the account focused earlier: parents beginning to research whether their child needed help. Earlier in the decision, less contested in the auction, and reached before a competitor had made the case.
Reached families before the big brands did.
Exclude the people looking for tutoring work
Negative keywords filtering out job, hiring, pay and application searches: the vocabulary of someone who wants to become a tutor rather than hire one. On a platform that recruits tutors as well as selling tutoring, that crossover never fully goes away and needs continuous attention.
Budget kept on families rather than applicants.
An even budget spends most of its money in the wrong weeks.
The standard way to set a Google Ads budget is a monthly figure divided evenly across the days. For most businesses that's reasonable. For test prep it's close to the worst possible allocation.
A parent doesn't buy SAT tutoring in general. They buy it for a specific test, on a specific date, with a fixed number of weeks to prepare. Demand builds in the run-up, peaks shortly before, and disappears once the test has been taken.
So the account followed the calendar instead of the month. Spend concentrated in the windows before each test date, and eased off in the gaps between them, where an evenly-spread budget would have kept buying clicks from families who had just sat the exam, or weren't yet thinking about the next one.
The same $2,000 a month, allocated by demand rather than by day, meant the budget was strongest exactly when a parent was most likely to act.
What we're not claiming
We aren't publishing lead volume, cost per enquiry or enrolment figures for this engagement, because we don't hold figures for the full period that we're confident enough to state.
A previous version of this page led with a click and lead count that turned out to be a single day's reporting rather than the result of the engagement, and credited results to an advertising channel that was never used on the account. Both have been removed. What remains is the strategy and the reasoning behind it.
Four things for any education business.
Find out who actually pays
In education, childcare and many family services, the person using the product isn't the person buying it. Write for the buyer, even when the product is for someone else.
Budget by calendar, not by day
If your demand is tied to deadlines, exams, enrolment, tax dates, seasons, an evenly spread budget spends heavily when nobody is buying. Concentrate it where the demand is.
Enter earlier than the big brands
You can't outbid a national competitor on its best keywords. You can reach a customer earlier in their research, when the auction is cheaper and nobody else has made the case yet.
Two-sided platforms attract both sides
If you recruit the people who deliver your service, your ads will reach them too. Exclude the job-seeking vocabulary, or accept that part of your budget is doing recruitment.
What went into it.
Five of our services, over one year.
Other accounts worth a look.
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