UTD TheStudentZone.net Market Plan

Team 9

David GolynskiyGeorgia Gottsacker

Ricky Calderon Elin Briton

MKT3300Professor Strijnev

5/5/2013

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1. Executive Summary

TheStudentZone.net is a website created by current UTD students for the purpose

of becoming a cooperative online community and a useful tool for all past, present,

and future students. The website will feature forums, classified advertisements,

professor/class ratings, and a student expo page. This will allow students to share

advice and experiences, network, organize, discuss, buy/sell/trade, and be creative by

adding their own features to the website. Students would be able to suggest features or

expose them in the student expo page. There are many talents hidden within our

student body and there are is also a need for students seeking advice/info from others

on campus. Not everyone has a bunch of friends on campus and not all friends may

have the answers you need. Therefore, an online community made by the students, for

the students can be an invaluable tool.

Though these features may sound great to most students, the hardest part of getting

this website to work is to attract and maintain active users. The problem is that our

website provides a template for people to use, but it is up to the people to actually

start using it. At the beginning, the website will be empty and usage may be scarce.

We must create incentives for users and focus on improving students’ lives in order to

be sustainable. However, if we can manage this, the beauty of running a community

like this is that eventually it will become self-sustainable.

TheStudentZone.net can be financially rewarding too. Ads can generate passive

income with heavy online traffic. There are a few other ways to generate income:

from donations, listing prices, memberships, lottery, challenges, etc. Capturing the

college market can create opportunities for marketing contracts in the future. If the

website expands to other campuses this can become very profitable.

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2. Company Description

As a senior at UTD, David Golynskiy observed that a web community with

freedom to exchange info would be very beneficial for all students and his fellow

classmates confirmed these thoughts. After many positive responses, he decided to

create TheStudenZone.net in August of 2012.

The website has a big potential as it is run by students. This allows them total

freedom from official UTD rules and freedom of expression. Nevertheless, certain

ethical standards such as a no tolerance policy for cheating or academic dishonesty

will still apply. The open source style of this website can allow students to expose

their creativity and be noticed amongst other UTD students. In fact, one student has

created a java application that optimizes schedules when choosing different classes.

This saves a great deal of time. Other innovations like this can be posted onto the

website and be accessed by anyone for free!

The short-term goal for the site is to become self-sustained in terms of

maintenance costs and usage. The long term plan for TheStudenZone.net is to expand

nationwide. This site has the potential to capture the student market as well as become

an invaluable tool for all. The upcoming generation has the ability to create and share

their experiences/ideas unlike ever before. If the site functions as envisioned, amazing

outcomes can come about.

3. Strategic Focus/Plan

Mission Statement:

The aim of TheStudentZone.net is to become a useful resource for past,

current and future students of UTD to exchange advice, ideas, and experiences.

Accessibility to our site is of utmost importance to us, therefore in the near future we

will focus on keeping membership free and make as little obligation as possible for

our users.

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Goals:

1. To become a widely used and valuable resource for students

2. To effectively market, attract, and sustain actI've users.

3. Keep website free and allow full freedom of expression.

4. Maintain a degree of integrity and ethical standard.

5. To expand and capture the student market for profitability.

6. Outcompete the competion by providing a more personal and communal

setting.

Financial Goals

1. The website must become self-sustainable and cover its own maintenance

fees.

2. Donation system should be established.

3. Revenue from non-student users needs to be generated.

4. Advertisement system for revenue established.

5. Investment fund required.

6. Creative sources of revenue implemented (lotteries, etc)

4. Situational Analysis

Internal Assessment

The Student Zone is a website specifically designed for the convenience of

UTD students. It offers an environment for students to communicate throughout their

college experience. Students are able to chat through forums or post classified ads to

satisfy their needs and wants. Although there are many UTD links associated with

Facebook and Twitter, The Student Zone is its own network created to benefit the

unmet needs and wants of all students.

The website in general is not an innovative concept since there are many

communities already in existence today. However, our core competency is that we

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have a student customized community. It allows us total freedom of expression and

unlimited potential for growth. Some of our core competencies are:

1. Custom tailored UTD websites; by the students, for the students

2. Would integrate well with current web, digital, and mobile trend

3. Anyone can share/obtain information.

4. Free, no obligation membership.

5. Students are able to expose their talents.

Amongst the listed advantages, if the student market is penetrated and a

significant amount of members are collected, the community will also become self-

sustainable. Due to the nature of the website, the students will be free to post/discuss

and add to the website. As a result, the community will run itself as members

contribute to help each other. The administrators will simply need to maintain order

and cleanliness.

Some of our weaknesses include: (1) small budget to work with, (2) gaining

active members, (3) administrating the website to uphold standards of integrity, (4)

web development skill, (5) personnel to manage the website as we cannot yet afford

to pay anyone, (6) web security issues.

External Analysis (Environmental forces)

The Student Zone is similar to Craigslist; simple yet effective. The entire site

is available for both desktop and mobile devices. Since it is a website, someone has to

pay for it. As a group, we have decided that the best way to solve this issue is by

making it a non-profit organization that accepts donations in order to keep the site up

and running. The only competitive forces would be Facebook and Twitter associated

UTD links that share similar qualities of The Student Zone.

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Craigslist as a competitor is too broad for our UTD community. It also carries

the stigma that it is unsafe and risky to meet people off of Craigslist. Meeting others

from UTD reduces this stigma because users know it is a fellow student in your

community. Facebook also acts as competitor to us; however Facebook is designed to

be an email-style conversation. Facebook cannot consolidate one categorized

discussion. Each topic needs a new, separate page. Furthermore, Facebook cannot be

searched internally for messages/topics, one can only search for pages and people

already in existence. These disadvantages render Facebook extremely inconvenient to

the unmet needs of UTD students. College Confidential and RateMyProfessor.org

also are competitors, but they lack in personalization and don’t have much discussion

about specific classes that each professor teaches.

Our main threat is the student body. If we do not convey the proper message

when marketing this website, it may not catch on with students. Currently, students

figure out one way or another to meet their needs. Our website would make it more

convenient. If not, then we will not be able to maintain membership. Other threats

come from our competition (Facebook, RateMyProfessor.org, College Confidential)

improving upon what they have. If they change their sites to meet the needs that we

are addressing then they may win over the student market since they already have a

significant established share.

5. Market-Product Focus

Market Analysis/ Target Market (What market segments have the best potential?)

The strongest market segment would be current UTD students and alumni.

Segments within the student body include:

1. International Students: segment to their needs and community

2. Transfer Students

3. Prospective Students

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4. Current Students

5. UTD Alumni

Each segment will have a section on the website. The international student

segment will have a dedicated subset of current student forums.

Product Market Grid

Legend: P= Primary Market, S= Secondary Market

As the product market grid suggests, for all parts of our website the current

students are our primary concern. Prospective students will tend you use more of the

forums for informational purposes. Recent graduates and alumni will tend to you use

the classifieds and forums section.

Target Market Perception/Position

The UTD Student zone strives to be regarded as the most useful student

community by offering resources as dedicated and relevant to UTD as possible. A

perception map has been created to map us against our competitors based on

dedication to UTD and how useful the source is (refer to external analysis for more

info on competition).

Market Segment

Classified Forums Blog

Current Student

P P P

Prospective Student

P S

Recent Graduate

P S P

Less recent Alumni

S

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6. Market Program

Product Pitch/Strategy

Most college students are active online using sites such as Facebook,

Craigslist and RateMyProfessor.com in order to meet their wants and needs and

obtain information about their school. However, these sites are limited in their

effectiveness due to the overwhelming amount of users and lack of real knowledge of

the campus and its students. What we are introducing is a new social media site,

created specifically to consolidate the best features of popular sites into one for the

UT Dallas student. We love the idea of creating a place where students can come

together to help other students. This is why we operate on the slogan “From one

Comet to another”.

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Promotion

Because one of the largest issues we have with TheStudentZone.net is a lack

of user ship, we need to make our student body aware of our site. We plan to do this

in a number of ways, mainly through partnering with familiar, established businesses.

We will arrange deals with on-campus restaurants as well as the Pub. An example

would be a 10% off coupon with online registration. We believe that incentives along

these lines will be highly attractive to our target market. Also, we plan to partner with

other companies whose target market consists of college students. Companies like

Jimmy John’s and Off-Campus books are constantly looking for new ways to appeal

to the college market, and we believe that an association with them will lend

legitimacy to our site.

Place

We plan on advertising in local newspapers as well as in the on-campus

newspaper. Also, we plan on posting flyers throughout the campus. More specifically,

we intend to target the following locations: the Student Union, Student Services

Building, Activity Center, Library, and all on-campus housing. This will increase our

number of users by a small amount, but hopefully will spark conversations that allow

our website to grow in popularity. We are also going to post flyers at popular off-

campus locations to target our commuting students and recent graduates. Some of

these places include Starbucks and Fuzzy’s Tacos, among other locations. Another

place where we intend to post flyers would be at off-campus apartments such as the

McCallum Apartments.

Finances

Since the website is free to use, we will function in more of a non-profit mode

at first; Relying upon start up investors and donations. Below is a breakdown of costs

and revenue streams combined with projections:

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Costs 1st Year Projection 5th Year Projection

Web Dev. $1,200 $200

Moderation $1,000 $2,500

Domain $160 $20

Advertising $6,500 $1,000

Security $120 $120

Total $8,980 $3,840

Profits Projected

Revenue - Cost = Profit

1st Year Projection $200 $8,980 -$8,780

5th Year Projection $30,500 $3,840 $26,000

Revenue 1st Year Projection 5th Year Projection

Ads $100 $8,000

Job Posts $100 $1,200

Affiliate Mkt. $0 $10,000

Donations $0 $500

Total $200 $30,500

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Appendix A. Organization and Key Personnel

Organization

The responsibilities to run the website will be distributed amongst our group.

All proceedings will be overseen by the founder of the site including all financials.

All other responsibilities or jobs will be contracted out as necessary.

Founder: David Golynskiy

Advisor: Elin Britton

Moderator: Ricky Calderon

Head of Advertising: Georgia Gottsacker

Web Developer: Josh Haman

Founder

Advisor Moderator Advertising Web Developer