Paid media for academies, judged on enrolments rather than impressions
Make It Happen runs paid media for academies and training schools: campaigns planned around the intake calendar, budget weighted to the weeks families actually decide, enquiry to enrolment measured with server-side conversion tracking, and campaigns live in three to four weeks because advertiser verification takes three.
This page describes what the studio builds for this kind of business. It does not claim a delivered engagement in that industry — where one exists, it is published on that industry's own page.
What this looks like today
Budget runs flat from March to July, and July is not when a family chooses a school. The month that decides the year gets the same weight as the month when nobody is deciding anything at all.
The report shows impressions, clicks and form fills. The director asks how many students actually started in September, and nobody in the room can join the two numbers, because nothing followed an enquiry past the form.
Enquiries arrive in a burst three weeks before term and the admissions desk is two people. Half get called back after the family has already visited somewhere else, and nobody can say afterwards which half.
What you get
A campaign calendar mapped to your intake cycle, with weight added in the weeks families decide and pulled back in the weeks they do not
Enquiry to enrolment measured end to end, so a campaign is judged by students who started rather than by forms submitted
Campaign structure organised by programme, so a short course and a multi-year programme stop competing for the same budget
Server-side conversion tracking plus custom events, so a phone call, a form and a message all arrive as one kind of record carrying where it came from
Accounts opened and verified in your institution's name, with the structure, the audiences and the history yours if we stop
What this is not
The advertising accounts are not ours. Each one is opened under your institution's own legal entity, the verification is filed in your name, and if we stop working together you keep the access and we lose ours.
We do not do admissions. The campaign produces enquiries; who calls them back and how quickly is what turns an enquiry into an enrolment, and that stays with your own people.
We do not write your programme or your pitch. Advertising can carry a reason to enrol that already exists; where the programme itself is weak, more reach only shortens the time it takes to find that out.
Questions buyers actually ask
Why can't my ads go live next week?
Verification of the advertiser. Nothing can run until the platforms finish reviewing which legal entity owns the account, and that review sits on their schedule, with three weeks the usual case. It also means the worst week to begin is the week before intake opens. Everything else gets built while it clears.
Should we just switch everything off between intakes?
Not entirely, because a family starts considering long before the deadline and an account that goes dark loses its history. What changes is the weight and the message: reach and answers in the quiet months, capture and urgency in the weeks people decide. The intake calendar sets the weighting, not a flat setting that never moves.
How do we know the ads brought students and not just enquiries?
The enquiry gets a source attached at the moment it arrives, through server-side conversion tracking with custom events, and that source travels with it into your admissions process. Then enrolments are read back against it. Where the channel reports and your enrolment list disagree, we trust the enrolment list.
Have you run campaigns for a school before?
We do not claim an academy as a case, and we name no client in any sector. What we will put in front of you first is the plan: your intake calendar, what counts as a lead, what counts as an enrolment, and the measurement that connects them. Agree that before any budget moves.
The possible part of the impossible.
If you have an idea that shouldn't work, bring it. We will tell you which part is genuinely impossible and which part is only hard. Most of it is the second one.