Football Star Academy
Sports & Fitness
The short version · within 8 weeks
SoudCoh boosted enrolments for Football Star Academy Essendon using video ads, social media, CRM automation, and AI to streamline lead generation and conversions.
The result.
within 8 weeks
220%
Increase in Lead Generation Volume
within 8 weeks
35%
Reduction in Cost Per Lead
within 8 weeks
4x
Improvement in Trial Attendance Rates
within 8 weeks
100%
Automation of Lead Nurturing and Reminders
within 8 weeks
- Industry
- Sports & Fitness
- Discipline
- Sports & Fitness
- Services
- Sports & Fitness · Facebook Ads · Instagram Ads · Video Advertising
- Measured over
- within 8 weeks
Every figure above was read out of this client's live account and is reproduced exactly as the study publishes it. It is a record of what happened on one account, in one market, at one budget — not a forecast for yours.
What would this look like on your account?
Different market, different budget, different numbers. The first call is where we work out whether the same approach fits yours at all.

The case study
About Football Star Academy
When Football Star Academy Essendon teamed up with Melbourne marketing agency SoudCoh, the mission was clear: attract more young players and boost enrolments for kids aged 5 to 15. The goal was not just to get attention but to build genuine engagement through video storytelling, smart automation, and high-performing Facebook and Instagram ads. The result was a thriving franchise growing faster than ever.
The Challenge
Six core obstacles stood between Football Star Academy and scalable enrolment growth through digital marketing channels.
Low Lead-to-Attendance Conversion Rate
Plenty of parents showed interest but few followed through. The system did not effectively nurture or convert leads into trial day attendees.
Lack of Local Brand Awareness
The academy's visibility in the community was not strong enough to drive consistent sign-ups from local families in the Essendon area.
Inefficient Lead Tracking and Communication
Manual data handling made it hard to track parent enquiries or follow up quickly. Leads were being lost before meaningful conversations could happen.
Trial Day No-Shows and Drop-Offs
Without automated reminders, parents often forgot trial days or lost interest before showing up. Attendance rates were far below potential.
No Automations
Every step was manual, from follow-ups to check-ins, wasting time and missing opportunities for timely engagement with interested parents.
Scalability Problems
Without a centralised CRM or automation system, growing into new areas felt impossible. The manual processes could not scale with demand.
Our Strategic Approach
Kids Football Academy Lead Generation Strategy for Melbourne
To transform Football Star Academy Essendon's marketing, we combined creative storytelling with smart automation and data-driven Meta advertising. Every step was designed to capture attention, convert interest, and streamline communication.
Video Production for Maximum Impact
We filmed a full trial day using drones and multiple cameras, turning it into an emotional, high-energy video that connected with parents instantly. The footage became the heart of the ad campaign, showcasing fun, teamwork, and inclusivity.
Targeted Meta Advertising Campaigns
Facebook and Instagram ads targeted local parents with kids aged 5 to 15. Using A/B testing, we fine-tuned creative formats and messages to boost engagement and drive sign-ups through seamless lead forms.
CRM and Automation Setup
We built a custom CRM system integrated with automated SMS and WhatsApp sequences. Every new lead received instant confirmations, reminders, and updates, reducing manual effort and maximising conversions.
Trial Day Optimisation
QR codes allowed easy check-ins on trial day, giving real-time attendance tracking. Automated reminders before the event cut down no-shows dramatically and improved the overall experience.
AI Chatbot Integration
An AI-powered chatbot managed parent enquiries 24/7, answering questions about sessions, age groups, and enrolment details, ensuring parents stayed engaged from first click to final sign-up.
Target Audience
Our campaign targeted local Melbourne parents with children aged 5 to 15 who were looking for quality football coaching programs. We focused on families in the Essendon area and surrounding suburbs who valued structured sport, teamwork, and skill development for their kids. By speaking directly to their desire for a safe, fun, and professional coaching environment, we attracted engaged, high-intent parents ready to book a trial.
Services Delivered
Results
within 8 weeks
Our multi-channel strategy quickly paid off, turning engagement into real-world attendance and enrolments for Football Star Academy.
Why This Matters
This campaign proved that with the right mix of storytelling, smart automation, and targeted social media advertising, sports academies can achieve significant and sustainable growth. By combining engaging creative content with data-driven follow-ups, Football Star Academy Essendon turned interest into action and created a smoother, smarter path from sign-up to enrolment. Now equipped with an automated marketing ecosystem, the academy is ready to scale faster, open new locations, and continue inspiring the next generation of football stars across Melbourne and beyond.
Tags
- Sports & Fitness
- Facebook Ads
- Instagram Ads
- Video Advertising
- Lead Generation
- CRM & Automation
That is one account. Yours is a different one.
We read your ads, your search presence and your tracking the same way this one was read, and tell you what we would change first.
What every number on this page actually means.
Marketing words get used loosely, and a loose word can make a small result look like a big one. Here is exactly what we mean by each of them.
- Conversion
- One real action by one real person: a phone call that lasted long enough to be a conversation, a submitted enquiry form, a booking, or a purchase. Not a page view and not a form that merely loaded.
- Cost per job · cost per lead
- The advertising money spent, divided by the number of those actions. It is the only figure that tells you whether the advertising is worth doing, which is why we publish it next to the count.
- Conversion rate
- The share of people who clicked the ad and then did the thing. A high click count with a low conversion rate usually means the ad and the page are promising different things.
- Ad spend
- Money that went to the advertising platform, not to us. Our management fee is separate and is never included in a cost-per-job figure, because mixing them would flatter the number.
- The measurement window
- The dates the figure covers, named every time. Where a study covers a launch, the clock starts the day campaigns went live — not the day the graph started looking good.
- A starting point
- Where a study knows what a figure was before the work began, that number is printed next to the one it became. Where the account had no history to compare against, the result is printed on its own rather than measured from a number nobody recorded.
- Qualified lead
- An enquiry that matched the service and the service area, so it was worth someone picking up the phone for. Where a study says qualified, somebody checked.
- An anonymised client
- Government, council and cultural-institution engagements are published as sector and jurisdiction only. The work and the measured outcome are described in full; the organisation is not named.
One more, because it matters most: nothing on this page is a guarantee. It is a record of what happened on one account, in one market, at one budget.
What this study cannot tell you is what the same figure looks like on your account — so the same figure, on your own numbers, with your own click price and close rate. It takes about a minute and asks for nothing.
This page exists because of two of the six stages.
Compound is how our team works on any account — six stages every change passes through. Two of them are why there is anything honest to publish.
Meter
If it can't be measured, it doesn't get bought.
Before a dollar moves, every action worth money to the business is tracked as itself — calls, forms, bookings, purchases — with values attached. Without that stage there is no honest number to publish afterwards.
Ledger
Every change we make becomes a record you can open.
Every change lands in a dated record as it happens — what was added, what was stopped, what was rewritten and what it cost. Writing this page afterwards was reading a file, not reconstructing a memory.
What actually happens after the first call.
No mystery and no lock-in before you have seen anything. This is the sequence every account on this site went through.
- The call
Thirty to forty-five minutes, free
What you sell, who buys it, and what one customer is worth to you. No deck. You leave with a real number for your situation rather than a range.
- Week 0
The audit
We open your account — or your competitors' ground, if you do not have one yet — and write down every leak we can find. That list is yours whether or not you work with us.
- Week 1
The build
Everything the account needs before it can spend a dollar: what it will bid on, what it must never pay for, the ad copy, the assets, the landing pages and the tracking. A second person checks all of it before anything is live.
- Day one
You press go
Campaigns are created paused, every time, so you can read the whole build first. You activate when you are ready, not when we are.
- Days 1–14
The clean
The busiest fortnight your account will ever have. Search terms read daily, waste negated, early winners promoted, ad copy iterated against what is actually being served.
- From there
Rhythm
Weekly optimisation, reporting on a fixed cadence whether the news is good or bad, and a proper conversation each quarter about where the next block of budget should go.
Before you ask us anything
Here is what everybody asks first.
The questions this raises.
Whether the figures are real, how they were measured and over what length of window, what it costs, and whether any of it would hold for your business.
The first call is free and there is no deck.
Book a callAre the figures in this case study real?
Yes. Every number on this page was read out of the client's own advertising account and is printed here exactly as the study publishes it, beside the period it covers. The dashboard and ad images are screen-grabs of that account rather than recreations. If one of these figures matters to your decision, ask about it on the first call and we will walk you through where it came from.
How were these numbers measured, and over what window?
The headline figure covers within 8 weeks, and every other figure on the page is printed beside the period it belongs to. We publish the LENGTH of a measurement window and the year, and withhold the exact dates — when a client advertised, and how their trading calendar looks, is their commercial information rather than ours. A conversion means one real action by one real person: a phone call that lasted long enough to be a conversation, a submitted enquiry form, a booking, or a purchase. Not a page view, and not a form that merely loaded.
Would this work for my business?
We cannot promise you the same numbers, and nobody honestly can. What this page tells you is what was achievable in that market, at that budget, for that service. Your competition, your service area, your margins and what one customer is worth to you all move the answer. On the first call we build the picture from your figures rather than someone else's, and if the honest answer is that this channel is wrong for you right now, we will say so.
Why does this study show a result but not a starting point?
Because in most of these engagements there was nothing reliable to start from. A brand-new advertising account has no history, and a business that was tracking enquiries on paper or in a spreadsheet has no comparable figure either. Where a real before-number exists we print it next to the after-number, so you can see the movement rather than take our word for it. Where it does not, we print the result on its own. Back-solving a starting point from a percentage would make the page look better and mean less.
Would my business get the same result?
We cannot tell you that, and nobody honestly can. What this page tells you is what was achievable in that market, at that budget, with that service. Your competition, your service area, your margins and what a customer is worth to you all move the answer. On the first call we build the picture from your numbers rather than from someone else's, and if the honest answer is that this channel is wrong for you right now, we will say so.
How much would this cost to run?
Two separate numbers. Your ad spend goes to the platform, and what it needs to be depends on how competitive your market is and how many jobs you want — the smallest companies we work with invest a minimum of A$3,000 a month, and our largest clients run multiple eight figures a month across paid channels. Our management fee is separate and scales with the work. The first call is free and you leave it with a real figure for your situation.
How quickly could we start seeing enquiries?
It depends on the channel. Paid search meets demand that already exists, so calls and forms can arrive within hours of launch, and the first two to four weeks are an optimisation period where waste is cut daily. Most accounts settle into their best rhythm around 60 to 90 days. SEO, content and brand work run on a much longer clock — months rather than weeks — and we will tell you which one your situation actually needs.
Am I locked into a long contract?
No long-term lock-in. We would rather keep the work because it is producing than because a contract says you have to stay. What we do ask for is enough runway to be fair to the account — a campaign judged on its first ten days is being judged during the part where we are still cutting waste out of it. Terms are put in front of you in plain English before anything is signed.
More accounts, same discipline.
Studies from the same kind of work, so you can see how the pattern holds across different businesses.

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The work that produced this.
Everything above was delivered by one of a handful of things we do. These are the ones this account leant on, written up in full rather than summarised.
- Advertising a membership on InstagramTrials, class footage and member stories cut for Reels rather than reused from a landscape promo.
- Filling trials and turning them into membersA trial booking is only half of it. This is how the campaign and the follow-up get built as one thing.
- Counting sign-ups properlyBookings that happen in a third-party scheduler are invisible by default. This is how they get imported back as conversions.
The briefing behind the work.
The case study records what happened. These two explain the channel, measurement or operating decision that made the result interpretable in the first place.
A platform choice made from the workflow rather than from the feature list. That case is argued in GoHighLevel and HubSpot solve different operating problems.
The small data contract that determines whether follow-up and attribution survive contact with the real workflow. The other half of it is set out in The six CRM fields to fix before buying another lead.
The work behind this one is written up in full under advertising a membership on instagram, and the operating sequence behind every study on this site sets out the sequence in order.
Want results like this?
Thirty minutes on your numbers rather than somebody else's, and a written list of what we would change first. Yours to keep either way.
No pitch deck. No upsell. A real conversation and a written list of leaks.
