The wrong question

"Which platform is better" is the question almost every client opens with, and it has no answer, because the two channels do different jobs. Google harvests demand that already exists. Meta creates demand that does not. A coaching business that only harvests will plateau the moment it has captured everyone already searching. A business that only creates demand burns money teaching people to want something they then buy from a competitor who showed up in search.

Where Google wins

Google is unbeatable when the prospect has already named their problem. Somebody typing "IELTS coaching in Hyderabad fees" has done the deciding; they are choosing a provider. Costs per enrolment on those terms are consistently the lowest in the account, and the leads close fastest because the intent arrived pre-formed.

The limitation is ceiling. Search volume for high-intent terms in a single city is finite. Once you own that inventory, more budget buys progressively worse terms, and your cost per enrolment climbs. When we see an account where Google costs are rising month on month with stable creative and bids, it is almost always demand exhaustion, not a management failure.

Where Meta wins

Meta earns its place for anything the prospect does not yet know they want: a new programme, a niche skill, a category that people do not search for by name. It is also the better environment for the emotional half of an education decision — a parent watching a two-minute film about a campus is being persuaded in a way a text ad cannot manage.

Meta is also where the scale is. When a coaching business needs to triple volume rather than improve efficiency by ten per cent, the answer is nearly always creative-led Meta campaigns, because the addressable audience is orders of magnitude larger than search volume.

The cost is patience. Meta leads arrive colder, need more nurturing, and convert over a longer window. Judged on a seven-day attribution window against Google, Meta will always look worse and you will always reach the wrong conclusion.

The pattern we see repeatedly

Across education and coaching accounts, the shape is consistent enough to plan around:

  • Google search delivers the lowest cost per enrolment and the shortest sales cycle, on the smallest available volume.
  • Meta delivers several times the volume at a higher cost per lead, with a noticeably longer time to close.
  • Retargeting on both is consistently the cheapest conversion in the account and is chronically underfunded.
  • Branded search looks phenomenal and is largely harvesting demand the other channels created.

That last point matters when you cut budgets. Turning off Meta and watching branded search hold steady for three weeks feels like proof that Meta did nothing. Week six is when the branded volume falls off, and by then the decision has usually been justified in a board meeting.

How to split the budget

A workable default for a coaching business with an established offer:

  • Fund Google search to saturation first. Take every high-intent term you can profitably win. This is the cheapest revenue available to you.
  • Put the growth budget into Meta. Once search is saturated, additional Google spend buys weaker intent; the same money on Meta buys reach.
  • Ring-fence 10–15% for retargeting across both. It is nearly always the highest-return line in the account.
  • Measure on a 30-day window at minimum, and review by cohort rather than by calendar month.

The honest summary

If you can only run one channel and you already have search demand, run Google. If you have no search demand because your category is new, run Meta. If you want to actually scale, you need both, funded in that order, and measured over a window long enough to see education decisions actually complete.