Three options. Only one actually works for your business.
ELICOS and adult-evening are two different businesses sharing one shopfront.
A language school usually runs two completely different businesses under one roof: the CRICOS-registered ELICOS programme that enrols international students on a visa subclass 500 and issues a COE (Confirmation of Enrolment) tied to NEAS accreditation and ESOS Act compliance, and the local adult-evening-class programme that teaches Italian, French, Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, German or Arabic on a 10-week term to people booking around their day job. The buyer, the price point, the channel, the regulatory frame and the conversion timeline are all completely different. The ELICOS enquiry comes via agent networks and global search, takes 4-12 weeks to convert, and pays $4-6k for a 12-week intensive course. The adult-evening enquiry comes via local Google search or WEA-style listings, takes 48 hours to convert, and pays $300-$700 for a 10-week course. Most language schools try to sell both with one website, one ad budget, one Facebook page, lose both audiences, and find themselves competing head-on with Navitas and Embassy English on ELICOS (where they are outspent) and EnglishOnline Australia on adult-evening (where they're outranked). On top of that, the post-COVID online-versus-in-person hybrid has reshuffled the deck: the ELICOS-on-campus differentiator is back, but the adult-evening-online format is now the default for working professionals.
Good language-school marketing is three things, in this order: a website that splits cleanly into ELICOS (CRICOS-registered intensive English for international students), Adult Evening Classes (Italian, French, Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, German, Arabic on a 10-week term), Exam Prep (IELTS, TOEFL, Cambridge, OET), and Kids Immersion (weekend Mandarin school, Saturday French Petit Ecole, Italian community language school) so each audience lands on the right page from the right search; a Google Business Profile that leads with NEAS accreditation for ELICOS and ASILTA or MLTA membership for adult and kids' classes because those are the trust signals each audience actually compares; and two parallel ad campaigns (one on global CRICOS visa-500 keywords with agent-network landing pages, one on local 'Italian classes [suburb]' or 'Mandarin Saturday school [suburb]' keywords with term-enrolment landing pages) so the budget is not wasted bidding broad against Navitas. The schools running at 90 percent term capacity are doing exactly this. The schools at 60 percent are still running one homepage that mentions everything and ranks for nothing.
Six agents, working in your accounts.
Account Lead, Web, SEO, Advertising, Social Media, and Content. One platform, one bill, you approve the work.
Sets the plan around the two parallel businesses (ELICOS plus adult-evening plus exam-prep plus kids-immersion) and the term calendar that drives both: an ELICOS push 8 weeks before each intake (January, April, July, October), an adult-evening push 5 weeks before Term 2 and Term 4, an IELTS exam-prep push 6 weeks before each test cycle, a kids-immersion push in the second-last week of school term. Briefs the other agents so the language pages, the term ads, the exam-prep ads and the milestone posts all hit their windows.
Imports your existing site so you stop paying Squarespace plus an LMS landing-page tool plus a separate site for the kids' weekend school, and ships a page per language plus level plus format. Adds the CRICOS Provider Code plus NEAS accreditation to every ELICOS page above the fold, the term timetable with current availability to every adult-evening page, and the Saturday-school enrolment flow for the kids' immersion programme.
Goes after the long-tail searches Navitas and EnglishOnline Australia cannot defend on relevance: 'Italian classes [suburb]', 'Mandarin Saturday school [suburb]', 'IELTS preparation Sydney CBD', 'CRICOS-registered ELICOS school [city]'. Ships LanguageSchool and EducationalOrganization plus Course schema, surfaces NEAS plus ASILTA plus MLTA membership in structured data, and earns review prompts from every adult student at the end of each term. Auto-applies the low-risk fixes.
Runs two completely separate Google Ads campaigns: ELICOS (global targeting via agent-network landing pages, copy leads with CRICOS Provider Code and COE-in-48-hours, bids on 'CRICOS English course [city]', 'student visa English course [city]') and adult-evening (local 7km radius, copy leads with term dates and price, bids on 'Italian classes [suburb]', 'French evening classes [suburb]'). Drops broad 'English language school' bidding because the global chains own that CPC.
Turns every consented student milestone into a post in your real accounts: a Term-3-B1-to-B2 graduation, a Cambridge C1 Advanced pass, an IELTS 7.5 result, a kids-Saturday-Mandarin-school first-essay carousel, a teacher profile with the CELTA or MLTA accreditation listed. Builds the term-after-term retention trust that the chains cannot fake because they don't have the small-class relationship.
Drafts the guides students and parents Google before they enrol: 'how to choose a CRICOS ELICOS school in Sydney', 'how much does an IELTS 7.0 prep course cost in 2026', 'is Saturday Mandarin school worth it for my 7-year-old', 'CEFR levels explained: what does B1 actually mean'. Two drafts a month, in your voice, that catch the student or parent four weeks before they enrol.
Your first 30 days.
- ELICOS and adult-evening landing pages split, each with the correct CTA, accreditation badge and audience copy
- Annual plan built around the four ELICOS intake windows and the two main adult-evening term enrolments, delivered by Sam
- Google Business Profile rebuilt as 'Language school' with NEAS plus CRICOS Provider Code in the description and 21 services listed
- Language-plus-level-plus-format pages (CEFR A1 through C1, in-person and online) indexed and ranking long-tail
- IELTS, TOEFL, Cambridge and OET exam-prep pages live with next-exam-cycle dates and prices named openly
- Kids' weekend-immersion (Mandarin, French, Italian community language school) landing page shipped with Saturday term timetable
- Two separate Google Ads campaigns running (global ELICOS plus local adult-evening) with their own landing pages and CPC profiles
- 'How to choose a CRICOS ELICOS school' cornerstone guide drafted, with a 'CEFR levels explained' companion piece in the queue
Language schools don't fail at teaching languages; they fail at running two businesses with one website. The CRICOS ELICOS enquiry needs the Provider Code and the NEAS badge and the COE-in-48-hours promise; the Tuesday-night Italian enquiry needs the term dates, the format, the price and a 'book online' button. One homepage that tries to mention both loses both. The work is the language-plus-level-plus-format page library, the two parallel ad campaigns, the consented term-milestone posts, and the long-tail SEO that Navitas and EnglishOnline Australia cannot defend.
Agencies are too dear to actually run the language-page library and the two-channel ad split for $3.5k a month. Tools are cheap but the Mandarin Saturday school landing page never gets shipped between the CRICOS audit and the ASILTA committee meeting. In-House is the third option: for $299 a month the agents ship the language pages, run the ELICOS and adult-evening campaigns on separate tracks, post the consented term-milestone moments and draft the parent-and-student guides. You stay in the driver's seat, two taps to approve, minutes a day between classes. Fill the COEs and the term enrolments at the same time.