Execution help and advice needed for new startup

[naushad1289]

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.
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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 any

 

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[Pinnacle]

Your website is beautiful! Did you build it yourself or hire a pro? I had no trouble navigating and finding the meat of what I needed to learn. Love the concept too, I believe there may just be a strong enough demand for this to turn it into something powerful.

I don't think you'll have as much a challenge reaching high school students as you might have converting them. It's not necessarily your prices, it's the financial situation of the average high school student and what their values are that may pose difficulty. It's likely you may find directories online of the high schools nearest you and maybe you can start with a small radius similar to the one you found with the universities. You may also consider a qualification process when you do reach these high school students to see how and if you can convert them. For example, adding a lead capture form onto Universityhosts.com may be helpful, or find a way for high school students to fill out a questionnaire or something.

Just food for thought. It's been 12 years since I was faced with the decisions that your markets are faced with, so I may be out of touch.

 

[winch]

Cool idea. Any plans for quality control?

 

[naushad1289]

It's not necessarily your prices, it's the financial situation of the average high school student and what their values are that may pose difficulty. It's likely you may find directories online of the high schools nearest you and maybe you can start with a small radius similar to the one you found with the universities.

First off thanks for the complements. I am really hoping that there is a need for this kind of service. To reply to your comments, high school parents will pay for the tour, and I do agree that this will not fit into some people's budget. I guess I will have to wait and see what the demand will be. I think the price is low enough to entice some people to try especially if they are having a hard time deci

 

[naushad1289]

Cool idea. Any plans for quality control?

This is a very tricky question. So once the tour is confirmed (after payment is made). The contact information of the college student and high school student will be sent out to each other. It will state that the college student will have to contact the high school student. The parents will also get the contact information of the college student.

There is also a review section where high school student will have a chance to review the tour provided by the college student.

But I am sure there will be times where something will go wrong but I will learn and see what the best way to solve the problems so those issues will not come up again.

 

[mapaul04]

I think you may have the target wrong

If the parents are going to be paying I believe your target is the parents.. not the high school students. I think in this model where you are showing the potential student the "real" side of the university you need to target the high school students though. I think most of the times the parents like the historical information etc and thats what they want to see for the school. In the end I feel like the school guided tours are for the parents and designed for them more than the potential student (thats how I felt at least).
Anyways, I dont believe $100.00 is too much however what if you let the college students name their rate? Just something to think about I dont know how that would affect your cut etc... Maybe a Law student deserves to make more than a Arts and Sciences Major?
I also believe you have an excused absense from HS when you miss for a college tour the college gives you paperwork etc. So making this happen is probably something you need to consider if you havent already.
Dont know costs but maybe you could look at Movie Theatre Aadvertising when you get to that stage? Could be a price effective way to reach teens?

Just quick thoughts.

I like the idea and think you could make this work

 

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[bernieshawn]

You've probably already though of this, but if you haven't, another good target (to either sell or network with) would be high school guidance counselors/college planners (aka the faculty that advises students with college choices). If you could get them to recommend your service, you could achieve VERY low marketing costs!

 

[naushad1289]

I dont believe $100.00 is too much however what if you let the college students name their rate? Just something to think about I dont know how that would affect your cut etc... Maybe a Law student deserves to make more than a Arts and Sciences Major?
I also believe you have an excused absense from HS when you miss for a college tour the college gives you paperwork etc. So making this happen is probably something you need to consider if you havent already.
Dont know costs but maybe you could look at Movie Theatre Aadvertising when you get to that stage? Could be a price effective way to reach teens?

Thanks so much for your feedback. I didn't want to price differentiate because I wanted to keep things simple (in both logistics and also in the programming side). The main target for this concept is undergraduate students but I am not against this taking off for graduate students. Just have to see what the market will tell me.

Never thought about the absense note. This is brilliant, and I will mention that. Theater advertising is an amazing idea after I can afford to advertise in there.

 

[naushad1289]

You've probably already though of this, but if you haven't, another good target (to either sell or network with) would be high school guidance counselors/college planners (aka the faculty that advises students with college choices). If you could get them to recommend your service, you could achieve VERY low marketing costs!

Thats definitely in my plan. I also know that there are some people whose job is just to help out high school student with college planning. That would be low cost marketing. Thanks for the advice!! Really appreciate it.

 

[rodney]

Hi naushad1289,

That's great to see another start-up in this forum!

From my angle is, you should target and involve the parents of the high school students as well. It would make sense to visit a campus as a family trip or tour (or have multiple friends go along the tour as one package deal). Usually, it's the parents that are selling out the doe not the HS students.

My other take is allow college students to give tours and post how much the tours cost based on the experience they are providing to the HS students. Your niche idea reminds me of Vayable, where individual from different cities give local expert tours for a certain price. By providing this platform and unique experience for different students, you can collect a smaller yet reasonable fee but scale dramatically based on the number of different unique experience.

For instance, I remember years ago, 3 of my friends went to visit UCLA. We tour the campus ourselves without any tour guide, but your platform could be relevant then. Let's say I wanted to catch a UCLA football game while the other didn't, or maybe we all watch the game together, each experience is unique and exciting with the proper tour guide (or university student) giving us a taste of what campus life could be.

Anyhow, it's great what you've done so far. Keep it going!

 

[crespom]

The first thing you need to do in any startup is to validate your assumptions on a small scale. It maynvd a good idea but for whatever reason students may not want to use this service, of course it might also be a runaway success. So I suggest maybe seeing if you can test the idea in a real life situation (read lean startup for help) like maybe set up a quick wordpress blog then get some adwords going for search terms on a specific college. Put a button to buy now and the via analytics test how many students buy and also test different pricing options. Anyway goodluck! Sounds worth testing !

 

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[pro]

I don't think a tour is the best product. Switch the product to something better. Same audience.

 

[healthstatus]

Your target market can be found at all the SAT/ACT test prep sites and service companies, these are students that want to go to college and they or their parents are spending above and beyond already.

You will be competing with the schools "regular" tour. Which is typically free and runs Mon-Sat twice a day for bigger schools and depending on the time of year. If you could bundle additional "unpublished scholarship opportunities", or something like that it would give people a reason to go through your tour and offer continued value.

You might also be able to find a professor that is interested in growing his department that might provide "special access" tours to lab facilities, computer rooms, etc.

 

[naushad1289]

My other take is allow college students to give tours and post how much the tours cost based on the experience they are providing to the HS students. Your niche idea reminds me of Vayable, where individual from different cities give local expert tours for a certain price. By providing this platform and unique experience for different students, you can collect a smaller yet reasonable fee but scale dramatically based on the number of different unique experience.

Thanks for the ideas. I see what you are saying about allowing college students naming their own price which is not a bad idea. That is something different than creating a standardize product. I guess it would see where this site takes off and if I get traffic ang get people making tours then this is something I am going to look into implementing.

 

[naushad1289]

The first thing you need to do in any startup is to validate your assumptions on a small scale. It maynvd a good idea but for whatever reason students may not want to use this service, of course it might also be a runaway success. So I suggest maybe seeing if you can test the idea in a real life situation (read lean startup for help) like maybe set up a quick wordpress blog then get some adwords going for search terms on a specific college. Put a button to buy now and the via analytics test how many students buy and also test different pricing options. Anyway goodluck! Sounds worth testing !

I guess its kind of late for type of testing you are talking about. I have spent A LOT of time on this site. Now I will try my best to make it. Do you think I still need Adwords? I mean I am beyond the stage of testing demand to be honest as I have a solid website.

 

[naushad1289]

I don't think a tour is the best product. Switch the product to something better. Same audience.

Something better such as....?

 

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[naushad1289]

Your target market can be found at all the SAT/ACT test prep sites and service companies, these are students that want to go to college and they or their parents are spending above and beyond already.

You will be competing with the schools "regular" tour. Which is typically free and runs Mon-Sat twice a day for bigger schools and depending on the time of year. If you could bundle additional "unpublished scholarship opportunities", or something like that it would give people a reason to go through your tour and offer continued value.

You might also be able to find a professor that is interested in growing his department that might provide "special access" tours to lab facilities, computer rooms, etc.

This is a brilliant idea!! You are sooo right about SAT/ACT classes, and those are the type of parents that go above and beyond for kids.

Also, the part about contacting professors to get special access is another great idea.
Thanks for your thoughts. I really appreciate it!!

 

[AcquireCurrency]

- I think it would be better if you marketed towards High School students only. In time, college students will realise that they can make a killing doing this. Sooner or later you will have a huge amount of college students at your disposal. Without high school students this business would never take off.

EDIT: Have a student info/register area hidden away from the rest of the website, for example a small link in the footer.

- It would be a great idea to use facebook to connect with 16-18 yr old high school students. Create a fb landing page and encourage them to discuss where they are going, college reviews etc.

Good luck