Marketing Plan:

Proposed by: Sydney Koch Sarah Lapton

Jesse Ellsworth

Submitted to: William L. Shimp on 12/7/15

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Table of ContentsCover Page…………………………………………………...……1Table of Contents………………………………………………….2Executive Summary…………………………………………..3 & 4Company Description……………………………………………..5Strategic Focus and Plan……………………………………...6 & 7

-Mission/Vision-Goals-Core Competency and Competitive Advantage

Situation Analysis……………………………………………...8-10-SWOT Analysis

a. Internal Strengths and Weaknessesb. External Opportunities and Threats

-Industry Analysis-Competitor Analysis-Company Analysis-Customer Analysis

Market-Product Focus………………………………………. 11-14-Marketing and Product Objectives-Target Markets-Points of Difference-Positioning

Marketing Program…………………………………………15-23-Product Strategy-Price Strategy-Promotion Strategy-Place (Distribution) Strategy

Financial Data and Projections…………………………….24 & 25 -Past Sales Revenues-Five Year Projections

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Organizational Structure…………………………………...26 & 27Implementation………………………………………….....28 & 29Evaluation and Control…………………………………………..30

Executive SummaryBuy a Nerd is all about providing students with the help they need to get the grade they want. We eliminate the struggle of students finding the right tutor, and tutors finding students who need help.

Koch, Lapton, and Ellsworth began this company in 2010 and share the title of Presidency over the business.

It has grown now to having four separate offices, each with four workers, in each state that is being serviced. Employee numbers have reached slightly under 75 people. We aim to keep our faculty amount low, so we can focus on our clients more.

Our offices are located in Tampa, Orlando, Miami, and Jacksonville, Florida; Atlanta, Savannah, Colombus, and Augusta, Georgia; Montegomery, Birmingham, Huntsville, and Auburn, Alabama; New Orleans, Alexandria, Shrevenport, and Battounrouge, Louisianna.

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Buy a Nerd has increased profit margins and market share each year since its foundation. Our start up requirements consisted of legal fees, consultant fees, insurance, research development, and rent for our offices.

We want to connect students and tutors so that students can receive the help they need and so that tutors can make a living.

Buy a Nerd has successfully matched over a million tutors and students over the past five years. Over 95% of the students have reported to getting the grade they desired after using our site to find a tutor.

We can do this by offering a membership to tutors with a monthly fee to use our website and app that will list their name and credentials for any student looking for help. Our website has two choices, to either find a tutor or apply to be one. The student will state their specific needs in which subject they need help for and their location then they can select from the list of tutors near them that fit their needs.

Buy a Nerd’s future is looking very bright. The plan to spread to more states all over the country is already being put into action. Shortly enough we will be offering our services in most of the fifty states.

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Company DescriptionSince 2010, Buy a Nerd has been saving students all over. We are an online corporation that provides the opportunity for students to find a well educated tutor who is specific to their needs. We personally guarantee you will pass whatever class you are struggling in. Buy a Nerd has highly trained staff to verify every tutor is up to standard. Our headquarters are located in Lakeland, Florida with only ten people on staff. We are a small company with a low amount of employees but reach a high amount of consumers. Currently, we are servicing southern states such as Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana. Buy a Nerd hopes to expand our services to more states all over. Spreading, eventually, to all of America and helping students and tutors from all over connect with each other. Buy a Nerd is a newly established service that was created by a few students that were struggling to find help.

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Strategic Focus and Plana. Mission/Vision

The obligation to students from Buy a Nerd is to provide dedicated and skilled tutors to middle school, high-school, and college students that will aid in the success of short term goals such as passing a test or completing assignments; or even long term goals such as passing a class or graduating. Buy a Nerd also has an obligation to their tutors to untie them with paid work and students in need of academic assistants whom have the desire to succeed through a professional atmosphere.

b. GoalsOur goal for a few years is to expand to the Northern and Midwest states. Goal for networking is to have high schools and colleges use our website and app. Our quality goal is to make sure to pair the student with the correct tutor, accurately. Our money goal is to within a one year plan make profits go up 10%. Our leadership goal is to have two seminars a semester for our staffs intellectual hiring. Our

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goal for customers is to have the highest respect towards our staff and tutors.

c. Core Competency and Competitive AdvantageBuy a Nerd is different than any company or service around so our competition is low and our efficiency is high. We are a one of a kind company which means we provide a very unique service (service differentiation). We also are very convenient and offer a low price and do not take advantage of our customers. The additions we have made to our company are what really set us apart. We offer an easy application along with our up to date website and these both offer online chat groups as well as a face-time through computer web cam or cell phone video.

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Situation Analysisa. SWOT Analysis

Strengths: Low operating costs, few competitors, easy access via app and face-time meetings, reliability and background screenings, and compassionate tutors and employees.Weaknesses: Possibility of students going off on their own, people not knowing of the company, liability issues, having enough available time slots and tutors, and connections between the staff and the tutors not being strong.Opportunities: Advertisements on our website to make more money and lower service cost, expand to everywhere in America or other countries, have schools pay to use our business, create a partnership with textbook authors, and gain consumers who aren’t in school and are looking to learn new things, for example a new language. Threats: Possibility of tutors going on their own after connections are made, not enough tutors for specialty subjects, other tutor companies such as

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“Sylvan”, change in the economy, and variation of teaching strategies.

b. Industry AnalysisBuy a Nerd has almost no industry rivalry. The degree of competition is very low, so we do not have to worry about a high competition amount reducing our potential profit amount. The threat of substitutes is also low, but there is some. Our service can’t be substituted by a different service, but it can be provided by someone or something different. The service of learning is nothing that can be replaced, but ours may be simplified by the tutors taking it upon themselves to create their own client list. This limits our ability to raise our membership price. Bargaining power of buyers is not a worry for Buy a Nerd. Our consumers cannot fight the price they are charged to use our sight, but they can only adjust the price they charge for others. The threat of a new entrant is always a bad possibility. Even though we are unique and different from everyone else, we can still be copied. Our idea can still be stolen by others, and if this happened it could then cause a price war. As of right now we can set our price based off what we feel is fair for our consumers and will still create a profit for us.

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c. Competitor AnalysisThere are competitors such as “Tutor.com” and

“Smartthinking.com” that are well established companies whom have a wide variety of qualified tutors already working for them. Although the competitors are well established there is room to compete against them. The tutors are what make the company great and some students may connect with our tutors and their teaching skills much better then with another companies. 

d. Company AnalysisBuy a Nerd is an online and in person tutor

program meant for students high school through upper education. As of now Buy a Nerd currently is making revenue of $410,000 annually per major city and is expanding at a fixed rate every year we are in production. With this type of rapid growth expansion and the available areas and markets that Buy a Nerd could expand to we see a long prosperous future. 

e. Customer AnalysisThe amount of customers that could access our

website is infinite. Anyone anywhere could log on and get in contact with a tutor that belongs to

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our program as long as they have internet access and are a student.

Market-Product Focusa. Marketing and Product Objectives

Marketing objectives for the next five years for individual sectors of this company is to increase the amount of tutors in the program by five percent in each major city. Marketing objectives for corporate in the next five years is to expand branches into South Carolina targeting major cities of interest that include; Columbia, Charleston, Mount Pleasant, and Rock Hill. The cities selected have been chosen based on population density and number of schools within the city assuming this will lead to higher demands for tutors.

b. Target MarketBuy a Nerd is geared towards Middle School, High School, and College students; as well as any person with the correct knowledge to teach a struggling student.

c. Points of Difference

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The majority of Buy a Nerd will be accessible through our website or easy to use app that can be downloaded on any device with application access. This will allow students and tutors to be able to get in touch with one another via web cam if in person meetings aren’t an option. It connects students with a whole database of tutors that may be available at times convenient to the student whether it be early morning meetings or late night study help. A student in Atlanta, Georgia may connect with a tutor in Miami, Florida. Another benefit of our unique web cam app is that it allows students that have specialty courses such as foreign languages to search outside of their local cities and find help that may otherwise be too far away to access. Among other features, we have a safety feature that allows you to chat along with face time through our website or app so even giving out personal information isn’t necessary. All of these things make us unique from any other company out there. We not only offer a different service than most, but the simple additions we have taken the time to add have made us stand out even more. The business for tutoring is very small to begin with, but Buy a Nerd has taken it to a whole different level. Because we have been able to do this, our competition is very minimal and almost

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non-existent. It is not hard to see our differences and uniqueness. Any person can tell we stand out from the rest, and we pride ourselves in that.

d. Positioning Primarily we will market our services to high-

schools and universities by having representatives at informational fairs and alerting staff of what we have to offer, placing flyers in libraries and around campuses letting passing students know that Buy a Nerd can help with their specific needs, and acquiring email lists of students so that we may alert them of the benefits Buy a Nerd has to offer them via electronic mail. Price may vary because tutors are allowed to choose their own price but students are also free to browse tutors from a large selection from a large region thus allowing the student to find a tutor within his or her budget. This power for tutors to choose their own price keeps things competitive among tutors and in which usually keeps prices low if they desire to have a good amount of business. We demand that our tutors are up to date on all curriculums and require them to stay up to date by completing online examinations. If one of our tutors fails to aid a student or does not meet professional standards in handling his or herself inside or outside of a

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meeting we will guarantee the tutor will receive a review and the student will get their money back. The placement of Buy a Nerd is not an issue, with the web cam service it can be accessed anywhere that internet capabilities are available.

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Marketing Programa. Product Strategy

Buy a Nerd is not a product, but a service. We attract tutors to our website and mobile app. Once the tutors apply, each one is carefully interviewed. This process is to make sure our tutors are knowledgeable in the subjects they applied for. Buy a Nerd is providing an organizational service for the tutoring industry. We want to provide a service to students out there who need help, as well as anyone who is looking to share some knowledge and make some money. Buy a Nerd will stand out because a service like this does not exist, so our competition is next to nothing. We will add extra features alongside our website like our app for easy access. Our app will include face time so the tutor and student can work together no matter the distance. This will eliminate the issue of having to find someone in your area. Our app will also have a GPS so you do still have the possibility of matching with someone in your location or near you. Other additions will be

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profiles consisting of all the information, credentials, and picture of the tutor or student; an online chat for quick access, and simple search options to find exactly what you need. We differ from other tutoring services because we don’t just allow other students, we allow any citizen with the knowledge to help someone else. Also, with our up to date technology we make this process easier than ever. Buy a Nerd prides itself on the quality of our service. We care about students all over the world as well as people who enjoy teaching and helping others. Our company wants to ensure that both sides are getting their needs met. Buy a Nerd is hoping to build a strong brand name so that the second you hear “BaN” you’ll know exactly what that means. We want to be your first thought when you are struggling. Our customers value our service because they no longer have to search or stress about finding the help they need, or making the money they need. Buy a Nerd spends a lot of time in the growth stage because the more and more people who find out about us we just continue to grow. We have yet to reach maturity, and are not close to declining. Our memberships continue to increase by small percentages each month. Our service can satisfy everyone throughout their life span. It is not age or even

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generation oriented. Buy a Nerd is set up so that anyone can join, if they have the qualifications. For example, a middle school student who is ranked at the top of his or her class and maybe has the IQ of an adult could help other children their age or even students that are older. A sixty-five year old retired lawyer could help a college student going through law school. The possibilities are endless. Buy a Nerd is an easy name to remember. It is catchy and clever. It is also easy to spell and recall. Not only is it all of these things, it is descriptive. Most importantly it is easy to understand and describes exactly what service we offer. Our name also distinguishes us from any other company out there. In our world, being a “nerd” is a great and profitable thing. Students get paid for their knowledge. Students get paid for being a so called “nerd”. Our service also offers great customer value. Getting the help that is needed in school is not only important for the grade or the class, but the knowledge and understanding will last a lifetime. Intelligence is and will always be important. Buy a Nerd offers a service that cannot be beaten.

b. Price StrategyThe price we charge our tutors to use our website or app is $50 a month. Buy a Nerd does not take

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a percentage from the tutor’s income. Our company wants our tutors to be able to focus on helping students while still making a solid income. Buy a Nerd has over 1,000 tutors in each major city and continues to grow. Each City is making $410,000 solely on the website and app. Our secretaries are paid $30,000; accountants are paid $70,000; hiring managers are paid $45,000; and representatives/marketers are paid $45,000. We chose our price based off of the lowest amount we could charge but still making the maximum profit. Buy a Nerd wants to keep the price of a membership low so tutors are not deferred from signing up. We also keep our employee rate low as well as overall costs to run the company. Our pricing model is based off of a “loss leader”. This means that we sell our service at a low price so we can stimulate profitable sales. This strategy helps us expand our market share. Some companies believe in overpricing their product so they do not have to have as many sales, but here at Buy a Nerd we want to make it possible for anyone to join so they can “win” just like we are. Our customers can be very price sensitive so we have to be careful about price fluctuations. Buy a Nerd tries not to change our price, especially not by increasing it. We know most students out there are struggling

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money wise, which is most likely why they are signing up with our company, to make money, so we do not want to scare them away with too high of a price. At $50 a month, our tutors could charge $10 per hour and only have to have five sessions to make back their cost. The rest after that will be all profit for them. Again, we don’t set the price the tutors have to charge, so the money they could possibly be making is all up to them. If a price change were to be put into effect, we could risk losing many customers. Especially because we do not have any type of contracts that make a membership last a certain amount of time and it costs nothing to cancel a membership. Buy a Nerd does not offer any discounts or sale options because we feel we are already offering the lowest price we can give. Even though we stand out from our competition service wise, we do as well price wise. We would like to keep it that way.

c. Promotion StrategyBuy a Nerd has promotional employees who go to Middle Schools, High Schools, and Colleges to promote the tutoring apps. Our employees have training in speaking and being knowledgeable about our product. Our advertising needs to generate attention, interest,

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desire, and action. To do this we mainly advertise online. Since our company is based off the internet, we figure this is our smartest strategy. If a student were to be searching for a tutor, our website would come up from that search. And on the other hand, if a tutor were searching to find tutoring jobs or students that need help, Buy a Nerd will be right there for them just a click away. This strategy is also fairly cheap, and the most realistic source to use. We use directory listings as well so our company will be listed in the yellow pages or local business directories. This is of course beside contacting schools and posting our information there for students to use. At any local school we have the opportunity to find both a student who can tutor and a student who needs help. Since Buy a Nerd is used majority by younger adults, social media is sometimes even used for advertisement without trying. Promotion is almost the most important thing to Buy a Nerd because we are a service offered online, so to get memberships we have to be known. If our promotion strategy is failing, we have to immediately change or fix it to get our name back out there. Anyone who hears our name can look us up and do the rest from there. So, we have to make sure the name Buy a Nerd is

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getting out there as much as possible. Our company takes our promotional strategies very series so we make sure to have the best marketing team out there. We do not have any personal selling and we also do not believe in pushing our service at people. Each promotion activity is directed towards one purpose: get our name out there. We know our company will do the rest once a person finds us. Buy a Nerd speaks for itself, so as long as we are known, we will be successful.

d. Place (Distribution) StrategyBuy a Nerd is located in four southern states: Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, and Georgia. We have our headquarters in Lakeland, Florida. In addition, each state has four different offices in the main cities of the state. Each of those offices contains four employees. The employees we hire for our staff consists of a position for a secretary, accountant, hiring manager, and a representative/marketer. Because Buy a Nerd is not a store, our location is not as important. We chose southern states because those are the states near our company’s founders. Our offices are posted around major cities in those states to reach the most amounts of people we can since we do not have many locations. Our service can

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be found anywhere, though, because it is all based upon the tutors that sign up and where there location is as well as the students who need help and where they are located. This helps our business because we do not have to worry about convenience or placing our office building in the perfect place. Buy a Nerd has to worry about promotion and advertising more than location, but having an office helps both of those things because when our building is seen that creates curiosity which then creates investigation and research which could then turn into a new member signing up. Another key positive thing about our service is there is either a short distance for travel or none. Our tutors and students do not have to worry about driving to a store, or even driving to meet each other. This eliminates any distance problems that could or would be an issue. Not only is this a great pro for our consumers, it is for our employees as well. Although it is limited to certain states and cities, this is convenient for those major cities that have a high population. Our service is made available twenty-four seven, three hundred and sixty five days a year. Our facility location is based off city population. We try to locate ourselves in the biggest cities, but we also try to spread the offices apart so we can cover the entire state and

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not be bundled up in one location. Buy a Nerd chose the states near the headquarters and within those states chose the most populated cities. When we branch out to other states, the same strategy will be used. For example: if Buy a Nerd were to open offices in the state of Missouri we would use the city of St. Louis, Kansas City, Jefferson City, and Springfield. Springfield is not the highest in population, not low either, but it covers the southwest region of the state.

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Financial Data and Projections

a. Past Sales RevenuesBuy a Nerd has been in production for five years now expanding offices to four states that include Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana. Buy a nerd started in 2010 in Florida with four offices that rapidly expanded to generate total revenue of $2,400,000 per year for the state with 4,000 tutors in the program. This gave the necessary funds to expand representation to other states and in 2012 Buy A Nerd launched an expansion effort into Georgia establishing four offices in major cities each with 1,000 tutors this doubled the companies revenues to $4,800,000 annually. With increased funds Buy a Nerd’s presidents decided to expand to Louisiana in 2013 establishing four more offices that each recruited and maintained 1,000 tutors bringing the companies total revenue to $7,200,000 by the end of the year. The fallowing year presidents at Buy a Nerd slowed down their expansion to two

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offices annually rather then four. In 2014 Buy a Nerd expanded offices into Alabama and by 2015 they had four offices established each maintaining 1,000 tutors in the program thus creating a total revenue of $9,600,000 annually. 

b. Five-Year ProjectionsBuy a Nerd plans to slow down their rate of expansion in order to improve on the infrastructure of the company. Buy a Nerd plans on increasing the amount of tutors 1% in each major city annually for an accumulative increase of 5% by the year 2020. They also plan on slowly expanding offices and representatives into South Carolina buy the year 2020. The projected expansions and increase in tutors should bring the companies revenue to $12,480,000 annually.

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Organizational StructureBuy a Nerd does not have many employees in order to keep costs of operation low. Our job descriptions for our offices in the cities are as follows: accountants (16), hiring managers (16), traveling marketers (16), and secretaries (16). In our headquarters we have as follows: presidents (3), secretary (1), marketing team (3), website/app manager (2). Our secretary’s job description enlists them to answer phone calls and direct the calls to where they are needed, organize and maintain filing systems, schedule appointments, and support the other staff members. Our accountants prepare and examine financial records. They perform overviews of financial operations and make sure that records are accurate as well as taxes being paid properly and orderly. Our hiring manager’s are in charge of interviewing new employees when we are in need and selecting who is best fit and qualified for our company. Our traveling marketers are the ones going to different schools in their areas to spread the word about Buy a Nerd and talk to the school representatives about using our company school

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wide. The presidents of the company have many responsibilities like creating, communicating, and implementing the organization’s vision, mission, and overall direction. They also, along with many other things, have to lead, guide, and direct the employees and oversee the complete operation of the organization. Our marketing team comes up with new marketing strategies and finds the best way to get our business out there and known. They craft our message we want to send out and bring creativity to the table and coordinate our actions. Finally, our website and app managers create our website and our app as well as update it, fix any technical issues, and respond to any other problems or alerts to the website and app.

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ImplementationThe mission of Buy a Nerd is to care as much or more as any parent should be caring about their child’s grade. We will constantly strive to implement any tools needed for success. Buy a Nerd has a strong commitment to all of the students coming through our program to get you the help you need to get the grade you want. Our goals will be molded by our continuously growing strategies for achievement.   

Buy a Nerd will have seminars for our advertising and marketing team so that we are always up to date and improving on strategies and techniques to expand and recruit. We will aid all of our employees understanding of our company so that their knowledge will be as strong as it can be. We will do this by having seminars, informational meetings, and in office tests to keep our employees on their toes, always working hard, and up to date on current curriculums that tend to increase on a yearly basis. If we can keep our employees focused on our goals we can meet them with ease. We will keep them focused by posting positive reinforcements in all of our offices and on our website as well as sending out

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encouraging words throughout each work week to promote a positive working and learning environment for both tutors and students.   

  

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Evaluation and ControlBuy a Nerd is on its way to achieving their implementations and goals. With easy expansion and by fallowing the code that Buy a Nerd has laid out there is no doubt that we will meet our expectations by 2020. Buy a Nerd desires to increase the number of tutors involved in our program by 1% annually and expand into a new state in each five year period. This control scale will allow our company to assess its current position in expanding and monitor our success of meeting our goals.

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