Strategy & positioning
Annual and term plans tied to enrolment targets, in language families repeat back.
Independent schools, education providers and partners
Marketing that understands Education
The remote CMO for independent schools and education providers, run by two people who led inside them. Take the whole remit, or hand us a single project.
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Our Partners
01 / The uncomfortable part
You are not losing to better schools. You are losing to schools that say it better.
You will recognise at least four of these. Most schools recognise six. Open the ones that land.
None of it is a marketing problem.
It is a translation problem.
01Your frameworks live in the heads of six people.+
Genuinely excellent, entirely undocumented. Fragile under review, impossible to induct new staff into, and invisible to prospective families.
02Marketing sits with your Business Manager.+
Alongside finance, HR, compliance and the yearbook. Nobody planned it that way, and nobody has the hours to fix it.
03Your website was built before your newest building.+
The campus has moved on. The site has not, and it is the first thing a family sees.
04You have great 'marketers' but they don't get the education context.+
The number one reason your marketing is inconsistent is becuase most marketers don't understand the complexity of the school or education context. That gap is where money, reputation and enrolments are lost.
05Your social feed is busy. Your pipeline is not.+
Output is not strategy. Volume without direction produces work nobody can point to a result for.
06Nobody has ever asked ChatGPT about your school.+
Around half of schools block the AI crawlers entirely, so the answer families get is assembled from directories and a diocesan profile.
07Everything stops for six weeks over summer.+
Which is exactly when families are deciding. We treat those six weeks as the heaviest working period of the year.
08The school ten minutes away looks the same as you.+
And neither of you can explain the difference in a sentence. That sentence is the whole job.
02 · The answer
Someone
owns it.
Without the salary, the super,
or the six weeks off.
The person who owns marketing, without the salary.
Big schools hire a Head of Marketing. Most independent schools and education providers cannot justify $180,000 plus superannuation for one person, one skill set, available thirty-eight weeks a year.
So they hire a coordinator instead and hope the strategy turns up with them. It does not. Coordinators are good at making things. Deciding what should be made, and why, is a different job.
That is the job we do. We decide what gets made and why, hold the brand, direct the campaigns, approve everything before it goes out, and answer to your Council for the results. Your coordinator keeps making things, and finally has someone telling them what matters.
Not every school wants that seat filled, and we do not push it. Plenty of our work is a single project with a start and a finish. A website. A framework documented. A brand system and template suite. An enrolment campaign for one year group. Take one, take several, or take the seat.
What that decision actually costs
$110K to $210K
A Head of Marketing at a Sydney independent school, once superannuation, leave, workers compensation, recruitment and software are counted.
- That buys one person, one skill set, thirty-eight weeks a year
- Design, web and media still to be bought on top
- Nothing happens for the six weeks families are deciding
What you get instead
Executive marketing leadership at a fraction of the employment cost, year round, including the six weeks your campus goes quiet.
With a production team behind us, so the work actually gets made. Rates held for two years, so you can budget with certainty.
03 / How the work runs
CAMPUS™
Six stages, run in order, revisited every term. Select one.
Stage 01 of 06
Clarify
Define the purpose before the pixels.
We start where most agencies skip: what the school actually is, who it is for, and what it wants to be known for. Nothing gets designed until that is written down and agreed by the people who have to live with it.
- Purpose, goals and community personas
- Stakeholder interviews across the executive
- The one sentence that separates you locally
Stage 02 of 06
Align
One voice across every desk.
Messaging, brand identity, tone and stakeholder communications brought into a single system, so a memo from the Head of Junior and a prospectus page read like the same school.
- Messaging framework and tone of voice
- Brand identity and template suites
- Internal and external comms standards
Stage 03 of 06
Map
A plan that respects the school year.
A term-based marketing plan aligned to school rhythms and enrolment targets, built around the fact that January is when families decide and campus is empty.
- Annual and term plans tied to enrolment targets
- Enquiry to tour to application, tracked end to end
- Campaign calendar built on the school year
Stage 04 of 06
Produce
The work actually gets made.
Branding, website, wireframes, design kits and campaign assets, produced to a standard your Council will recognise and your own staff can maintain without us.
- Website and digital estate, registered in your name
- Prospectus, expo and recruitment collateral
- Design kits your staff can use in Word
Stage 05 of 06
Utilise
Systems that run without you.
Tools, workflows and automation implemented so the admin that eats your registrar's week runs itself, sitting in front of your existing enrolment system rather than replacing it.
- CRM, nurture sequences and tour booking
- Scholarship and staff applicant journeys
- AI search visibility as a standing item
Stage 06 of 06
Sustain
Momentum, not a launch.
Teams trained, progress reviewed, strategy revisited each term. Reporting that connects spend to enquiries to enrolments in a form Council accepts without translating it first.
- Team coaching and honest feedback
- Board ready reporting every term
- Quarterly strategy review
04 / What we own
Everything a CMO is accountable for.
Not a menu of services. A remit.
Enrolment & admissions
Enquiry to tour to application, tracked end to end, in front of your existing system.
Framework articulation
Out of leaders' heads and into documents, icons and classroom assets. Review ready.
Brand & identity
One locked source of truth, and templates your staff can actually use.
Website & digital estate
Owned by you, registered in the school's name, handed over cleanly if you want us gone.
CRM & automation
The admin that eats your registrar's week, running itself.
Communications
Parent newsletters, staff memos, stakeholder and crisis comms. One calendar, one standard.
AI search visibility
What the assistants tell families who ask about you. Twelve months from now this is table stakes.
Content systems & coaching
We do not replace your people. We give them a calendar, a standard and honest feedback.
Reporting & accountability
Spend to enquiries to enrolments, in numbers Council accepts without translation.
Print & production
Signage, prospectus, uniforms shoot, yearbook. Managed, proofed and delivered on time.
Tours & open days
The moment a family decides. Scripted, staffed, measured and followed up automatically.
Sitting in the room when the decisions are made.
Including arguing for the opposite of sector best practice when the opposite is more likely to work. Knowing why a Head of Junior sends a different memo to a Head of Senior, and why that matters more than it sounds.
“His capacity to draw on his experience in education really helped him understand the unique setting that schools have when it comes to marketing. We are so proud of the product and we continue to receive many compliments on the quality of the work.”
Thea LaffinHead of Learning and Teaching K to 12, Penrith Christian School
05 / Proof
Every name here is a reference you can call.
We do not use client names we cannot back up with a phone number.
Framework articulation
Penrith Christian School
Great Learning, Well People was strong and entirely undocumented. Every leader could describe it. Not one could hand you a document. We turned it into written documentation, an icon suite, one page visuals and classroom assets, ready for review.
“James was responsive to ideas, provided many iterations, and spent time to make sure our vision became a reality.”
Geraldine Paynter, Principal
Enrolment & brand
Marsden Park Anglican College
Growing Pre-K to Year 12, fees rising fifteen percent into the top tier locally, and a brand that had not kept pace. We found their site was blocking the AI crawlers entirely, so families were being told about the College by third party directories.
Enrolment campaigns and a full brand system followed.
Also on the books
Success Resources
Roughly 500 events a year across four markets. Strategy and standard held between leadership and execution teams.
Wellbeing Australia
National membership body. Website, online community portal and CRM on one system.
CrowdCoursing
K to 12 safety platform across Florida districts, with Space Florida and the University of Florida.
Stageo
Operating system for coaches and consultants, 500 plus members. Conversion page, paid media and social.
The Transformation Network
Board level. Brand positioning and online presence, alongside curriculum and teaching standards across branches.
Breakthru Enrichment Academy
Marketing and online presence strategy alongside coaching and training within their apprenticeship program.
The full body of work
The work, with the references attached.
Frameworks, brand systems, enrolment campaigns and live platforms. Every project, every school.
Frameworks
Learning frameworks, written down at last
Documentation, icon suites, one page visuals and classroom assets, built so a review panel and a Year 3 parent both understand them.
Penrith Christian School
Enrolment campaigns
Campaigns that fill a specific year group
Creative, media and follow up built around the intake you actually need, not the impressions that look good in a report.
Marsden Park Anglican College
Websites & platforms
Sites, portals and CRM on one system
Website, member community and enrolment automation running together, registered in your name and handed over cleanly.
Wellbeing Australia
15+ yrsInside and alongside schools
MinimalNew school engagements a year, deliberately
2Markets, Global
EveryName here is a reference you can call
Websites we have built, campaigns we have run, and the people who will vouch for both.
View the portfolio06 / Partnership
One project, or the whole department.
Plenty of schools come to us for a single piece of work and stop there, and that is a perfectly good outcome. Others want the seat filled year round. Most start with a project and grow into more, on their own timing.
Start here
Diagnose
Before anyone commits to anything, find out what is actually true.
- What AI tells families about your school, verbatim
- Your enquiry funnel, mystery shopped as a real parent
- Your three nearest competitors, compared honestly
- A prioritised plan with costings your Council can read
Build · one off
Projects
A single piece of work with a start, a finish and a fixed price. No retainer, no lock in, no obligation to continue.
- Framework articulation and visual systems
- Brand foundation and template suites
- Website, CRM and enrolment automation
- Prospectus, expo and recruitment collateral
The full remit
Remote CMO
We take the seat. Strategy, direction, quality and accountability, with the team to execute it.
- A place in your strategic team, year round
- Your January executive retreat, for the full duration
- Unlimited campaigns, content, design and print
- Board ready reporting every term
- Rates held for two years
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07 / A note from James
I loved my years in schools. I still miss the staffroom, though I do not miss playground duty in February.
What I did not expect, when Jennifer and I moved into marketing, was how fast the work would lead straight back. What schools need most is not someone who can make things look good. There is no shortage of that. It is someone who understands why a framework everyone can describe is still a problem, and what it feels like to have marketing land on your desk when your desk is already full.
We keep this deliberately small. Three schools a year. We would rather grow alongside a few schools over several years than take on twenty and become the agency that stops answering the phone in Term 4.
If your school has quietly become better than the way it presents itself, that is the conversation we enjoy most.
James
James and Jennifer Clanfield · Founders
Bespoke and personalise partnership
Start with something that costs you nothing.
We will run a full visibility check on your school and send you what the AI tools are actually telling prospective families, with the competitor comparison included. Prepared by hand. No cost, and nothing about it obliges you to speak to us. If all you need is one project quoted, say so and we will quote it.
Or write to James directly at [email protected]