Over 24 months with the kids' speech therapy school Mova Promova, we spent a $127,000 budget, brought in 8,930 leads at an average of $14 and turned 44% of the 5,358 parents who completed an assessment into paying clients. The heart of this case is a two-step funnel with a paid assessment that filters out casual parents and keeps only those ready to pay for a course.
Children's speech therapy is one of the most competitive and also most profitable niches in children's online education. Parents are willing to pay, but service quality is invisible before purchase, so trust is the main barrier. In this case study we show how we solved that with a well-designed funnel and achieved 44% lead-to-paying-client conversion against an industry average of 25-35%.
Context: who the client is and what the problem was
In 2024, the online children's speech therapy school Mova Promova came to us: a Ukrainian project with a team of 12 speech therapists and 2 years in business. Until then they had grown through organic Instagram and word of mouth. Their main request was:
“We're at 60% capacity. We want to scale to full capacity and then grow the team. But we don't understand how to advertise so that we attract parents ready to commit long term, not one-off curious visitors.” — Founder of Mova Promova
The main pain point: lots of “just looking” inquiries and few parents ready to pay for a course. Purchase conversion hovered around 12-15%, which made the economics unprofitable at $11-15 per lead.
The key decision: a paid assessment instead of a free one
The classic funnel in this niche is: ad → free trial lesson → a sales call from a course advisor → course sale. This model converts at 8-15%, because free lessons attract “browsers” who come to look but aren't ready to pay.
We suggested the client completely rebuild the funnel: add a $35 paid assessment as a mandatory filter. At first she pushed back: “we'll lose half our leads.” After 2 months of testing, the opposite turned out to be true.
How the paid assessment works
The structure of the Mova Promova assessment:
- Booking: a short form on the website (name + phone + child's age). Assessment price: $35, paid online
- Preparation: after payment, an automatic email with instructions on what to prepare, when to join and a Zoom link
- The assessment: a 45-minute one-on-one session between the speech therapist, the child and the parent. The therapist evaluates speech, gives feedback and recommends a program
- The program: after the assessment, the parent gets a personalized plan with the number of sessions, course length and price
- Course enrollment: if the parent agrees, the first month is booked
The main psychological effect: a parent who paid $35 for an assessment is already invested in the process. They've prepared, set aside time and are waiting for the result. Course conversion is 4-5 times higher than with a free assessment.
Ad structure
Over 24 months we tested more than 250 creatives on 12 different audiences. The winners:
Audience 1. Lookalike of the school's paying clients (35% of the budget)
The main channel. We uploaded a list of the school's 800 active clients to Facebook and created a 1% lookalike for Ukraine. This audience delivered the lowest cost per client: $26 against a project average of $32.
Audience 2. Interests of parents of preschoolers aged 3-7 (25% of the budget)
Targeting parents of children aged 3-7 + child development interests (Montessori, educational toys, child psychology). $13 per lead, 38% lead-to-client conversion.
Audience 3. Retargeting website visitors (15% of the budget)
Dynamic retargeting of people who visited the course landing page but didn't pay for the assessment. We followed up for 14 days, achieving 18% conversion to an assessment purchase versus 4% for cold audiences.
Audience 4. Lookalike of assessment bookers (15% of the budget)
Alongside the client lookalike, a lookalike of people who paid for an assessment. They're younger and have less spending power, but they deliver a high lead volume. $12 per lead.
Other tests (10% of the budget)
Ongoing experiments: new interests, preschools, tests by parent gender, tests on “grandparents” 55+. Most failed, but twice in 24 months we found a combination that worked.
The best-performing creatives
Video testimonials from real parents
The main format. A mom and her child speak to camera (a phone, no crew): “For six months Stas couldn't pronounce the letter ‘R’, and lessons at a regular school didn't help. After 2 months at Mova Promova, here's the result.” Then the child says something. These creatives convert 2.4 times better than graphic ads.
Before/after
A 4-slide carousel. The first shows a photo of the child at the start with the text “couldn't pronounce sibilants”. The second, 2 months later, has text and audio of the child pronouncing them correctly. The third is a parent's review. The fourth is a CTA to book an assessment. The cost per click fell from $0.42 to $0.21.
The speech therapist speaking directly
The speech therapist says on camera: “3 common parent mistakes when a child can't pronounce the letter ‘R’.” It delivers valuable content and ends with a soft invitation to an assessment. CPM is 15% lower, trust is higher and purchase conversion is higher.
“The main takeaway from 24 months of work: in children's education, parents don't buy a lesson; they buy a specialist. The creative has to show a real speech therapist, a real child and a concrete result. Any polished ‘packaging’ ad without faces loses by 2-3 times.” — Natalia Maslakova, founder of MAS Project
What didn't work
Not every experiment succeeded. We're sharing our mistakes so you don't repeat them:
- A free assessment “as a test”: we ran it in parallel to compare. We got 3 times more leads but 5 times fewer clients. The cost per client rose 1.8x. We switched it off after 3 weeks
- Ads aimed at grandmothers 55+: we tested the hypothesis that grandmothers might pay for their grandchildren. The cost per lead was $8 (great), but conversion to a paid assessment was 0.5%. Most wanted to “take a look for free”
- Video creatives with voice actors: we tried “professional” videos with actors instead of real parents. CTR fell by 40%. Viewers can tell it's staged and ignore it
What I'd repeat in any children's project
- A paid assessment/trial lesson instead of a free one: it reduces lead volume but lifts conversion to a paying client 3-5 times
- A lookalike of paying clients matters more than any interests: Facebook's algorithm is excellent at finding similar parents who can pay
- UGC from parents beats any graphic design: a real face + a child's real result
- Retargeting over 14 days brings back 18% of people who didn't buy at first touch
- Specialists speaking directly in creatives build trust better than any reviews
The project's final economics
With an average course ticket of $350 (3 months of lessons) and an LTV of about $350-500, the ads paid back 11 times over. The school grew from 120 active students to 800+ in 24 months.
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Get a free consultationFrequently asked questions
How much does a lead cost for a kids' speech therapy school in 2026?
The average cost per lead in children's speech therapy in 2026 is $12-18 in Ukraine. In our Mova Promova case we got 8,930 leads at an average of $14. The key metric in this niche isn't cost per lead but cost per client: ours was $32 (after the paid assessment step and 44% lead-to-client conversion).
What's a normal lead-to-client conversion rate in speech therapy?
In children's speech therapy, a normal lead-to-client conversion rate is 25-35%. In our Mova Promova case we reached 44%, an industry record. The secret is a two-step funnel built on a paid assessment ($25-50), which filters out parents who aren't ready and warms up the right ones through personal contact with a speech therapist.
Why charge for the assessment instead of offering it for free?
A paid assessment is the main lead qualification tool. A free one attracts “browsers”; a paid one attracts parents who are genuinely ready. In our data, conversion from a paid assessment to a course is 44% versus 8-12% for a free one. An assessment price of $25-50 is the optimal range: it doesn't scare people off, but it filters.
Which creatives work for parents?
The top 3 formats for children's education, in our experience: 1) video testimonials from parents with their child: +60% conversion; 2) before/after progress of real students; 3) a speech therapist speaking directly about common problems. Polished “packaging” designs without real faces work worst, with a 40% lower CTR.
What budget do you need to launch paid social for a speech therapy school?
The minimum for a test is $2,000-3,000/month for 2 months: $500 to test audiences, the rest to scale the winner. For stable results, from $5,000/month. In the Mova Promova case, the budget grew from $3,000/month in the first month to $7,000/month after the funnel was optimized.