S2E1 Inbound to Inquiry

This week we host inbound marketing expert Brendan Schneider of SchneiderB Media and discuss helpful insights on how to boost inquiries at your school with inbound marketing tactics and strategies.

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hey there welcome to the open house podcast with your host Jesse Meadow we're starting season two we've taken a

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nice long vacation off uh during the post pandemic uh our first season there

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we really focused a lot on admissions Representatives communication Representatives at our Independent Schools uh and really trying to get

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through those covid mitigation efforts and now that we're coming out on the end of it conference season's back up we've

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been socializing a lot more and we're really trying to get a little bit more of a focus on some industry experts and

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really try to help with some insights on how they can do things and build up uh their enrollments out of this

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post-pandemic period And so first up on this second season we have a great great

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guest for us uh Schneider B is going to be with us and he's going to be talking about inbound marketing how that can

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affect your schools and and really build up your inquiry base so without further Ado I don't want to waste anyone's time

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let's have them Jump Right In the man the myth the legend how are you sir hi

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Jesse I'm so excited to be here man thanks for having me absolutely absolutely I'm glad you can make it I

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know there's been um you know some big news for you a lot of transitions you know everybody seems

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to have been transitioning uh these past two years or so whether you're literally moving I live here in Florida everyone

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seemed to have been coming here for the past two years or you know transient through some positions and jobs I'd love

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to to um kind of get some feedback introduce yourself to uh everyone and kind of tell

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us about you know where you came and what you're doing now yeah it it goes back

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um and I hate to go way back but it goes back to my previous School uh uh where I started at swickley Academy

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so I'm based in Pittsburgh and it was 2008-9 and and I share this history

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because it's relevant to what I'm doing now and in marketing so anyways uh you're probably too young to remember

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this Jesse I'm old now but like economy tanked what are we gonna do

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um our our interest indicators so our inquiries are applications and our visits were like a one month trailing average to the market everything was

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just bad so you know we we didn't know where to go so we tried traditional outbound

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marketing methods that we hadn't used things like Billboards placards at the Pittsburgh International Airport

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um a couple other crazy things but you know what we realized is that those are super expensive

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hard to measure um and then most importantly didn't affect our inquiries or

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applications or our visits so found the inbound marketing book by Brian Halligan and Dharma Shaw and this is super cheesy

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but it was like the light bulb moment I'm thinking this is it man this is what we have to try so I I share this story

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because that's where the blog schneiderbee.com came from I started the

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blog because I I didn't want to screw up anything at school this is the naivete

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like I just didn't know so what I did is I started the blog to try and experiment

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with the inbound marketing methods I wanted to use at Sewickley and I thought if I use air quotes here if you're

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listening it's I'm using air quotes if I screw anything up I can screw it up under my own name and

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not school that's right um I so what I did is I quickly realized that you don't screw anything up in marketing people

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just don't pay attention so then you iterate and try to make it better what I actually and this is embarrassing didn't

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really figure out is that I didn't expect the blog to do anything it was

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just it was really my sandbox but then you know lo and behold I'm using techniques to get found and I'm getting

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found and and then it just kind of it took off from there and and the big news is that

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I've left Sewickley and I'm out of my own so I'm doing uh Schneider B media full-time and since July 1st so

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so it's exciting it's it's as I you know we were uh lucky enough to run into each

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other at EMA in Florida so that was really fun but um as I shared there

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uh I'm 50 super excited and 50 scared out of my mind you know this is a new

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Endeavor and and I've worked in schools my whole life so this is uh this is fun interesting fact that when we got

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started uh two and a half years ago uh through my research somehow your blog

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came up and I actually read a lot of your articles and a lot of the basic books that I started with came from one

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of your book lists I think there was utility was on that inbound marketing from the HubSpot uh Word of Mouth

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marketing you know I got a a crash course because of your blog they might

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still be here yeah yeah so don't think it was for knots I'm

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excited for you well thank you and and thank you for the kind words about the blog and the books but it's I have

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enjoyed that it in my transition I mean I was really leading two lives it was

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the school life and my commitment to school and I I did enjoy where I was was you know during school I'm doing I'm

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doing school I'm I'm committed there I'm working there and enjoyed that work enjoyed my team it was great it was just

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this and then I'd come home nights and weekends and I'd be doing Schneider B because it's a passion it's something I

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love so I was constantly juggling that and then trying to you know stay married

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uh so love my wife would like to spend time with her and then you know be with our kids so

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one of the things I've appreciated is that I can now focus on this full-time

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and to your point with having different clients there's a there's a methodology to

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inbound but it how it manifests itself in each school is a little different

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because it depends on the personality the school the the the expertise they have in-house versus they don't have so

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that's been really really fun for me it's it's it allows me to be creative um and do things that I like to do I

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love it I love it but let's dive into that you know for um you know for someone that uh you know

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might be jumping into this um on a very basic level I guess you know can we Define you know help us

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Define what inbound marketing is and and I guess you know from there what you've seen

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um be very useful uh methods of using it for schools I I imagine there's a multitude and it would it would vary

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depending on the school but you'll kind of Define that for us and and and and tell us about the different varieties

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and different ways that you can actually use that to your advantage yeah um so I'll jump in

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what inbound marketing is I like to start with what it isn't so um traditional marketing or outbound

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marketing or Interruption marketing is really the opposite of inbound and what those things are

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um a print ad in the newspaper interrupts your reading pleasure or radio ad interrupts your listening

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pleasure on and on and on those are becoming less effective people

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don't pay attention they're becoming more and more expensive because they're becoming less effective and people don't

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pay attention and then ultimately there's technology that has been created or in use now that makes those

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things go away so DVR or streaming although you can do some stuff there or

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um satellite radio you know whatever right so inbound which was a which was a coin or

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a term coined by HubSpot um and let me just use a little asterisk here you do not have to use the HubSpot

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software to do inbound marketing I'm a huge fan of HubSpot this software's fantastic but you know that's

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a whole other conversation but they coined the term and the idea is that and

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they initially when they coined it they used a magnet a lot in their imagery so the idea is that you're attracting

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people to you and ultimately you attract them to you through um content through basically through

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Google it's it's digital getting found and and the the the five steps at a very

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high level are Persona so develop your persona uh

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think of keywords um search engine optimization creation of content which for schools

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most likely is a Blog the written word and then social and then um I always say uh social media by

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itself will not solve your enrollment challenges I've learned the hard way but as part of an inbound strategy super

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effective super effective not only effective uh I I might even I

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might even push that it's necessary um yeah you don't have that presence

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it's not really going to be able to do what you needed to do um you know we talk a lot about that uh

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on our side because we do more of uh you know our our side of things is the paid side and you know obviously you know

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different ways that you can do that and and the the normal we call it the enrollment funnel but this sales funnel

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I guess yeah we stress to them you know our clients

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the importance of having that organic content you can't just have this you can't just have that you know you have

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to be present in all of these different ways so that you know when that interest comes up or like you were saying uh you

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know SEO that you pop up you're able to be found or an idea uh you know on a

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brand awareness stage being able to pop up in in front of families um in a variety of different ways especially you

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know with our boarding schools you know a lot of things that we do with them is you know what kind of organic content do you have not so much selling to school

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but selling what a boarding school is and why choose a boarding school or why choose an independent school or these

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type of things uh you know are all organic free but they build around the

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campaigns that you might have on the paid side they build on the inbound uh campaigns uh that you might be having on

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your organic side so you know those kind of things are really crucial and and I would say you know I might even say that

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you you probably need to you need to be in that social category at least for the parents of today yeah I I actually think

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inbound's necessary now I've been talking about it for years I know people are sick of me talking about it but like

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I keep talking about it because people aren't doing it but I want to go back to something you said Jesse because um I think baked into to one of the

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things um that you talked about with Organic content is that

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um it's not about the school in so many schools seem to miss this

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um and they even get internal and I've seen it at my former school and I've seen it other schools I've helped they get internal pushback because you'll see

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faculty like you're creating content for a Blog and you'll see faculty go well that's not about school or that's not

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about whatever and I'm like that's the whole point like you need to create content that is that is going to be

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helpful goes back to the utility book yeah yeah um but is for the Persona that you're

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trying to attract who are you trying to attract and and and again high level so who are

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you trying to attract what will they type into Google and you expect your school website or a piece of your uh

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content show up in those search results get them to the page and then allow them to convert that's that's the secret

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sauce right there and I think so many schools Miss parts of that they they get

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one they don't get another and it's and that's that's frustrating so uh we did a presentation

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um where uh you know we talked about the enrollment funnel and kind of how things go and and what the expectation should

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be at each one of these stages you know everyone always thinks okay well you spend money on Facebook it's all conversions okay well no you know

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there's a brand awareness stage there's you know uh decision making stage and then you have your conversion so in

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going through that you know we gave them some graphics about okay here's a paid ad I'm not even talking about organic

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but here's a paid ad here's how all this interacts you know they click this they go here now you can retarget this here

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you know an inbound piece uh a a Blog piece that you've got you know how does that pop up here they come from here all

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of this is in this digital ecosystem and playing around each other so like you were saying if they've only got one part

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and not the other uh it's it's not really going to be doing uh what they wanted to and you know that kind of

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leads me to my next question you know how do you see um inbound marketing affecting schools I

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know we touched on uh SEO is is there more ways that the digital presence of a school is boosted

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um other than you know maybe just a Blog maybe there's some other inbound methods that you know how does that affect their

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digital presence the the thing for me and I've seen so many schools

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um make mistakes around this and I Jesse I want to highlight something he said I we're not throwing shade on schools

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we've both been in um it's it's they just don't have that expertise it's what

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we do now that I'm a vendor full-time like you I've gone to the dark dark dark side right yeah it's what we think about

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and and the again asterisks with schools schools are notorious for

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putting things on people's place but never removing things that's right so and and humans can only do so much so

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again I'm not trying to pick on schools and I know you're the same way back to inbound though um

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and this is why you know the one thing I'm trying to do with schools is a big

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package which is you kind of have to do it all like you've got to I've seen so

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many schools do one thing and I'm sure you've seen this although you don't have to out anybody they hire you you bring them traffic but

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because they don't have conversion points because they don't have lead nurturing emails because they don't have other things they're like oh it didn't

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work well yeah it did work you know you hired us to do a we've done a but you also

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need to do BCD so where I've tried to educate schools is there's a full process here

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um that you have to do which is drive like you people have to know you

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exist that's right and I get so I I laugh a lot because people are so worried about what their website looks

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like they're so worried about the color or this image or whatever I'm like

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I go with well okay I'll say this then I'll walk it back it doesn't matter of course it matters right but it doesn't

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matter because if they can't find it and then they don't convert from an anonymous visitor into a prospective

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family even simply getting their email address what's the point so I have a great photo and I have a you know our

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colors a little we're using a different you know blue who cares who cares so so

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what I think schools should do again I like to read Jesse that's where the

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inbound marketing book by Brian Halligan and Dharma Shaw is a great place to start to understand the full

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the full methodology the full strategy I also recommend that schools buy copy for

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yourself let's say you're the marketing director and then buy a copy for the

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other um decision makers in your school around this so maybe it's who do you answer to

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director of advancement director of expression um head of school and have them read it

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they can skim it it's easily digestible so that they have a sense of what you're trying to do

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and then you know if if you listen to this today and you don't know what a

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Persona is I would start with personas and personas are simply uh

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semi-fictional representation of who you're trying to attract so it's like your ideal prospective family start

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there start with Persona development and then things will flow um the other thing since I'm on my

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soapbox now Jesse thank you is is I'm so frustrated that schools aren't doing SEO

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um you know they don't and they they spend so much time and worry so much about social it's important I'm not

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saying it's not important but if you just look at a web traffic perspective so when you're done listening to this or

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watching this go to your Google analytics see how much traffic social drove to your website over a year and

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how much traffic organic search which is a function of SEO drove to your website

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over the last year you will be shocked at the difference organic search is the main driver schools don't pay attention

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to that at all most schools yeah don't pay attention to that so I'll I'll shut up now no no you're absolutely right and

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you know I it's a vanity metric uh yeah yeah social media they see it they're on it they see

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other schools on it and so they're like we have to be here yeah they're not searching constantly so they don't

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notice all of the things that come with search and how that really kind of uh affects everything and even if they are

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aware um getting what they need done getting the

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keywords getting the reports you know building out the the articles that will fit with that search term or search

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phrase uh so that you'll pop up and become more relevant um you know that that a lot of that is

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missed so you know if you use SEO on its own um then you get into you know

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um you know Google ads and paying it okay well we're gonna push this article here we're going to have this landing page build and everything has to kind of

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align in we've got relevant scores and it's it's daunting um but I agree with you it's more

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important to focus on that front end when I'm actually searching in my browser and starting that whole journey

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yep how what what steps have you taken to make sure that you're in front of me um it's it's crucially important yeah on

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the inbound side you know we've talked a little bit about this uh how have you seen through your plethora of experience

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with this Both of Us Weekly and now with your clients how have you seen that really increase inquiry so two thoughts

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here two thoughts here one um I know know for a fact that inbound marketing will increase inquiries

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there are two two kind of uh

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what are they warnings I guess maybe that's a little strong word right it's it's the first warning with inbound is

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that it's not well there's probably three the first is that it's not a Magic Bullet it it takes time to set up I call it the

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machine there's no machine like there's a lot of as we're talking about all these pieces and parts that need to be

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set up that schools historically haven't done for whatever reason so it's not a

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magic ball the second thing is that in my opinion you need to have all the pieces so you need to you need to drive

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traffic you need to convert you need to heavily nurturing you need to have more content you know and and that goes

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really into the third piece or the third warning which is that inbound marketing is an engine and that engine needs fuel

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to run in the fuels content and I'm telling you blogging

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from my experience I think you need to it's got to be once a week or once every two weeks but whatever it is I would

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probably let's just say once every other week you've got to be consistent and while that sounds like

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hey no problem it's a pain in the butt it's a pain in the butt to go again and

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again and again so it's a commitment uh from the school but but it works like so

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that you have those three things there and it works the other the other thing about inquiries

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um my former head of school my boss we were behind closed doors one day and and I was bringing him down he was you know

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I bought him the book I used my own advice right I bought him the book he read it yeah yeah he scammed it he's like okay

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man uh go and and I would keep him up to date with what was going on and he was

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uh you know crazy enough to let my crazy go which I appreciate but then we were talking one day about like those vanity

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metrics I think it was Facebook Jesse as we were blonde he's like Brennan

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I don't care about that like I don't care if you have a thousand fans on Facebook or 5 000 fans on Facebook what

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I care about is inquiries or for us it was interest indicators inquiries applications and

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visits so if all this stuff that you're talking about over here doesn't translate into our interest indicators

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it doesn't matter and and that was really good advice early on to at least

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in my mind to go oh the all that stuff is just vanity it's just yeah it doesn't

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affect what I really needed to affect which is uh inquiries which lead to students

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yeah so absolutely so you know I know we touched a little bit on this

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um you know when we were talking about Persona building and such um but you know the schools they listen

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to the show uh they've gone to you know schneiderb.com they they've drank the

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Kool-Aid yeah where do they get started you know where does one get started and I guess from there you know you kind of

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throw into the mix uh what works best for what works best for schools what you've seen work best for school and

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then how do you get that started yeah that's a good question uh the first thing you know again I would recommend

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reading the book um that again inbound marketing Brian halgan Dorman Shaw but if you don't like

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to read here's what I would do so ultimately schools are going to have multiple personas so let's say you're a

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uh Pre-K to 12 right day school you're going to have a Persona probably for

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early childhood and maybe one for lower school maybe for Middle maybe for high school if you're a boarding school you

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might have international borders you might have domestic borders those are different things you're going to attract those people differently so think of the

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Persona that you need probably to pay attention to the most so like let's just say Pre-K at 12 it's all

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about day or uh it's all about Early Childhood right we got to bring them in young so think I'm just making

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assumptions here but think about that persona think about the makeup of your

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current families um and and who they are now so that

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raises a question of aspirational or not so you have to wrestle with that as a school but the other thing is

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from my experience because we screw this up the first time we did this Jesse we spent way too much time on Persona

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development you have to spend some time but we spent way too much time I believe it's an art and a science so you have to

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get some data um get all of your like you know print

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out of all the families that are Pre-K and K depending on how you do your childhood right or your Early Childhood stuff look at how their makeup

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think of things that are where do they live where do they come from is it too

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is it you know um two families single families do both parents work

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um what are their pain points what were their objections to school ultimately what you want to figure out is

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what what are data points that are actionable for me so for example and

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then I'll give you an exam example of something that doesn't work with an example of one that does when we went through this the first time

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and spent way too much time we did all these studies and all this stuff somebody came back and said our families

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read Town and Country magazine and I'm like oh so what like I'm not I'm

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not advertising in Town and Country magazine right so for me that's not actionable but what is actionable for

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our um and one Persona we used was that it was two working parents

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it was a mom it was she intentional it was mom um they lived north of where our school

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was um they both worked uh or already said that they they were

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first generation Independent School family so the parents don't know the vernacular they don't know that you're

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supposed to start in the fall right or yeah yeah so they might look in May

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so they you know so that but that changes the dynamic um and then so think of those actionable

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things think of their pain points so for that if that Persona it was before care

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after care um transportation and then think of objections

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um and then try to answer those objections have those from there it's very simple give that person a name

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preferably not somebody that's real because it's fictitional yeah and then I would recommend

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having coffee with two or three families that are close to that persona

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and then and then ask them questions so I think that kills two birds with one stone one it's fundraising it's making

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families feel good it's finding out about their experience you can never do enough of that but from a marketing

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perspective um talk to them see where they sh not

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shop but just see how they interact you know talk to them about pain points and then and then pay attention to their

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language because if that person is using let's just say it's the mom using certain language you want to remember

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those phrases to use in ads or landing pages you want to speak to that person

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um so that the Persona so you're going to attract that right fit family

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um and then and then it really gets interesting so if you give that person a name think about what she would type

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into Google and does your school come up and then one caveat you have to use um I know you

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know this Jesse but Royal you an incognito window or or a different browser that you don't use because

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Google knows everything it's scary as a human but it's great as a marketer so use an incognito window type in that

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phrase and then for us it's Sewickley initially it was Pittsburgh private school and we didn't even show up on the

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first three pages because we were Sewickley Academy in Sewickley

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Pennsylvania we never talked about Pittsburgh so location that's a whole nother thing but but think of that phrase type it

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into Google and see where you show up oh and it should be non-branded So you you're not so branded versus

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non-branded uh branded would include your school's name these would be non-branded keywords so

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that's I hope that's a no I mean that's that's excellent excellent advice I mean really it's it's it's essentially uh

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building a Blog um through through the site um but to get to that point

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you need to do the research on building who your persons are yeah getting and talking to them so that you can start to

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use their language um you know really having that incorporated in those articles that you're writing keep it non-branded

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um you know the content that you're putting there and do those Incognito Windows searches um from what you found out uh through

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your persona research uh and and your conversations with those parents uh hey are we going to show up here are we not

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going to show up here we're not okay let's start building some content that will push us up on this ranking

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um and then from there once you get that basics down now we can start going on into uh you know the nuanced uh methods

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of of inbounds in in that regard excellent oh there's I really appreciate it that's account advice uh for anyone

27:37

looking to get that started I know I've taken notes um uh myself here so that's great you

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know as we wrap up uh the first season we always like to uh you know kind of talk and look a little bit ahead and

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since you know you're here uh you just started in July you've still got the excitement it hasn't you know boiled

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down and and weighted you down yet where do you see inbound going like what do you see the biggest growth in

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Opportunity is it really as simple as just getting started or there's some new ways of interaction that you think

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schools should kind of um uh get on board with here in the next year or so yeah that's a that's a good question and

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and thinking about it just yet I'm not sure I have anything more profound than to say

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I help schools just start to use it more yeah um you know it's sometimes I get sick of

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myself saying it so I can only imagine what schools are saying but they need to

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do this they need to start to explore this and even if you know we're 2022 right now in the fall even if they just

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start to learn and push it out to say you know what I can't even process that till the 23-24 school year that's fine

28:49

but just get a path just start reading in your spare time just start learning

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um bring little things in I mean when we started I didn't do the the quote unquote correct steps like Persona

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keywords like we were jumping around because I didn't know any better but at least we started to experiment and then

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I thought oh that's why you go in that order you know like so so even if you

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can't get in that order you know just just start to learn about it and get it

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going because I think I really do believe the schools that implement it are going to be ahead of the game versus

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the schools that don't because the schools that don't are just going to keep um you know I always joke it's the

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definition of insanity right you're doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results schools were notorious for that man schools do that

29:36

all the time so like start thinking about it good things will happen yeah well that's good always love uh uh

29:44

looking on the horizon here you know kind of giving them some insights on what's going on now and then you know where it might be in the in the future

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but Brendan you know I really appreciate the time that you've come on here I wish you nothing but the best of luck in your

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endeavors I know we will be in contact and hopefully uh be seeing each other uh uh soon at some conference somewhere so

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I really appreciate the time I know it was good insights for me and I'm sure anyone that was listening Jesse thanks

30:07

man I love what you guys are doing and happy to be I guess what guest one on an episode or six one yeah right big deal

30:15

man it's a big deal we're gonna get an autograph yeah that's you just have to meet my wife she keeps me humble it's good fair enough all right Brenda thank

30:23

you so much thanks a lot Jesse