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In this article, I show how to segment data, reach the right parents, and avoid wasted spend.
Every preschool, tuition centre, or enrichment school in Singapore faces the same challenge: finding more parents like your best parents. Lookalike audiences on Facebook & Instagram allow schools to scale efficiently—without blindly chasing clicks.
Meta’s algorithm takes your parent data (emails, phone numbers, or lead forms) and finds similar people who are most likely to engage with your ads. Done right, it lowers your cost per enrolment (CPE), stretches your budget, and fills classrooms.
Yet, the promise of lookalike audiences often goes unrealized. Many education marketers build them wrongly—uploading messy data, using too few seed leads, or failing to segment by parent type.
(Related reading: How to track cost per enrolment, not just CPL)
Lookalike audiences are only as strong as the seed list. Uploading every parent email you’ve ever collected—even those who unsubscribed years ago—creates noise. Instead:
• Segment by recency: Parents who enquired within the last 6 months reflect your current demand.
• Segment by action: Parents who actually enrolled vs. those who only clicked.
• Segment by centre location: If you run multiple centres, don’t lump them together—parents in Tampines behave differently from parents in Bukit Timah.
(See also: Location targeting strategies for enrichment centres)
Facebook recommends at least 1,000 seed users for a strong lookalike. But in education, that’s rarely realistic. Schools often work with lists of 300–800 quality leads—and that’s still enough if they’re well-segmented.
Case Study (Singapore Tuition Centre):
• 600 enrolment leads uploaded
• Built 1% lookalike audience
• CTR increased 38%, and cost per lead dropped 27% compared to broad interest targeting
(Deeper analysis: Case study: tuition centre scaling with remarketing)
Connect with our expert team to transform your enrolment process with proven digital marketing strategies that deliver real results.
Connect with us! → • 1% Lookalike = Highly precise, best for limited budgets.
• 3% Lookalike = Balanced scale and precision.
• 5% Lookalike = Wide reach, but lower quality leads.
In Singapore, where Facebook lead costs for preschools already average $15–$25 per lead (source), even a small drop in quality quickly inflates cost per enrolment.
Singapore’s education market is hyper-local. Parents often choose preschools within a 2–5 km radius of their home. A generic nationwide lookalike is a waste.
Smart strategy: Combine 1% lookalike of enrolled parents with radius targeting around your centre. This creates a double filter: similar parents + nearby parents.
(More strategies: Google Ads benchmarks for tuition centres in Singapore)
Expired contacts, bounced emails, and unsubscribes confuse the algorithm. Clean your list first.
Low cost per lead looks good in reports—but if leads don’t convert into enrolments, your ROI suffers. (Read: Preschool ads: high CTR vs high enrolments)
The MOE & PDPA rules in Singapore are strict. Always collect consent before using parent data. (Reference: MOE & PDPA rules every education marketer must know)
Parents of toddlers behave differently from parents of Primary 5 kids. Build segment-specific lookalikes.
Small education businesses often rush into Meta Ads without strong data practices. Three factors drive this:
• High CPC industries: Tuition, preschool, and enrichment ads often exceed $3–$6 CPC in Singapore. Without precision, budgets burn fast.
• Cultural buying behaviour: Parents rely heavily on word-of-mouth and social proof. Lookalikes built on actual enrolments mimic this trust dynamic.
• Limited resources: SMEs rarely have large CRM systems, so they upload whatever list they have—leading to weak lookalikes.
This is why many centres mistakenly believe Meta Ads “don’t work”—when in reality, their audience foundation was flawed.
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According to HubSpot’s State of Marketing Report, businesses using lookalike audiences report 43% higher engagement rates compared to broad targeting. Similarly, Social Media Examiner notes that combining lookalikes with remarketing boosts ROI by up to 2.5x in education campaigns.
In Singapore, Marketing-Interactive highlights rising competition among tuition and preschool ads, where cost per enrolment is the true benchmark of success—not just CPL.
(Related read: Landing page optimization for education Google Ads)
• Lookalikes work only with clean, segmented parent data.
• Start small with 1% audiences, then test wider groups.
• Layer lookalikes with local targeting for best results.
• Always measure by cost per enrolment, not cost per lead.
Schools that follow these principles consistently outperform those relying on broad interest targeting or outdated parent lists.
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