Full by enrolment day.
Senior-led paid media, technical SEO and AI search for independent schools, colleges and training providers, planned around admissions windows and measured on applications.
Built for education.
Education sells to a long, careful decision, made by students, parents or employers, and it sells in windows: open days, application deadlines, Clearing, the start of a course. A campaign that spends evenly across the year misses the weeks that fill places, and one judged on prospectus downloads cannot tell which spend produced a student.
The work here is built around the admissions calendar. Budget is weighted to the windows that convert, open day and application journeys are tracked through to enrolment where your systems allow, and course pages are built so search engines and AI assistants can read entry requirements, fees and outcomes. The aim is spend you can tie to applications and enrolments.
What an education engagement covers.
- Admissions-window campaign planning
- Open day and event registration campaigns
- Application and enrolment tracking
- Course and programme page SEO
- Paid social for students and parents
- International student targeting
- AI search visibility for course research
One senior mind, audit to invoice.
One senior operator plans the year around your admissions cycle, adjusting through each window rather than setting a flat budget and leaving it.
Measurement follows a prospective student from the first click to an open day, an application and, where your systems allow, an enrolment, so budget can be judged on places filled.
How the sector reads to AI.
In the Crane Index scan of 1 October 2026, the Education benchmark scored the websites of 91 organisations for AI readability, how well AI systems can read them. The median score was 48 out of 100, and 5 scored 70 or more. Fettes College led, at 78. Read the Education benchmark.
Your own site can be scored the same way, free, so you can see where it sits against the sector before any work starts. Get your Crane Index score.
Education questions.
Can you work around our admissions calendar?
Yes. Campaigns are planned around open days, deadlines and start dates, with budget weighted to the weeks that produce applications.
Can you track applications as well as enquiries?
Usually. Where your application or student record system can pass back an outcome, each application is tied to the campaign that produced it. Where it cannot, the closest measurable step, such as an open day booking, is tracked instead and labelled as such.
Do we need to advertise to parents and students separately?
Often, yes. They search differently and care about different things, so campaigns, messages and landing pages are set up for each where both have a say in the decision.
The full stack, on one desk.
Every sector engagement draws on the same four disciplines, held by one senior practitioner. Take one, or the whole stack.
Creator of the AI Readability Suite
Senior work, sector by sector.
Start with a conversation.
A proper conversation with the person who would do the work. Tell me about your education business and where you want to be, and you will get an honest read on what I would change, what I would leave alone, and where the real upside is.
Speak with NicThe senior read,
once a week.
Most marketing newsletters are noise on a schedule. This is not that. Once a week I send a short, considered read on the shifts that actually change what you should do, across the AI shift, PPC, technical SEO and analytics. Filtered, weighted and signed off by me before it goes out. The judgement is mine, and now you can hear every edition in my own voice.
Nic CraneFounder, The Crane Consultancy
Join readers of The Crane Standard.