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I just launched a new website called Universityhosts.com. I will quickly explain the concept and give reasoning for creating this concept:
Univesityhosts will allow high school students to receive a personalized tour from college students of their choice. The prices are $99 for a day-long tour and $149 for overnight tour. University hosts takes 20% cut and then pays the rest to the college students. So college students get paid and have an incentive. Not to mention, college students are always on a budget, and I seriously think some would love to get paid to talk about their campus and have someone follow them around. College students will come to this website and create a profile. The site was mainly created to help high school students decided between colleges. College-led tours are biased and filled with historical information and statistics that no one ever remembers. Plus, college send you over pretty fliers to lure you into coming there and on one really tells you what really sucks about a college until you get there and find out yourself. High school students will have a chance to attend college classes as a visitor as no one really gets to see inside of a college class until the first day of college.
My Marketing Plan:
1) I live in San Francisco, so I will be launching in 8 colleges near me (UC Berkeley, Stanford, San Francisco State University, and etc). Most of these colleges are big with over 20,000+ students. I work during the day, and I plan to visit these colleges during nights and weekends starting this weekend. I plan to put fliers all over the campus and cold approach students to get their contact information and get them interested and sign up.
2) I hired a virtual assistant and got email addresses of all the Guidance Counselors in California. I will be sending them emails letting them know of the service. I will also try to call them as much as possible and whenever I have time to build a relationship. There is this free software that mailmerges froman excel file and allows me the write mass customized email. So it will seem like I personally wrote them the email but the software sent it out to them.
3) Using a software, I have gotten email addresses of students in the eights schools I am targeting. So, I will be emailing these students and letting them know about the service.
4) I will be going to sites like collegeconfidential and other sites that people go to research colleges.
How should this concept be best executed? I would love any advice. Are there any other marketing techniques that I am missing? If this was your concept how would you execute it? What do you guys think about the website? Do you think I should make any changes? I am targeting the 8 colleges merely because they are close to me (3 hours or less). I guess this will be my trial run to see if this concept works. I have not done any "research" as my gut instinct tells me that there is a need for a concept like this.
Also, I know there are other ways I can advertise such as Adwords, Facebook Ads, and even hire a company to do SEO, but I am trying to bootstrap and will only go to this route only if you guys think it will be absolutely necessary for me to carry out. I am not against it, but I rather not go that route unless you guys think its really necessary.
My main worry is: how do I target high school students?? I need your ideas!! Targeting college students is pretty easy since they are all in one vicinity but high school students are all spread out. I know contacting guidance counselors will not be enough. I am having a hard time formulating ways in which I can reach out to high school students and letting them know about this service. I feel like there has to be an easy way, but I just can't think of anyUnivesityhosts will allow high school students to receive a personalized tour from college students of their choice. The prices are $99 for a day-long tour and $149 for overnight tour. University hosts takes 20% cut and then pays the rest to the college students. So college students get paid and have an incentive. Not to mention, college students are always on a budget, and I seriously think some would love to get paid to talk about their campus and have someone follow them around. College students will come to this website and create a profile. The site was mainly created to help high school students decided between colleges. College-led tours are biased and filled with historical information and statistics that no one ever remembers. Plus, college send you over pretty fliers to lure you into coming there and on one really tells you what really sucks about a college until you get there and find out yourself. High school students will have a chance to attend college classes as a visitor as no one really gets to see inside of a college class until the first day of college.
My Marketing Plan:
1) I live in San Francisco, so I will be launching in 8 colleges near me (UC Berkeley, Stanford, San Francisco State University, and etc). Most of these colleges are big with over 20,000+ students. I work during the day, and I plan to visit these colleges during nights and weekends starting this weekend. I plan to put fliers all over the campus and cold approach students to get their contact information and get them interested and sign up.
2) I hired a virtual assistant and got email addresses of all the Guidance Counselors in California. I will be sending them emails letting them know of the service. I will also try to call them as much as possible and whenever I have time to build a relationship. There is this free software that mailmerges froman excel file and allows me the write mass customized email. So it will seem like I personally wrote them the email but the software sent it out to them.
3) Using a software, I have gotten email addresses of students in the eights schools I am targeting. So, I will be emailing these students and letting them know about the service.
4) I will be going to sites like collegeconfidential and other sites that people go to research colleges.
How should this concept be best executed? I would love any advice. Are there any other marketing techniques that I am missing? If this was your concept how would you execute it? What do you guys think about the website? Do you think I should make any changes? I am targeting the 8 colleges merely because they are close to me (3 hours or less). I guess this will be my trial run to see if this concept works. I have not done any "research" as my gut instinct tells me that there is a need for a concept like this.
Also, I know there are other ways I can advertise such as Adwords, Facebook Ads, and even hire a company to do SEO, but I am trying to bootstrap and will only go to this route only if you guys think it will be absolutely necessary for me to carry out. I am not against it, but I rather not go that route unless you guys think its really necessary.
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