SchneiderB Media Inc.

SchneiderB Media helps schools get more inquiries. We accomplish that goal through our SEO consulting, Inbound Marketing consulting, Fractional Digital Marketing program, and our SchoolMakretingCRM school marketing software.

Founder and CEO

MarCom Society

The MarCom Society is a community created expressly for marketing and communications professionals as schools.

Founder

ChalkBooks

Advisor

ByDesign

Advisory Board Member

Teachers College, Columbia University

Guest Lecturer, Marketing Class

Sewickley Academy

Oversight for all external functions of the school including admission, alumni, development, marketing, and communications.

Director of Advancement

Director of Admission & Financial Aid

Assistant Boys' Varsity Lacrosse Coach

edsocialmedia

Contributing Blogger for edSocialMedia which explores the role of social media in education.

Contributor

AISAP: The Association of Independent School Admission Professionals

Board of Directors, Secretary

Hootsuite

- Advocate on behalf of the Hootsuite brand
- Amplify Hootsuite messages to their existing networks
- Provide feedback on the Hootsuite dashboard and regional insight
- Create a stronger presence for Hootsuite regionally through participation in events and online advocacy

Hootsuite Ambassador (Volunteer)

Western Reserve Academy

Director of Enrollment and Financial Aid

Head Boys Basketball Coach

Assistant Varsity Boys' Lacrosse Coach

Dean of Students

Director of Technology

Web Publishing

Faculty Member

Founder and CEO @ SchneiderB Media Inc. | K12 Digital Marketing Consultant

👋 Hi, I'm Brendan. 

A decade ago, I was immersed in traditional K12 school marketing, following the conventional playbook that everyone else used. After years of expensive advertising campaigns and diminishing returns, I discovered something transformative: inbound marketing—a methodology that would revolutionize how schools attract and enroll new families.

That revelation led me to pioneer a new approach to education marketing, helping schools move beyond outdated tactics to build sustainable enrollment systems.

In 2025, I captured these insights in my new book "School Marketing The Right Way," which became an instant Amazon bestseller in Education Marketing. The book reveals the system I've used to help schools transform their enrollment outcomes.

Today, I share what I've learned through:
→ My weekly newsletter read by 5,000+ education leaders
→ Speaking engagements at major education conferences
→ Consulting with K12 schools ready to use the Internet to drive inquiries
→ Training workshops and community through the MarCom Society
→ My Marketing automation software, School MarketingCRM

My mission is simple: help tuition-charging schools earn more inquiries and empower marketing, communication, and enrollment professionals with the tools and knowledge they need to thrive in the digital age.

Want to transform your school's marketing approach? 

→ Get my book: https://amzn.to/4hH0syP
→ Subscribe to my newsletter: https://schneiderb.com/subscribe-school-marketing-insider
→ Book a consultation: https://www.schneiderb.com/booking

The future of education marketing isn't about selling—it's about creating genuine connections through inbound strategies that showcase your school's true value and transform casual inquiries into lifelong community members.

Twitter: https://x.com/schneiderb
BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/schneiderb.com

Brendan Schneider

One of the biggest mistakes I see schools make? Using "marketing" and "communications" interchangeably.

It sounds like semantics, but this confusion creates real problems.

I've watched schools hire "Directors of Marketing" who spend 90% of their time on internal newsletters. I've seen "Communications Officers" get frustrated because they're measured on enrollment metrics they can't influence.

The result? Scattered efforts, unclear accountability, and underwhelming results on both fronts.

Here's the clarity that changed everything for me:
Marketing = Recruiting (attracting new families) 
Communications = Retaining (engaging current families)

Both are critical. Both require different skills, strategies, and measures of success. And both deserve dedicated focus and resources.

When schools understand this distinction, they can finally build the right team, set the right goals, and stop wondering why their "marketing person" isn't moving the enrollment needle.

What's your take? Does this distinction resonate with your experience?

#SchoolMarketing #EducationMarketing #SchoolLeadership #EnrollmentMarketing #MarketingStrategy

28 years inside K-12 schools taught me what actually fills seats. Now I help tuition-charging schools get more inquiries through SEO, Google Ads, Meta Ads, and marketing automation. Book a call to see if we’re a fit.

My wife and I visited our son this past weekend at Denison University to watch him perform in Macbeth.

In the theater building, I read this quote from Adam Weinberg, the president of Denison.

"I know of no society that remained open, free, and just without strength in the arts and humanities."

It's more true today than it was in 2019.

Thank you, President Weinberg.

A parent sits down on the couch after dinner. Instead of typing "private school Atlanta" into Google, they ask their phone a question.

"What is the best private school near me?"

And just like that, Google gives them an answer. Not a list of ten blue links. An answer.

This is what's happening right now. And most schools aren't ready for it.

The shift from Search Engine Optimization to Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is real. Parents are asking full questions. AI tools like Google AI Overview, Bing Copilot, and ChatGPT are delivering direct answers before a parent ever clicks a website.

Here's what that means for your school:

If your content isn't structured to be the answer, you're invisible.

Not buried on page two. Invisible.

I put together a carousel that breaks down what AEO is, why it matters now, and five strategies your school can start using today.

The schools that figure this out early won't just rank higher. They'll be the ones families find first, trust first, and choose first.

What's your school doing to prepare for this shift? I'd genuinely like to know.

#SchoolMarketing #IndependentSchools #AEO #SEO #DigitalMarketing #EnrollmentManagement #SchoolMarketingTheRightWay

Answer Engine Optimization: The Future of School Marketing

Helping private & independent schools align message, mission, and community.

🎙️ Cutting the marketing budget to save money is usually the most expensive decision a school can make.

Why? Because when you pull back on your marketing initiatives (for any reason), you don't stay even ... you fall behind. And buying your way back into the market costs a lot more than staying present ever would have.

I recently joined Peter Baron on the MoonshotOS podcast to talk about the data schools actually need to advocate for their budgets (specifically Customer Acquisition Cost) and why your Marketing Director needs a seat at the leadership table.

If you’ve ever struggled to justify your marketing spend, this one's for you. ⤵️

Open article: Why Cutting Marketing Is the Most Expensive Decision a School Can Make by moonshotos.com

Why Cutting Marketing Is the Most Expensive Decision a School Can Make

More than half of independent school marketers rate their burnout between 7 and 10 out of 10.

That's not a wellness problem. That's a leadership problem.

The 2026 MarCom Society Salary Survey surveyed 358 professionals. Here's what the data shows:

• 53.2% rate burnout frequency between 7 and 10
• 61.7% report evening and weekend work sometimes or often
• 18% work more than 50 hours per week
• \~27% may leave their role within 1-3 years

The median salary sits at $85,000-$89,000. That's a reasonable number on paper.

But salary doesn't fix a role that bleeds into evenings, weekends, and every major school event on the calendar.

When burnout is this widespread, it's not a personal resilience issue. It's a structural one. It means the role has expanded faster than the resources, headcount, or boundaries around it.

And the retention signal is the part school leaders should pay closest attention to. Losing an experienced marketing director isn't just an HR inconvenience. It's months of lost momentum, institutional knowledge walking out the door, and a costly rehire.

The fix isn't a wellness stipend or a mental health app.

It's an honest look at what you're actually asking one person to carry.

Download Survey: https://lnkd.in/eaFu8Kdz

358 independent school marketing professionals shared their salary data this year.

That's the most we've ever had in four years of running the MarCom Society Salary Survey.

Here's what stood out.

The median salary rose to $85,000-$89,000, up from $80,000-$84,000 in 2025. About 35% of respondents now earn $100,000 or more.

But this year, we asked questions we've never asked before. And the answers were hard to ignore.

Over half of respondents rated their burnout at 7 or higher on a 10-point scale. Nearly 60% say their school has no clear career advancement path for marketing professionals. And about 27% indicated they may leave their current role within the next one to three years.

One respondent wrote that they had just taken off the school mascot costume. If that tells you anything about the gap between title and actual daily responsibilities.

This report is 67 pages of real data from the people doing this work every day. Salary breakdowns. Reporting structures. Team sizes. Budget ranges. Remote work. Professional development funding. Job satisfaction. Burnout. Career outlook.

Whether you're a marketing director preparing for your next salary conversation, a Head of School trying to understand what your communications team is experiencing, or someone trying to figure out your next career move, this report was built for you.

Download the full 2026 MarCom Society Salary Survey. Link in the comments.

Thank you to every professional who participated. Your willingness to share openly is what makes this possible. And it's what makes our profession stronger.

If this data is useful to you, share it with someone who needs to see it.

Nobody warns you about the crash.

You spend months in survival mode. Inquiry season. Open houses. Application deadlines. Decision day. Running on coffee, adrenaline, and sheer will.

And then it stops.

The phone gets quieter. The inbox slows down. The urgency that defined your life for the last four months just lifts.

You should feel relieved. And you do, for about a day.

Then something strange happens. You feel flat. Tired in a way that sleep doesn't fix. A little lost. Like you've been sprinting toward a finish line for so long that you forgot what it feels like to just walk.

I've felt this. More than once.

For a long time, I thought something was wrong with me. Everyone around me seemed fine. And there I was, dragging myself through the day, wondering why I couldn't shake it off.

That crash is real. It happens to a lot of us in this work.

The 2025 MarCom Society Salary Survey found that a significant number of school marketing and communications professionals reported struggles with burnout and mental health. These are not people who don't care. These are people who care deeply, give everything they have, and have very little left over when the season finally ends.

If that's you right now, hear this.

You are not weak. You just ran a very long race, probably without enough support, and your mind and body are asking for something you haven't given them in months.

The work will be there when you're ready. Make sure you are there too.

If you are a school marketing or communications professional, I'd love to know: how do you recover after enrollment season ends? Share in the comments below.

Houseway Consulting

Houseway Consulting is an independent marketing consultancy specialising in the education sector. I help school leaders to find their school's best positioning using strategic marketing. My work covers local and international schools.

In addition, I teach commercial subjects at an independent school part-time. This keeps me relevant in a fast changing education sector, and constantly learning about the environment in which schools operate. And it keeps me humble, as teenagers tend to do!

My company Houseway Consulting brings a diverse range of industry consulting experience to you. This includes experience in private and public sector, profit and non-profit, manufacturing and services. My key area of focus is education marketing. 

You can access the publication 'A Guide to Effective School Marketing' by Keryn House of Houseway Consulting, a project for ISASA, on the link below. I've facilitated the ISASA school marketing workshops at independent schools around the country and online, based on this book. 

While being a business owner, I completed my CM(SA) designation as a Chartered Marketer with MASA, the Marketing Association of South Africa. 

See client testimonials on my website www.housewayconsulting.co.za and access a free 15-min Zoom call to answer your questions. I look forward to meeting you!

Director

Independent Schools Association of Southern Africa

Since 2018, I have been facilitating workshops in Effective School Marketing for ISASA, based on the book, A Guide to Effective School Marketing (available via ISASA) and tailored to specific areas. Bookings are done through the ISASA website (ISASA member schools only). In 2020, we moved from in-person to online. Now these workshops reach much further, enabling a wider geographical range of school marketers, along with other school leaders and administrators, to participate, learn, share and network together.

Facilitator: Effective School Marketing Workshops

Waterfall College

Waterfall College, a part of Waterfall Schools, is a dynamic, co-ed independent school based in Hillcrest, KZN. The school is known for its small classes, personal approach to quality education, subject specialist teachers and a happy, yet structured campus environment, enabling students and staff to thrive. 

While at the school, I provided part-time school marketing services for Waterfall College, and taught IEB Business Studies Grade 10. I also published a book through ISASA: A Guide to Effective School Marketing, during this period.

Marketing Consultant

Hillcrest High School, South Africa

Hillcrest High School is a large co-ed government high school where I completed a full-time locum position in teaching Gr 8-12 English for 5 months. 

I often get surprised looks when I say I taught Othello to Grade 12 students! It was certainly a challenge to adapt from the boardroom to the classroom but was an ideal learning environment, working alongside highly experienced teachers and school leaders.

This was my first return to teaching after many years and it provided a successful transition from the corporate environment into the educational sector, which led to education marketing and eventually my own business.

English Locum Teacher

PFK Electronics

PFK Electronics is a designer and manufacturer of electronic systems to global markets, especially automotive electronic security systems. 

In this role, based in Durban, I was responsible for general management of the laboratory. Here, teams of engineers in various specialist groups worked on a project basis on electronic product innovations to meet promotional and sales deadlines.

R & D Manager

BPESA

BPeSA Gauteng (now called BPeSA) was established as the official industry body for BPO & Call Centres in the province of Gauteng, South Africa. 

I managed the non-profit company and was also a member of the BPeSA Gauteng Board of Directors. Responsibilities included investment promotion and local development opportunities for Gauteng and the 3 metro's in BPO (Tshwane, Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni). This involved media liaison, public speaking, research, quality standards, small business development, stakeholder liaison and extensive global travel for trade exhibitions and investment promotion.

During this time, I worked on the company's transition in a challenging strategic merger towards creating a national BPO office as an important part of the future for this growing sector in South Africa in a highly competitive international market. 

Today, BPeSA continues to be a key player in investment marketing for the BPO sector.

CEO Gauteng 

Mike Perry & Associates

Mike Perry & Associates are boutique Business, Marketing, Management & Strategy Consultants - also known as the 'What If?' People. 

I started at the company as a Consultant and then moved into a Project Manager role, with the responsibilities of business development, project management, managing the client relationship, creating and delivering presentations to the client and conducting market research, analysis and developing strategy.

While at P&A, I led strategy projects on:
- Sales strategy, marketing strategy, branding strategy and business strategy  in sectors such as:
- Construction, Capital Equipment, FMCG, Wine, Media, Printing, Electronics, Financial Services, Retail, IT, Government and NGOs. 

This experience across multiple sectors, board-level presentations and research-based project work has been invaluable in my later work for clients in marketing strategy consulting.

Project Manager

the dti (Department of Trade and Industry: Republic of South Africa)

This role was a senior leadership position in national government, responsible for the textile, clothing, footwear and leather industries. It was in the exciting honeymoon years of our new democracy in South Africa. 

A key focus was on developing and implementing an industrial strategy to sustain and grow the Clothing, Textile, Footwear and Leather industries, in view of growing import and export markets for these sensitive labour-intensive South African products. Trade negotiations in countries across Southern Africa, US and EU involved extensive international travel.

While in this position, I also chaired the Gender Committee at the dti as I have always been passionate about the empowerment of women, being a woman myself who has been given opportunities to progress in business.

Director - Industrial Strategy

South African Clothing Industries, Seardel Group

Having started as a Sales Co-ordinator where I looked after the orders for retailers from start to finish, I moved up to Pre-Production Manager.  I was then promoted to Production Planning for the manufacture of ladies’ fashion to supply leading local and international retailers. 

My role as Pre-Production Manager included:
- Managing a team of two supervisors and approximately 50 staff. 
- Trouble shooting production problems that arose in the design process

My role as Planning Executive included:
- Liaison between sales (costing) and production (factory planning) to meet customer needs
- Planning the factory production flow to meet deadlines with constant challenges of raw material delays, outsource delays, factory processes and overtime
 
These years included an MBA with distinctions for 11 out of 19 subjects. Not an easy feat, but a lot of fun and loads of learning which I continue to use today in my own business.

Planning Executive

Do you feel your school isn't standing out from the rest, in the eyes of prospective families?

My roots are in education.

I originally studied to be a teacher. But when I completed my studies, there were no suitable positions nearby. So, I looked at opportunities in business and took on the role of Sales Co-ordinator in a large manufacturing company, where my passion for business began. I was offered management roles in pre-production and planning. 

This led me to study my MBA, which made me want to change the world!  So, I joined the new democratic government of SA as Director of Industrial Strategy, promoting sectors across Africa, Europe and US. I missed the business environment, and I then took on a consulting position in marketing and business strategy. Seeking leadership opportunities led me to a CEO role in Business Process Outsourcing where I worked in investment marketing and continued extensive global travel. 

I returned to education after experiencing health issues and a loss in my family. This season was one of personal growth and adjustment from 'the boardroom to the classroom' - A new career trajectory that I embraced. Teaching Business created an opportunity to take on a part-time school marketing role. This led to me starting my own consulting business in school marketing, while continuing to teach part-time.

I now specialise in marketing strategy for independent schools. 

I still teach part-time at a private school, in commercial subjects. This complements my work in school marketing, and it keeps me grounded in the fast-changing sector.

I've published a book with ISASA, and have been facilitating the ISASA school marketing workshops for 5 years. I'm a practising CMSA (Chartered Marketer) with MASA, the Marketing Association of South Africa. I have local and international clients. As a British citizen, I tend to focus more on UK and SA. I'm based in both UK and SA during the year.

The market has changed and education has changed - Both continue to change.

Marketing strategy is needed, building a distinctive positioning to get your school to stand out from the rest, with messages to reach the right market segments on platforms they use, digital and traditional. This must be based on independent data to find the real gems in the eyes of your school community. 

Then, it's easier for you to make decisions and allocate scarce resources, measure progress, take opportunities to grow and sustain the school in constant uncertain times.

Message me for more information, or go to my website for testimonials and contact details.

taplio

The Battle

Brendan Schneider

Keryn House

Followers

Posts

Engagements

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Performance ScoreBrendan Schneider's LinkedIn Performance

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taplio

The Battle

Brendan Schneider

Keryn House

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Brendan Schneider's LinkedIn Performance

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Performance ScoreBrendan Schneider's LinkedIn Performance