The test for an IELTS prep centre in Almaty ran, the leads came in, and a month later the owner writes: "Let's pause for now." The results were decent. But for the last two weeks the media buyer had gone quiet because "the algorithm is learning", then sent a dozen Ads Manager screenshots at the end, and the owner never worked out what he had paid for.
A client's decision to renew rests on two things: the report, and whether he knew what was going on all month. Both are in your hands from day one.
In short
- Week 1 goes on access, the lead event and a written agreement on what counts as a lead. Without them you will have nothing to show a month later.
- Once a week, on the same day, the client gets a five-line update. In a bad week too.
- The monthly report fits on one page: a plan vs actual table, what worked, losses outside advertising, the plan and one decision you need from the client.
- Requests beyond the proposal go into a separate proposal, and the client pays for ads with his own card in his own ad account.
A four-week plan
Say the centre's first project is tracking setup plus a Meta lead test for a fixed price; the numbers in this lesson are an example. That is more than the clinic's 13-hour estimate in the topic on pricing and scope, but it is priced the same way, only the work list gains lines for the test, the creatives, the weekly updates and the report. The month breaks down like this:
| Week | What you do | What the client gets |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Access and tracking | Get access, set up the lead event, agree on what counts as a lead, agree on the test budget and target | Screenshots of a test lead in DebugView and Test events |
| 2. The test | Leave the campaign alone for five days, check spend once a day and match the leads in the ad account against your own list | The first five-line update |
| 3. Test results | Build the table, mark with the client's manager who replied and who came, look for losses after the click | The second update |
| 4. Report and plan | Write the report and the plan for month two, send them the day before a 20-minute call | The report and one question that needs an answer |
Five days without edits is a condition of the test, not laziness: a significant edit (creative, targeting, a new ad) sends the ad set back into the learning phase, and the days before the edit can no longer be compared with the days after. The table is built a couple of days after the test ends. Results in Ads Manager can take up to 48 hours to process, and someone who submitted the form on Saturday may only reply to the manager on Monday.
A client who "just wants the ads running" will ask why week 1 has no launch. Until the lead event works, the campaign has nothing to optimise for except clicks, and a month later the report will have no numbers. This is worth standing firm on. If the client already runs ads, week 1 is the same, and the old campaigns keep running as they were: while leads are not counted, any change you make later has nothing to be compared with.
Week 1: access and what counts as a lead
Week 1 starts once the 50% prepayment under the proposal has arrived, and the deadline runs from the day the client gives you access. The ad account, the business portfolio, GA4 and GTM belong to the client, and you get exactly as much access as the work needs:
- in the Meta ad account, partial access with "Manage campaigns": create and edit ads and see reports. Ad account settings, finances and permissions come only with full access (business portfolio asset access). If you have your own business portfolio, the client can give it access as a partner, for which he needs your portfolio ID;
- in GA4, the Editor role, which has full control of the property settings but not of users (GA4 roles);
- in GTM, Publish access to the container, otherwise every version has to go to the client for publishing (GTM access levels);
- on the site, enough to install the GTM code and go through the form to the end.
The client pays for the ads, with his own card in his own ad account. Do not add your card there, not even for the test and not even when the client says "just for now, I'll pay you back": the charges for someone else's ads will come out of your account, and the client may simply forget to pay them back.
The other job of the week is a written agreement on what counts as a lead. Otherwise at the end of the month you will show eleven leads and the client will say: "Only three of them were any good." Four lines in a chat with the owner were enough for the centre:
- a lead is a submitted form with a phone number, excluding tests and duplicates;
- replied means the person answered the manager on WhatsApp;
- came means the person attended the free trial lesson;
- the centre's manager marks this in the shared lead sheet on the same day.
The plan vs actual table is later counted from these lines, so at the end of the month you and the client are counting the same thing.
The weekly update
The update goes out on the same day and at the same time, for example on Monday morning. The client gets used to it and stops writing "so how's it going?", because he knows when the answer will come. It has five lines:
- Which week it is and what ran.
- How much was spent out of the plan.
- The result: leads, cost per lead and what happened to them.
- What you did and why.
- What comes next and what you need from the client.
Metrics in the update are spelled out in words: the centre's owner is not expected to know what CPL means. Here is what the centre got on the Monday after the test:
Week 2: the Meta test ran from Tuesday to Saturday.
Spent 9,860 ₸ out of 10,000 ₸.
12,000 impressions, 171 clicks, 11 leads at 896 ₸ each against a plan of 2,000 ₸; 7 of the 11 replied on WhatsApp.
I did not touch the settings, so the test days can be compared, and I matched the leads in the ad account against the sheet every day.
Next: trial lessons on Wednesday and Saturday; please ask the manager to mark in the sheet who came, and I'll send the results on Monday.
In a bad week the update goes out at the same hour. Line three says leads are below plan, line four says what you have already checked (the form, ad statuses, billing in the ad account), and line five says what you are changing. A client who hears about a bad week from you discusses the plan with you. A client who spots it himself discusses you.
A one-page monthly report
The report answers the client's three questions: what did I get for my money, why did it turn out this way, and what happens next. So it holds the goal and the plan vs actual table with a conclusion, a look at the ads, losses outside advertising, the plan for next month and one decision you need from the client, with a deadline. Without the part on losses outside advertising, the ads will get the blame for everything that happened after the click.
Ads Manager screenshots do not go into the report: the client will scroll through a dozen images without making sense of the columns, and the ad account counts events, not people. Take the leads for the table from your own list and the spend from the ad account.
The centre's report for month one
Goal for the month: find out what a lead and a person at the trial lesson cost from Meta ads, on a 10,000 ₸ budget. The acceptable cost per person at the lesson comes from the centre's economics.
| Metric | Plan | Actual |
|---|---|---|
| Budget | 10,000 ₸ | 9,860 ₸ |
| Impressions | - | 12,000 |
| Clicks | 150 | 171 |
| Cost per click | 67 ₸ | 58 ₸ |
| Leads | 5 | 11 |
| Cost per lead | 2,000 ₸ | 896 ₸ |
| Replied on WhatsApp | - | 7 of 11 |
| Came to the trial lesson | - | 3 |
| Cost per person at the lesson | 8,000 ₸ | 3,287 ₸ |
Conclusion. A lead cost 896 ₸ against a plan of 2,000 ₸, and a person at the trial lesson cost 3,287 ₸ against the acceptable 8,000 ₸. But behind this are eleven leads and three people: had two come to the lesson, the cost would be 4,930 ₸, had four come, 2,465 ₸. These numbers are too thin to raise the budget on; first comes a second test over two weeks.
Ads. The cheapest leads came from the "Problem" ad, 7 at 700 ₸, but three replied and one came. "Result and price" brought 3 leads at 1,100 ₸; all replied and two came. "How the lesson works" brought one lead, who replied but did not come. Eleven leads cannot tell you why: one person coming or not coming flips the comparison.
Outside advertising. One lead has a mistyped number: the form accepts an invalid phone number, which is fixed on the site. Nobody recorded when the manager sent the first message, so we do not know whether he replied within an hour.
Plan for month two. A second test: the same 2,000 ₸ a day, but for two weeks, about 28,000 ₸. We add the course price to the "Problem" ad and change nothing else. The manager records the time of the first message and the reason a person did not come. The target stays the same: a lead under 2,000 ₸, a person at the lesson under 8,000 ₸.
Decision by Friday. Approve the second test (about 28,000 ₸ over two weeks, from the centre's card in its own ad account) and the ongoing management under the proposal attached to this report.
The report makes no promise to repeat 896 ₸: that figure comes from eleven leads. If the owner replies "it's that cheap, let's go to 10,000 ₸ a day", the reason it is too early is already on the same page.
What kills projects
- Silence for more than a week. The client does not know what is happening to his money and fills in the gap himself: if you are not writing, you have nothing to show. The update goes out on schedule even when there is little news: "test running, no edits, results on Monday".
- "The algorithm is learning" instead of numbers. The learning phase is not made up: an ad set needs about 50 results within a week of the last significant edit, and a 10,000 ₸ test will not get out of it. But to the client the phrase sounds like an excuse. Explain learning once, in week 1, and give numbers and actions in the updates.
- Changes in the ad account with no explanation. The client sees spend drop or an ad disappear and decides something is broken. Log every change with a date and a reason, and mention it in line four of the update.
- Extra work "while you're at it". Fix a banner, have a look at Google, make a story: each request is small, together they eat your rate, and a fixed price turns into an endless project. Reply with a link to the "not included" section. Changes within the project are limited to the rounds of revisions set in the proposal, and a new task gets its own proposal with its own price and a 50% prepayment.
First-month checklist
Questions
What if the client does not mark who replied and who came? Remind him once, then report on leads and say so plainly in the report: "Replies and attendance were not tracked, so the cost per person at the trial lesson is unknown." An empty row in the table persuades better than three more reminders.
The results are bad. Should I show them? Yes, on the same day you would show good ones, with the cause if it is visible, and with an action. If the numbers cannot show the cause, say so and add what you will record in the next test so that it becomes visible.
How do you answer a request to "do the website too"? The website sits in the "not included" section, so this is new work. Offer a separate proposal with its own price and prepayment, or recommend a developer you trust.
When should I raise my price? Before renewal, in the new proposal for the next month, once you have two or three reports with numbers behind you. Mid-month, a new price looks like changing the terms halfway through.
Exercise: report templates
This is the week 5 step of the Start track. Take the test you ran in week 2 and fill in both templates with its numbers, as if you were sending them to a client.
The step is done when both templates are filled with your test numbers, the update fits in five lines, and the report is one page with a plan vs actual table.
If the update will not fit in five lines, look at line four: it is easy to pour everything you did that week into it, while the client needs one or two actions and the reason. If the report spills onto a second page, cut the description of the campaign settings; the client does not read it. Read the conclusion again on its own. Ten or so leads cannot explain why one ad did better than another; all you can do is write down a hypothesis and how you will test it. And since you have no client yet, put the question you would ask the business owner in the decision line.
Summary
- Keep both templates next to your case study. On the first Monday of a real project all that is left is to fill in the numbers.
- When a client says yes, start with the prepayment and week 1. Launch the campaign after the screenshot of a test lead, not before.
- After the first month, write the project up with the case study template and drop the practice case it replaces from your portfolio.
- This is the last step of the Start track: you now have a test site with tracking, a case study, an audit, a proposal and report templates, which is what you take to your first client.