2. Table of Contents
Cover Page…………………………………………………...……1
Table of Contents………………………………………………….2
Executive Summary…………………………………………..3 & 4
Company Description……………………………………………..5
Strategic Focus and Plan……………………………………...6 & 7
-Mission/Vision
-Goals
-Core Competency and Competitive Advantage
Situation Analysis……………………………………………...8-10
-SWOT Analysis
a. Internal Strengths and Weaknesses
b. 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
2
3. Organizational Structure…………………………………...26 & 27
Implementation………………………………………….....28 & 29
Evaluation and Control…………………………………………..30
Executive Summary
Buy 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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4. 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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5. Company Description
Since 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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6. Strategic Focus and Plan
a. 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. Goals
Our 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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7. goal for customers is to have the highest respect
towards our staff and tutors.
c. Core Competency and Competitive Advantage
Buy 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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8. Situation Analysis
a. 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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9. “Sylvan”, change in the economy, and variation
of teaching strategies.
b. Industry Analysis
Buy 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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10. c. Competitor Analysis
There 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 Analysis
Buy 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 Analysis
The 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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11. our program as long as they have internet access
and are a student.
Market-Product Focus
a. 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 Market
Buy 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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12. 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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13. 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
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14. inside or outside of a 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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15. Marketing Program
a. 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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16. 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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17. 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 Strategy
The 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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18. 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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19. 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 Strategy
Buy 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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20. 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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21. 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) Strategy
Buy 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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22. 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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23. 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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24. Financial Data and
Projections
a. Past Sales Revenues
Buy 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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25. 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 Projections
Buy 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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26. Organizational Structure
Buy 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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27. 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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28. Implementation
The 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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29. encouraging words throughout each work week to
promote a positive working and learning environment
for both tutors and students.
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30. Evaluation and Control
Buy 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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