Facebook ads for a relationship coaching programme

Facebook was the worst-performing channel in the business, sitting around 2x and switched off. It now runs at 9–10x and has overtaken Google and YouTube.

Mario, Relationship coaching. Recorded January 2023.

Mario runs a marriage rescue programme inside a larger self-development company. It is a considered purchase sold to people at a difficult moment, which makes the advertising harder than most — the message has to be direct enough to reach someone in that situation without being crass about it.

Facebook had been the weak channel. Return on ad spend sat around 2x, well behind Google, and he had eventually turned it off entirely rather than keep funding it. That is a common place for coaching businesses to end up: the platform gets written off as a poor fit for the category rather than as a creative and targeting problem.

The account was rebuilt around the specific moment his programme addresses, with creative that spoke to that rather than to relationships in general. Performance moved quickly. Facebook now returns between 9 and 10 times ad spend and has become the largest source of revenue in the business.

It has also inverted his channel mix. Google and YouTube, which used to be the reliable performers, now look like the underperformers by comparison, and the current job is bringing them up to the same level.

The condition Mario puts on recommending this is a fair one: you need a funnel that already converts. Paid traffic makes an existing sales process bigger, in both directions. Sending more people into a process that does not close simply loses money faster.

For coaches and course creators, the constraint is nearly always creative and message rather than the platform. If Facebook is underperforming for you, it is worth checking whether it was genuinely tested before it was written off.

In Mario’s words