Cold plans and runs marketing for education providers with places to fill: independent schools, sixth forms, colleges, nurseries, training academies and apprenticeship providers. Campaigns follow your admissions calendar, from the first open evening adverts to the reminders that land before applications close, and every visit and application is tracked to the channel that produced it.
This is an instant, live ballpark quote calculator. You’ll see a project range and flexible payment options, including pay over time and monthly retainer costs.
Step 1 of 2Enter your website (or the one you’d like) to start:
School marketing tends to happen in a rush. A banner goes on the railings, a post goes on Facebook, someone boosts it for a week before the open evening and nobody can say if it worked. The platforms have tightened up too. Neither Google nor Meta lets you target teenagers by their interests, so a campaign has to win over parents with one message and young people with another.
We work back from your deadlines. For state secondary places that means the 31 October closing date, for primary it's 15 January, and for sixth forms, colleges and apprenticeships it's your own intake dates. Open day campaigns run first, aimed at local parents, then follow-up and reminder campaigns go to people who've already shown interest. The calculator gives you a range before anything is booked.
You see the cost of each open day booking and each application by channel, and which messages filled which events. Budget stops going on boosted posts that only reach current parents. The head and governors get a monthly report short enough to read before a meeting, from the person who runs your campaigns.
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The plan starts with places: which year groups, courses or campuses have room, what each place is worth and when families decide. We look at your catchment, the providers nearby and the reasons families give for choosing you, then set a budget by intake and a target cost per visit. Branding sits inside this work too, so a tired prospectus or logo gets fixed alongside the campaigns.
Facebook and Instagram reach parents well, especially for nursery, primary and independent places. Paid social for sixth forms and colleges has to win over parents and teenagers at once, which usually means short video from current students and plain information for the adults. Day-to-day posting can stay with your staff. We plan the paid side, set the calendar around events and write captions that don't read like a newsletter.
Organic search brings applicants without a cost per click once it's working, and it carries on after the paid budget stops. Course pages, admissions content, local SEO for each site and the work that gets you quoted in AI answers all sit in the plan from the start. Our SEO for education providers goes into more depth if search is the main job.
Google Ads earns its place when people search for what you offer: sixth form open evenings, nursery places near them, adult courses, apprenticeships in a trade. We build campaigns by intake and course, keep out searches for teaching jobs or free resources, and pause spend once a course is full. Paid social carries the awareness side, and the ad budget itself goes to Google or Meta, never through us.
A lot of open day traffic lands on a page that asks too much. We test booking forms with fewer fields, a clear choice of dates, a map and a parking note, and a confirmation email with a calendar invite and a reminder the day before. For courses, we test moving entry requirements and start dates above the enquiry form. Small changes like these often fill more seats than a bigger budget.
GA4 and Google Tag Manager go in before any campaign runs, with open day bookings, prospectus downloads, course enquiries and applications set up as conversions. Where your admissions or student records system can export applications, we match them back to the source. The monthly report leads with bookings and applications by channel, and sets each intake against last year's.
Week one is for numbers and dates. We go through last year's applications, open day attendance, what you've spent and where, then write a plan with channels, budget by intake and the deadlines every campaign works back from.
From week two we set up tracking and booking pages, then launch campaigns in calendar order, starting with your next open event. You see every advert before it runs, and photo consent for any pupil who appears is checked before anything goes live.
Week six is the first honest look at what's filling places. Spend shifts towards the channels filling visits and applications, weak adverts are cut, and the plan for the next intake is drafted while this one is still running.
An admissions decision builds slowly. A parent hears about a school at the gate, sees a friend's post, reads the website twice and keeps the open evening date in mind for weeks. Marketing works when it stays in view across that stretch and makes booking a visit easy. The open day still does the persuading, so most of our effort goes into getting the right families through the door.
Forty second answers with no jargon. Anything else, ring the office and ask whoever picks up.
Six to eight weeks ahead is a sensible minimum for paid social, so people see the event more than once and there's time to test the adverts. Search campaigns can start closer to the date. For state secondary places the bigger push runs in September and October, before applications close, so tracking needs to be in place by the summer holidays.
Only in a limited way. Google doesn't personalise ads for under-18s, and Meta restricts teen targeting to basics like age and location, so interest-based campaigns aimed at teenagers aren't possible. For post-16 recruitment we reach young people through organic social and video, and put the paid budget towards parents and older learners.
Yes. A small budget can work well when the audience is local and every place matters, which describes most preps. A prep with a few spaces in each year might only need search, a handful of open morning campaigns and an email sequence for families who enquire. The plan scales to the number of places you need to fill.
We only use images of children where you hold consent for that use, and we check it before any advert runs. Many campaigns work better with photos of the site, staff and older students anyway. We keep a record of which images went into which adverts, so if a parent withdraws consent, they come down the same day.
Every open day booking, prospectus request and enquiry is tracked to the channel and advert that brought it in. If your admissions system can export applications and acceptances, we match them back, so the report shows cost per application alongside cost per click. Without an export, a short termly spreadsheet from admissions does the same job.
That depends on the number of intakes and campaigns, the channels involved and how much video or photography we produce. Ad spend sits on top and goes to the platforms directly. Our pricing calculator gives a range for our side in about three minutes, so you've got something concrete for the finance committee before we speak.
Our education clients include Debut Academy, an Essex hair and beauty training academy, where we handled the rebrand and a site whose enquiry forms feed HubSpot, so every lead lands in one place. We also refreshed the Basildon Skills Show identity for Basildon Council, including print aimed at the schools taking part.
Campaigns need somewhere good to land. Our school website design team builds the pages they point at, and education SEO grows the applicants you don't pay per click for.
Smart design decisions, great communication, and fast turnarounds, even over the Christmas break. Everything was scoped clearly, delivered on time, and they went above and beyond with extra refinements.
They delivered a professional, high-quality website and continue to provide excellent ongoing SEO support. Communication is clear, results-driven, and they genuinely understand our business objectives.
I couldn’t be happier with the outcome and highly recommend their team. I would absolutely work with them again (and likely sooner than they expect!).
They delivered far beyond what I was expecting, and I’m honestly over the moon with my new website.
The final product met all our expectations and clearly reflected their creativity, attention to detail, and dedication to delivering quality work.
We were most impressed with Cold | Digital Agency's creativity.
We're impressed with their enthusiasm for success.
They brought our identity to life in a way that felt authentic and future-focused.
Our SEO and Google rankings have improved significantly, and we’ve had a big increase in quality leads coming through the website.
They’re extremely attentive, they listened to what I wanted and brought it to life amazingly.
Superb service for my business and such a professional team.
Excellent service and really delivered on the brief I gave them. Designed the logo and my website, very happy with the result and would highly recommend.
Their whole purpose was to listen to me and deliver.
They provided professional and personalized services to suit my needs.
They consistently delivered all items on time and kept me informed throughout the process.
Overall, we were pleased with the service provided.
Cold | Digital Agency couldn't cater to my needs anymore if they tried.
I have been nothing but greatly satisfied with the work he has done for me, everything has been carefully considered and tailored to me!
They had it built much faster than I was expecting with lots of amazing features, couldn't have asked for a better site and I was very surprised at the great price for the quality they provided.
| DIGITAL MARKETING Independent schools | DIGITAL MARKETING Prep schools | DIGITAL MARKETING Sixth forms |
| DIGITAL MARKETING FE colleges | DIGITAL MARKETING Private nurseries | DIGITAL MARKETING Training academies |
| DIGITAL MARKETING Apprenticeship providers | DIGITAL MARKETING Academy trusts | DIGITAL MARKETING Adult learning |
This is an instant, live ballpark quote, not a final proposal. It can cover branding, websites and marketing. You will see a project range and flexible payment options, including pay-over-time. Takes about 3 minutes.
Prefer to skip the calculator and ask a quick question? Drop us a line and we'll be in touch.
