When building awareness or expanding your trust, keeping your branding clear, consistent and creative is essential.
Successful branding is about communicating what makes your multi-academy trust remarkable. A multi-academy trust branding audit gives the opportunity to step back and look at whether you are doing this well. It will pinpoint your position in the marketplace and examine strengths or weaknesses. The education landscape is always changing, so make sure you are keeping up.
If you’re thinking any of the below? It really is time for a refresh.
- We want to increase awareness and stand out
- Our branding looks a bit dated
- We’ve expanded so rapidly that our trust brand has become diluted
- Rolling out branding to new schools is time consuming and costs too much
- Our leadership and objectives have changed, we need to reflect this
A multi-academy trust branding audit, by education experts
At Cleverbox we pride ourselves on always delivering the most comprehensive and constructive reviews. We look carefully at your current brand position and growth plans, then provide advice and recommendations, including how to create a narrative that can be implemented across all your materials to communicate effectively to your target audience.
From defining values to offering actionable insights, here’s the deep-dive strategy we follow when evaluating a multi-academy trust branding audit.
We’re taking bookings now for free 30-minute branding sessions starting in January.
Thank you for being such a wonderful support system on our rebranding journey. It has been a real pleasure working with you talented, lovely people, from the design team to the customer service and technical support teams. Many thanks to everyone for providing a 5 star experience!
Coombe Academy Trust
Step 1. Identify yourself
Always start with your trust’s core values. These should be at the centre of all your marketing. Get these right and they will guide each step you take in telling the story of who you are and what you represent.
These will then attract the best-fit schools, staff and pupils. Take time to understand your values and their impact on others. Think about:
- What do your ethos and overall brand values represent?
- Does your image represent your values effectively?
- Who is your audience? And, are you appealing to them?
- What are your key goals and future aspirations?
- What challenges are you facing in meeting these goals?
Step 2. Review your logos
A key component for any brand is a strong and recognisable logo. This is the foundation of an organisation’s identity. Your logo represents a multi-academy trust’s logo, a ‘badge of excellence’ – a constant recognisable icon that instills pride and gives a sense of consistency that identifies your schools as a family.
If your branding doesn’t give the right first impression, then it is time to consider a change.
- Does your trust logo reflect your core values?
- How consistent are your school’s logo designs? Do they look like part of your trust family?
- If you have an existing set of logo or brand guidelines, are they working?
- How well is your current branding building recognition for your trust?
Step 3. Work on your website
It’s essential for a multi-academy and all its associated academies to have websites that are impactful and user-friendly. It is often the first port of call for parents, potential schools or sponsors researching a trust. And it is crucial that they are met with a clear, professional, informative website that clearly shows your individual story and offering.
- Are your schools’ websites seen as a cohesive family?
- Are your websites compliant and easy to update?
- Is the information easy to find, displayed well and offering a good user-experience?
- Can you measure user stats and analytics?
- How easy is it to roll out a new site when you onboard a new school?
Managing policies across your academy sites can be difficult. A good multi-academy trust website will have tools to help you ensure your statutory information is always kept up-to-date & compliant with regulations. Our system has centralised controls that will do just that.
Step 4. Make sure all marketing materials match
There’s a lot of MAT marketing to keep in alignment. Offline, you have brochures, letterheads, print adverts, signage and prospectuses. Online, there’s your school websites, newsletters, social media profiles, photography and videos.
- Are all the different elements (design, colours, tone of voice) consistent?
- What impression are you making across all marketing channels?
- What is working well?
- What could work better?
- How do these appeal to your community?
The quality of the branding and marketing material Cleverbox have produced has without doubt helped the Harris Academies enjoy overwhelming applications which have added to their success.
Sir Dan Moynihan, CEO – Harris Federation
Step 5. Review & action
Using the information gathered, document the aspects of your trust branding that are working, which need some fine-tuning, and which are missing the mark entirely. Then create an action plan for updating your brand to bring it in line with your vision and future aspirations.
If this all sounds a bit daunting and time consuming, our experts can help with a multi-academy trust branding audit. With over 20 years’ experience working with education rebranding, let us get to the heart of what is working for you and what’s not, by using the right frameworks, tools and top creatives to set you up for success.
Arrange a free consultation with our senior brand specialists
Get expert advice on how you can reinvigorate your trust’s brand.
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