Almost nobody hands over their contact details to a school just to be sold a course. But how many people would agree to find out, for free and in two minutes, how good their English actually is? Plenty. That’s the whole difference between a campaign that burns budget and one that fills the contact list.
With MoveYourEnglish! we didn’t go for the most aggressive offer or the biggest budget. We built bait: something people wanted to get before buying anything at all. The result speaks for itself.
The numbers: 212 contacts spending 450€
No big-brand campaigns, no four-figure spend. A single paid campaign, the right idea at its core, and in a little over a month:
- 212 leads collected in 40 days
- 450€ of budget, that’s it
- A free English test as the way in
Do the math: a little over 2€ per contact. In a sector where acquiring a single enquiry can cost far more, that ratio changes the rules of the game. And it didn’t come from spending a lot: it came from offering the right thing.
Why free bait beats a direct offer
The first instinct, when you want to sell courses, is to say “Enrol” right away. It seems logical. In reality it’s the fastest way to scare off the people who don’t feel ready to commit yet.
Free bait flips the relationship. Instead of asking (money, time, a decision), you give. And you give something the person sees as useful for themselves, not as an excuse to sell them something. The free English test works exactly like that:
- Very low friction. No cost, no risk, no commitment. The barrier to saying “yes” is almost zero.
- Real interest. Anyone who agrees to measure their English is, by definition, someone who cares about English. You filter your audience without openly filtering it.
- Perfect timing. At the end of the test the person knows their level and feels the gap to close. It’s the ideal moment to talk to them about a course, with them already inside the conversation.
The bait doesn’t give away value at random: it uses it as a bridge. First you give a reason to engage, then you turn that engagement into a qualified contact.
How we built the mechanism
Bait only works if every link in the chain holds. On MoveYourEnglish! we worked on three points:
- Creative that stops the scroll. Clean, recognisable visuals with an immediate message: you can find out your English level right now. No inflated promises, just a concrete invitation that’s easy to accept.
- A dedicated landing page. Whoever clicks doesn’t land on a site full of menus and distractions, but on a page with one single purpose: start the test and collect the details. One possible action, zero dispersion.
- The contact that stays in-house. Every lead enters an orderly flow, ready to be followed up at the right moment. This is where interest stops being a number and becomes a potential enrolment.
It’s the same chain we can set up for any business: sensible bait, a targeted paid campaign and a surgical landing page.
A model that goes well beyond English schools
The English test is specific to MoveYourEnglish!, but the mechanism is universal. Any business can invent its own bait: a guide, a trial, a free check, a simulation, a mini-audit. The content changes, the logic doesn’t.
A professional practice can offer a first analysis. An e-commerce a discount on the first order in exchange for an email. A service a demo or a personalised calculation. In every case the principle is the same: give value before you ask, and the contact list fills up on its own, at costs a direct offer will never reach.
The lesson of this case isn’t “spend less”. It’s design the right offer, the one people actually want to take. At that point, the budget matters far less than you think.
Want your own bait that generates contacts?
If you have courses, services or products to fill and it feels like you’re throwing money at campaigns that bring nothing, the problem is almost never the budget: it’s the offer. Get in touch and we’ll build the right bait for your business together, the same logic that took MoveYourEnglish! to 212 leads in 40 days on 450€.