Director of Marketing

Job Description

Job Description

Description:

Apple Montessori Schools is seeking a strategic and results-driven Director of Marketing to lead the organization's marketing strategy and drive enrollment growth across a growing portfolio of schools. This role is responsible for developing and executing integrated marketing initiatives that increase brand awareness, generate qualified leads, and convert prospective families into booked tours and enrollments. The Director of Marketing will own the marketing strategy and execution required to increase qualified booked tours across our schools.

The ideal candidate is a hands-on marketing leader with a strong analytical mindset, proven leadership experience, and the ability to translate strategy into measurable business results in a fast-paced, growth-oriented environment.

Some of the Responsibilities include:

• Lead full-funnel marketing strategy across awareness, lead generation, nurture, and booked tour conversion
• Optimize all marketing activity toward qualified booked tours as the primary business outcome
• Manage paid search and paid social strategy in partnership with agency partners
• Oversee SEO strategy, priorities, and agency execution
• Lead website, landing page, and CRO initiatives to improve inquiry and tour-booking conversion
• Own lifecycle marketing across email and SMS, including segmentation, nurture journeys, reactivation, and campaign calendar planning
• Manage direct mail, referral programs, listings/reviews, local marketing support, and school-level campaign needs
• Partner closely with Admissions to understand lead quality, parent objections, tour show rates, tour conversion, and enrollment outcomes
• Build strong feedback loops between Marketing, Admissions, and school teams so insights from the field improve campaigns, messaging, and nurture
• Own marketing reporting across leads, booked tours, completed tours, conversion rates, channel efficiency, and budget pacing
• Translate performance data into clear recommendations, priorities, and next steps
• Manage marketing budgets, monitor pacing, and recommend investment shifts based on performance and business needs
• Lead and develop a team of three internal marketers, while managing multiple agencies and freelance creative partners
• Create clear workflows, briefs, calendars, and operating cadences that help the team execute with quality and accountability
• Communicate performance, risks, tradeoffs, and decisions clearly to senior leadership

Reports to: SVP of Marketing and Admissions

• Full-funnel growth marketing experience, ideally in a lead-generation, multi-location, education, childcare, healthcare, wellness, retail services, or high-consideration consumer business
• Experience optimizing toward a meaningful conversion outcome such as booked tours, appointments, consultations, leads, or enrollments
• Strong data fluency, including the ability to build, pull, analyze, and act on performance reporting
• CRM and lifecycle marketing expertise, including segmentation, nurture journeys, email/SMS strategy, and campaign calendar planning
• Strong project management skills and the ability to manage multiple channels, agencies, timelines, budgets, and dependencies
• Ability to lead paid media, SEO, website/CRO, CRM, local marketing, referrals, direct mail, reviews, and reporting at a strategic level
• Experience steering people, agencies, freelancers, or cross-functional teams
• Comfort operating in ambiguity and creating structure without getting stuck
• Strong test-and-learn judgment, with the ability to move forward without needing every detail to be perfect
• Collaborative working style and strong cross-functional instincts
• Ability to partner effectively with Admissions and school teams
• Strong executive communication and the ability to manage up with clear updates, risks, recommendations, and tradeoffs
• Competent brand and creative judgment, with the ability to brief, evaluate, and approve parent-facing creative confidently
• Candidates must reside in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, or Pennsylvania and have the ability to travel throughout the assigned territory as business needs require and attend weekly meetings in Westfield, NJ.
• Bachelor's degree in marketing, Communications, Business, or a related field
• 7-10 years of progressive marketing experience, including at least 3–5 years in a marketing leadership role.

Preferred:

• Experience marketing to parents or families
• Experience in education, childcare, enrichment, or school admissions
• Multi-site, local-market, or retail services marketing experience
• Direct people management experience
• Agency-side experience with meaningful strategic ownership
• Experience with Salesforce, Power BI, GA4, ad platform reporting, CRM platforms, or similar tools

Competitive compensation package including a base salary of up to $150,000, commensurate with experience and qualifications, plus annual bonus potential.