ECLC Facebook + Instagram Ads
1. The campaign in 30 seconds
$2,500 total to be spent across June. ECLC tour bookings only. Launching Tuesday 3 June. Three audiences tested against each other. Five ad variants, each speaking to a specific question a parent has when they're still looking. Ads publish from The Roth Family JCC at Shalom Orlando Facebook page.
2. Who does what
Lilach
- Strategy + audience setup
- Ad copy + creative brief
- Build campaign in Meta Ads Manager
- Daily monitoring + weekly reports
- Optimisations week by week
Marni
- Approve final creative + copy
- Final go-ahead before launch
- Weekly review of results
Samantha + Chip + design team
- 5 image concepts × 3 sizes
- 15 final ad assets total
Sivan
- Customer list CSV for Lookalike
- Historical conversion data
- Weekly tour booking input
ECLC team
- Follow up with tour leads within 24 hours
- Run the tour
- Close the enrolment
3. What happens when a parent sees an ad, the full journey
Following one parent from impression to enrolment. Each step shows who's doing the work at that stage.
1Parent scrolls Facebook or Instagram
Sees one of our 5 ad variants in Feed, Stories, or Reels. They're seeing it because they're in one of our 3 target audiences.
2Parent taps the ad
A Meta Native Lead Form pops up INSIDE the app. They never leave Facebook. The form has 4 fields (name, email, phone, age of child) plus 1 question on timing.
3Parent submits the form
Most fields are auto-filled from their Facebook profile. They tap Submit.
5ECLC team follows up
Jody, Lisa, or James calls or emails the parent within 24 hours to confirm a tour date. The faster the team can reach the parent, the more likely the tour booking turns into an actual visit.
6Tour happens
30-45 minute walk-through of ECLC. Meet teachers. Ask questions. Family decides if it's the right fit.
7Enrolment confirmed
If the family decides to enrol, Sivan adds them to her weekly tracker spreadsheet (the existing dashboard input she does every Friday). The ECLC team handles the actual enrolment paperwork manually. Lilach then takes Sivan's data each Friday and uploads it to Meta as an "offline conversion", this is the key step that teaches Meta which leads turned into real families, so the algorithm finds more like them. Currently manual. Could be automated later with HubSpot or similar CRM, but for Month 1 manual is fine because the volume is small (20-50 leads).
4. The three audiences testing against each other
$2,500/month is split across three groups. Meta automatically shifts spend toward whichever group converts best.
1. Lookalike
Meta finds parents in Orlando who behave online like our current ECLC families. We give them an encrypted seed list from Sivan, Meta does the matching.
2. Retargeting
People who visited shalomorlando.org, opened the Tour Reservation Form, or opened the Contact Us form in the last 90 days. They already know us. Pixel firing on all three surfaces, audience builds automatically.
3. Interest-based cold
Parents within 10 miles of Maitland, age 28-45, interested in Montessori, Reggio Emilia, Jewish community, parenting groups. Layered with multi-child households (older sibling in grade school, young child at home) and households with infants. Narrowest pool, highest intent match.
5. The 5 ad variants, Meta-optimised, under 125 characters each
Every variant fits above the fold on mobile (Meta truncates anything over 125 characters). Each opens with a hook in the first 5 words. No buzzwords. Each variant targets one specific reason a parent hasn't booked yet.
Strongest · 66 characters
One tour
"Two out of three families enrol after one ECLC tour. Come see why."
Speaks to: parents who want proof. Real Q1 tour-to-enrol stat as concrete social proof.
Strong · 80 characters
Not sure they're ready?
"Worried your two-year-old isn't ready for preschool? Spend 15 minutes at ECLC."
Speaks to: hesitant parents of toddlers. "15 minutes" lowers the barrier.
Strong · 89 characters
2 or 3 days, not 5
"Need 2 or 3 days, not 5? ECLC at Shalom Orlando has flexible schedules. Tour this week."
Speaks to: part-time working parents and multi-child families.
Solid · 82 characters
Known by name
"Small classes. Teachers who know your child by name. Tour ECLC at Shalom Orlando."
Speaks to: parents who don't want their child to be a number.
Solid · 99 characters
You're not late
"Still comparing preschools? You're not late. ECLC enrols through August. Tour this week."
Speaks to: parents who feel behind because most decisions were made Jan-Mar.
6. What our competitors are running right now
Pulled live from Meta's public Ad Library. Real screenshots, real ad copy, real start dates. Long-running ads = ones converting; short-running ads = recent tests. Click any competitor card to open their live ads page in a new tab.
Ladybird Academy
Absolute Excellence Preparatory Academy
Little Jan Learn & Play
Zucker Jewish Academy
JCC Brooklyn Windsor Terrace
What this comp set tells us about our strategy
The market is feature-led, not parent-worry-led. Look at the winning long-running ads: Ladybird ("High Quality Educational Childcare", 2 years), Zucker ("#1 choice for families that value strong academics", 20 months), Little Jan ("10 Years Strong + FREE registration", 3.5 months). All credentials, programmes, and proof points. None of them speak to "my two-year-old isn't ready", "will my family fit in", or "I need part-time, not full-time".
That's our wedge. Five hesitation-led variants in a market saturated with feature-led ads is a genuine pattern break. The Meta algorithm rewards distinctness, when our ads don't look like everyone else's, the system has a reason to show ours to a parent who's already scrolled past three feature-led ads today.
The honest risk: features and accolades may still convert better at scale because they're what parents expect a preschool to say. Our V4 ("Two out of three families enrol") is the proof-point bridge that hedges this risk. If our hesitation-led variants underperform, V4 is our fallback into the proven formula.
7. The expected funnel, realistic for a first June test
Honest estimates accounting for a first-ever Meta campaign + late-decider window. June parents shopping are less committed than Jan-Mar parents, so tour-to-enrolment drops from Q1's 63% organic figure to a realistic 20-35% for ad-sourced leads. No optimism baked into these numbers, they reflect first-campaign reality, not ideal-state targets.
8. The budget split
$2,500 total to be spent across June. Single-month campaign. Split across 3 types of ads, front-loaded for the testing phase: roughly $120/day for Days 1-14 (more data faster), $70/day for Days 15-27 (concentrate spend on the winning audience).
9. How tracking works, 3 layers
Three tracking systems work together so we know what's happening at every step.
Layer 1, The Pixel (already firing)
Records every page view and button click on shalomorlando.org. These "events", page views, scrolls, clicks on tour and contact buttons, are how the pixel learns who's interested. The warm retargeting audience builds automatically from this data. Currently active and accumulating daily.
Layer 2, Conversion events
When a parent submits the lead form, a "Lead" event fires back to Meta. Meta uses this to optimise the campaign, it learns which ads, audiences, and times produce leads.
Layer 3, Offline conversions
Each week Lilach uploads to Meta the list of tours that happened and the families that enrolled. This trains Meta on lead QUALITY, not just volume.
10. What we do if things go wrong
Three decision rules so we never let bad spend run on autopilot.
If a creative is failing
Trigger: CTR < 0.8% after 5,000 impressions.
Action: Pause the creative. Try a new image.
If an audience is failing
Trigger: Cost-per-lead > 2× the realistic target (so > $240 for Lookalike, > $120 for Retargeting, > $360 for cold), sustained over 7 days with at least $200 spent.
Action: Pause the audience. Reallocate budget to the winning audiences.
If a winner emerges
Trigger: CPA at or below the realistic target (≤ $60 Retargeting, ≤ $120 Lookalike, ≤ $180 cold) AND CTR above 0.9% sustained over 7 days.
Action: Increase budget by 20% per week (no more). Create more variants of the winning concept.
If Meta rejects an ad
Trigger: Ad status shows "Rejected" after Meta review.
Action: Rewrite copy or swap image within 1 hour. Resubmit. Most rejections are technical.
If spend runs over
Trigger: Daily spend exceeds 110% of budget two days running.
Action: Hard $2,500/month account cap prevents real overspend. Meta auto-pauses if hit.
If June underperforms
Trigger: End of June: under 20 tour bookings, CPA > $80.
Action: Pause July. Reallocate to Google Ads or referral programme. Lilach + Marni discuss.
If we exceed ECLC's tour capacity
Trigger: Booked tours per week exceed what James, Jody, Lisa can run. Parents waiting more than 7 days for a tour slot.
Action: Pause cold audience first (preserves the warmer Retargeting and Lookalike pipelines). Protect the bookings already in the queue rather than generating more.
11. What each ad will look like
Mockups of the five variants as they'll appear on Facebook and Instagram Feed. Design team produces the final images by Friday 30 May.
12. The lead form & auto-response, what parents see
When a parent taps any ad, this is the form that pops up inside Facebook/Instagram. They never leave the app. The auto-response email fires within 60 seconds of submission.
Book a tour and meet our team. We'll be in touch within 24 hours.
Privacy policy · shalomorlando.org/privacy
Hi [first name],
Thanks for getting in touch about the Early Childhood Learning Center at Shalom Orlando.
One of our team will be in touch within 24 hours to set up your tour.
When you visit, we'll show you around the classrooms, introduce you to our teachers, and answer any questions. Most tours run 30 to 45 minutes.
In the meantime, just reply to this email or call us on (407) 645-5933 if anything comes up.
Speak soon,
The ECLC team at Shalom Orlando
13. The ROI math, realistic, with probabilities
Based on $24,000 average annual ECLC tuition. Four scenarios with honest probability weighting, no optimism. Flop sits at 50% likely because this is the org's first-ever Meta campaign, in the late-decider window, with no historical Meta data, a small Lookalike seed (JCC didn't track tours before January), and a small audience pool. Stretch sits at only 5% because even the realistic funnel caps at ~5 enrolments in the month. Q1 organic tour-to-enrolment was 63% but June ad-sourced tours convert lower (20-35%) because the audience is materially less committed than Jan-Mar families.
Honest risk acknowledgement
This is Shalom Orlando's first ever Meta ads campaign. We have no historical Meta data to predict CPA accurately. June is the late-decider window, most families decided in January-March. There is a real chance the campaign delivers fewer than 3 enrolments in Month 1, or none at all if the audience pool is too small.
What protects us: the $2,500 monthly cap means worst-case downside is bounded. Daily monitoring kills underperforming creative within 7 days. We treat June as a test, not a commitment. If June underperforms, July's $2,500 either gets paused or redirected to Google Ads + referral programme. We learn either way.
Why I still recommend running this
Even in the conservative case, the campaign returns approximately $20 in first-year tuition revenue for every $1 spent on ads. The asymmetry is favourable: small downside ($2,500 spent on learning), large upside ($120k+ revenue if it works). And the data from Month 1 informs every Shalom Orlando paid campaign going forward, regardless of outcome.