market a Product

J O E D E A N

W I T H A S S I S TA N C E F R O M K AT I E C H A P M A N , M A R I O M AT O S , E L I S A M Y E R S

T E A C H E R ’ S A I D : M U S I C E D I T I O N

Contents

Executive Summary 3

Product Overview 4

WOW Focus Group 5 The Plan 5

WOW Focus Group Results 7

Marketing Tactics 10 Brand Strategy 10

Leveraging Leverage 11

Launching Tactics and Sales Strategy 14

Executive Summary

To make it easy to focus on the Boom- Start principles covered in this plan, they will be emphasised in the margin space. Boom Boom BoomStart!

This business will be a smartphone and tablet app development company, and the focus is to create and market an organizer app for private music instructors, provisionally called Teacher’s Aid: Music Edition. This business will target college aged music teachers as these are student teachers who don’t have very much experience or ped- agogical skills. This app will provide the framework in which these teachers can build good teaching habits and make the teaching and organization for music instructors more effective and more efficient. This is solving everyday pain for

teachers.In the first year of operation, the business will build a small team to create the Teacher’s Aid: Music Edition organizer app and launch it on the Apple, Google and Amazon app stores, as these represent the major distribution opportunities for mobile software. Real music instructors will be invited to use Teacher’s Aid as a means to provide live user feedback, especially during the beta testing period, such that we may continue to fine-tune the product and put new feature up- dates and improvements on the app stores. We will use testimonials from real instructors to help with the promotion, and offer adver- tising within the app to relevant partners. We will also incorporate a campaign to generate videos that include the app, events at local high school music competitions, and advertising in music stores as a way to generate broader interest and awareness of the product. 8.3 out of 10 for a WOW score is quan-

tifiable support we are happy to see and to share.

Based on the responses in a focus group, that gave the idea a score of 8.3 out of 10, we feel confident that this has the potential for broad appeal and usefulness. From the responses of that focus group, we will also likely be pursuing further testing to look at also developing a compatible student app to connect with the teacher’s app. We will also be considering additional functionality as well as the possibility of creating this as a Software as a Service product to enable a broader and more powerful potential for the app, as well as generating a recurring revenue stream through cloud storage. We expect that we will generate enough revenue to break even in the first year, with profitability being achieved in the second year of operation.

Product Overview

The unique product claim comes in gathering the tools needed for success in the private music teaching field together in one product. That is something the competition simply has not been able to do.

Teacher’s Aid: Music Edition will be an app designed for private music instructors. Our goal is to bring more convenience to private instruction. The app we’re going to create will be user-friendly and aesthetically pleasing. With easy-to-use tools featured in our app, we will help teachers keep track of their schedules, their students, pay- ments from their students/clients, and student progress. These tools include: a calendar geared specifically for private instruction that makes scheduling/rescheduling sessions a simple process; in-app student profiles that the instructor can add as much detail to as they need in order to tailor their teaching approach to every student; and a notebook for each student that allows the teacher to be constantly aware of their students’ progress by storing notes made in previous sessions, and keeping track of their students’ goals. This allows for the instructor to formulate specific lesson plans for each student. Our differentiation comes from the

combining of these tools.Other additional features may be purchased in-app to allow the instructor to customize further, along with the ability to purchase more cloud storage. Teachers will see a reason to believe

in this app when they recognize all of the tools that they already need/use brought together in one place. Also, seeing that we listen to feedback and adjust accordingly will enhance that reason to believe.

With insight gained from conducting a focus group, we are work- ing on ideas for an app compatible with Teacher’s Aid: M.E. that the instructors’ students can use. Some of the features of this app in- clude: video chat capabilities, practice logs (with notifications to the teacher), assignment uploads, and a payment system.

WOW Focus Group

The Plan

Screening Requirements We will dominate the situation for younger, college aged music teachers that are still developing their method and style of teaching.

We will reach out to music teachers in order to fill our WOW focus group. We specifically invited teachers with at least two years of ex- perience teaching multiple students. We sought out teachers for any instrument , but had a preferencial eye out specifically for around college age individuals.

Organization

For approaching the presentation of the focus group, we decided to follow the protocol “For exploring a single product idea without comparing it to others. . . ” (BoomStart, chapter 2). This is our specific protocol established to run our focus group.

• Blue

– Please review with us what you have been using or are using to manage your students’ lesson scheduling and other informa- tion.

• White

– Let us introduce you to this new app. (Offering all the informa- tion about the app.)

• Red

– On a scale from 1-10, please rank your initial reaction to this new app idea.

• Black

– What concerns do you have with this app at this point?

– Do you have any hesitations about it?

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• Yellow

– How could this app help you in your work?

– What do you like about this app?

• Green

– What suggestions do you have about the app?

– Do you have any suggestions about appropriate distribution channels to use in getting information about the app out to other teachers?

• Red

– Where would you rate this app on a scale of 1-10 now?

• Blue

– Review some of the takeaways and thoughts and information gone over.

– Thank them all for coming and close the focus group.

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WOW Focus Group Results

Participants

We had 6 participants in our WOW focus group. Each participant had at least two years of experience teaching music. They were from a variety of instrument backgrounds, but were all in a fairly young demographic, with the oldest participant being 33.

Results

• Blue

– We found a theme of instructors using planners, basic note- books, and Google calendars to track their students progress, lessons, and payments.

• White

– As we introduced the product pitch, we observed a wide initial interest through the body language of the participants.

• Red

– For the initial WOW score, we received an average of 7.75 out of 10 from the participants.

– This WOW score was based on the idea that there would be an accompanying app for the students. Without that student app, the participants felt that Teacher’s Aid was not useful, but was rather nothing more than a glorified notebook.

We showed our focus group that we are willing to learn and improve by listening to the targets. By taking on the task of looking into accepting their suggestion to add a student app, we built trust with them.

• Black

– As already mentioned, the largest concern was that there abso- lutely needed to be a complimentary and connected app for the students.

– They also felt like it had to be able to connect and sync with other calendars that they might already use for the other parts of their lives.

– The also wanted to make sure it would be able to sync to a computer for more detailed work and to print off information.

– There were also a few other concerns offered as the following questions...

* How many student profiles can it handle?

* How will the payment function work?

* How easy will it be to use?

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• Yellow They each felt the need to believe in what we are offering.

– The primary benefit that the participants found in Teacher’s Aid was having all of the information for their students in one location. Look - a new everyday pain we can

solve that we were not even focused on. – They also believed it would remove “busy work” for them,

leaving them more time to teach.

• Green

– Obviously, the biggest suggestion received was the need to have the compatible student app, but that came up earlier while working through the Red Hat questions and was assumed as a reality after that.

– They suggested that perhaps we have the wrong price in mind and that it would be well worth paying a much higher fee for the app if the teachers paid for it and their students would have access to their corresponding app for free. They said that they would be willing to pay at least $20 for such a set up.

– Other random suggestions for features, functionality, or other tid-bits to include or consider included the following:

* Adding a tuner or metronome.

* Upload of video lessons or video chat with instructor by the student as they get stuck during a practice session.

* Tracking of practice time and homework being worked on.

* Have the calendar function so that students could schedule their own lessons and view the teacher’s calendar to know of availability.

– They unanimously suggested that they would either buy it, or at least look into it further, if it was recommended by a music store or instructor rental facility.

• Red

– At the end of our focus group, the group gave the app an aver- age score of 8.3.

• Blue

– Overall what we learned from our focus group is that people are generally excited about the product and the benefits it offers in increasing the effectiveness of their teaching.

Overview

All in all, the focus group was incredibly insightful and provided a whole new parallel direction to look in moving forward with

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Teacher’s Aid by introducing the idea of the student app to accom- pany the teacher’s app. The enthusiasm they showed definitely en- courages the forward progress of working through this idea and pushing to develop it.

Marketing Tactics

Brand Strategy

Situation Statement

College aged private music instructors want to develop good habits of organization and efficiency to be able to teachers inspire their stu- dents, give them the best education possible, and develop meaningful relationships, but currently there is nothing that offers a unified way to schedule lessons, track student progress, create personal lesson plans, and manage student payments. Teacher’s Aid: Music Edition changes that!

Target Customers This is the situation we are particularly going to dominate. Plus, because the creator of the program is already expreienced in the field, we build our credibility.

Teacher’s Aid: Music Edition is written specifically with private music teachers in mind by a music teacher that knows what it takes to give a quality music education. Teachers that are in the earlier years of their careers will particularly be able to benefit as they are forming habits and building up their number of students. Also, those newer teachers are generally also younger teachers who are often more open to using apps. This could present a chance to feed a

frenzy.Along with individual teachers, it makes sense to us that there are likely some teacher methodology organizations that we could target as business customers. The ones we identified are Sizuki and Consonus Music Institute. Both of those customers could be targeted simply to offer our product through them to the teachers using their methods for a lower fee per user or we could even try providing customization for each group to include the actual teaching methods right in the app itself.

Key Values, Personality, and Identity The brand’s personality is optimistic.

The developers of Teacher’s Aid understand that teachers want to see their students progress and improve. So do we, and we are optimistic we can help that happen.

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That is why we especially value:

1. Good education.

2. Always put forth your best effort.

3. Stay optimistic.

4. Learn from your mistakes.

While we do not have a logo yet, we recognize that a lot of our identity will have to be conveyed through our logo. So we will de- velop a simple logo that conveys our belief in education and im- provement.

Brand Essence Benefits like changing the world may seem too lofty, but we act big and we will deliver one student and one teacher at a time.

Education for your inspiration. We chose this because we believe that private instructors play a vital role in a person’s development. A great teacher can truly influence a person’s life in a positive way; teachers are role models. If we can help teachers inspire their stu- dents, give them a better education, and develop meaningful relation- ships, we can change the world; one person at a time.

Pitch

Apps are already heavily integrated into our everyday lives including education.

Currently, there are almost no mobile devices apps available that aid in private instruction.

Teachers play vital roles in a person’s development; we want to create quality relationships through quality education.

Teacher’s Aid makes teaching more effective and more efficient for private instructors. Why yes. We will bring back in that

quantifiable support here.Music teachers give Teacher’s Aid an enthusiasm score of 8.3 out of 10.

Can we take a few minutes to show you what private music teach- ers are so excited about? We are not going for the ask here, we

just want a case open opportunity.

Leveraging Leverage

Horse

Music Departments (in universities) could provide us with beta-testers and possible advisors that may contribute to what the app needs. They also have the potential to have other contacts that we could use for needs we have not even discovered yet. Since the founder

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has ties already with the Utah State University Music Department, that will be one music department that we will definitely look into working with. Renowned teachers and big names

like Suzuki would add clout to what we are offering. Connecting ourselves with big friends would go a long way to helping us reach out and gaining an air of legitimacy to our small and new company and product.

Renowned Teachers usually have their own methods already, but could put in a word of recommendation to their student teachers to use this app as student teachers don’t possess the knowledge these renowned teachers do. These renowned teachers may also promote our app at conferences and by word of mouth to other teachers. They may also provide us other valuable connections in various reaches of the music industry.

Eric Eliason could help propel this business from the business side of things. He has many connections and may be able to put us into contact with people who can turn this app into something big.

Jon Dean could also propel this app on the business end, as he has a lot of knowledge about the mobile publishing industry. He also has connections with people who can help in the development of this app.

Suzuki may be able to put us in touch with publishers to market this app, and private instructors to use this app.

The iStudiez team develops apps in the education arena and could provide some insight into what it means to make an app in this genre of mobile application. They also have a very user-friendly interface in which they could provide feedback on for us to de- velop an interface that our audience will love.

The Consonus Music Institute provides onsite classroom pedagogy workshops and may be able to help market us to teachers with private students and also put us in touch with private instructors.

Anchors Juliard would be a reach for us, but would sure be getting our swagger on to step out and approach them.

Music Departments (in universities) could purchase a license for a set number of copies of the app that the students can use to guide their teaching and help them form good habits and practices for their private instruction, which in turn benefits the university’s reputation if the student teachers are providing a good education. The Juilliard School of Music may even adopt our app to use, which would lend credibility to our name.

Goldmine Beta Testers

Student teachers (or recent graduates) would probably be the best for our beta testers as they could use the app for their teaching and make notes of bugs they find while using the app.

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Teacher forums would also be a great place to round up beta testers as this encompasses private teachers all over the country. These testers would also use the app for their teaching and make notes of bugs they find while using the app.

Benefactors

The National Association for Music Education (NAfME) benefits by pro- moting this app because it ultimately helps the teachers succeed and be more effective when teaching their students, ideally al- lowing teachers to retain more students and giving them a better education.

The Music Teacher’s National Association (MTNA) also benefits by pro- moting this app because it ultimately helps the teachers succeed and be more effective when teaching their students, ideally al- lowing teachers to retain more students and giving them a better education.

Music Departments and Pedagogy Programs benefit because it gives their student teachers a framework in which they can build good teaching habits and provide a better education for their students. This, in turn, provides a good reputation for the department and its programs leaving their customers with confidence in their services.

Suzuki a teaching method used for many instruments, could benefit by licensing a version specific to their methods and selling that to teachers who use this method. This form of building on the core

product is an interesting one for us, but could yield many benefits, including the potential to create a feeding frenzy between different groups seeking personalized systems.

The Consonus Music Institute has a teaching sequence they advise their teachers to follow and could also benefit by licensing a ver- sion specific to their methods and selling that to their teachers who use this method.

Advisory Board

Our advisors will receive payment in exchange for their advice, and these valued mentors may also hold shares in the company.

Jonathan Dean is a successful businessman with experience in the video games and mobile publishing industry. As someone that has worked in the fast-changing industry his entire career, including at executive level for some of the largest companies, he has a lot of knowledge about how to create products and get them launched, including mobile apps. In his industry, he’s fairly well known and his skills sought after. He could provide contacts who can help

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with getting this app made as well as putting us in contact with people who could get this app into the marketplace. We need to be sure to choose big

friends. Both of these men are big men in their respective spheres and we will leverage that to our greatest advantage.

Michael Christiansen is a nationally acclaimed professional musician with extensive knowledge about performing, the guitar, other instruments, teaching (private and classroom), and many other things music related and not. He’s been in the business for quite some time; most of his experience comes from teaching, and per- forming. He is well sought after in his industry. Mike has many connections in the music industry: other professional musicians, publishers, and musical instrument accessory companies. He also has connections with other institutions, as well as former students who have started, or are involved with, countless businesses. He could provide insight to the specific user requirements of this app, such as private instruction needs, and could be a partner in testing this app during the trial stages (a beta tester). When we are ready to build on a core

product, these new advisors will be sought out.Future Additions to our board of advisors would include others of

Joe’s mentors as things come up that certian people would be a good fit to help with. We would also need to add other specialists, who would be experienced individuals in the other fields to which this app might apply, such as private instructors in fields of lan- guage, fitness, consulting, counseling, and others that we discover that may also be ideally suited to use our app. The advisors would serve to provide further insight to what this app would need to be in order to be well-rounded and encompass many arenas. These other specialists, however, would be brought in later, as our main focus at the moment is on an app for private music instructors.

Launching Tactics and Sales Strategy These events give us a chance to create a buzz with our own events hosted within industry events that are already happening.

The launching tactic of our app will be to generate hype about the release of the app among music instructors. We will do this by creat- ing an event for ourselves within state high school band competitions and the Music Teacher’s National Association conference. At these competitions and the conference we will show a YouTube video to kick off a social media marketing campaign involving self made videos with the theme, “Teacher’s Aid helps you organize so you can focus on all the little squeaks, not just the big ones”. After this video, which will be a fun attention getter, we will show a sleek video fea- turing the usability of the app along with its features. It will be at this point we will ask people to start making their own additional videos and spreading the word about Teacher’s Aid through social media. The video we present at these events

and potential crowd supplied testimo- nials, how to videos, and tips and tricks webinars in the future will provide the opportunity to offer demonstrations of the product.

Those additional videos will help Teacher’s Aid: Music Edition

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generate interest through a crowdsourced social media marketing campaign. In this campaign music students will upload a YouTube video of them playing, practicing, and just learning to play their instrument. The videos will feature the pains that all new music stu- dents go through including the squeaks and off-notes they play while trying to learn their new instruments. At the end of the video stu- dents will present our app to their teachers and share the theme, “Teacher’s Aid helps you organize so you can focus on all the little squeaks, not only the big ones.” These videos will be fun, light, and humorous. They will create traffic to the apps’ social media pages since each video will direct people to them and will contain a direct link to the app itelf. By generating a host of YouTube videos

about the product, it gives us a chance to act big within social media.

We will be trying to build anticipation for the app and an expecta- tion for its release. While we recognize that the majority of our sales may simply come from people finding us in the app stores, we will not rely only on the word getting out through them. We plan to ac- tively introduce the app through music stores and facilities that rent out space to private instructors. To promote the app in those kinds of venues, we will supply the locations with business cards for the app. One side will feature a highly condensed elevator pitch for the app, while the other side will have a scannable code for immediate download of the app and connection to our Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pages. We can reach out for touchpoints when

teachers are in the music store to see who their competition is, get music and supplies, or to actually teach. Other touchpoints hit as they share and discuss with students and other teachers, as they actually buy or use the app, or when they participate in uploading videos, testimonials, or feedback.

The app will also have a feature to be easy to share on social me- dia after purchase to friends and other potential customers. Here we will build our word of mouth reach and get it out to the wide spread target market that we have selected for our app. Since private instruc- tors are not collected in any particular central hub, after we hit the music stores, where most instructors stay connected, we will be uti- lizing word of mouth to really reach our market in depth. Teachers are always trying to share ideas to help improve their students ex- perience so will keep our word of mouth positive and address ques- tions and concerns in good time to build trust with our customer. By offering a free version to start with,

we take the chance to let the program iteslf close the deal for us.

Customers will have the option to try the free version of the app. We are hoping with the free version of the app that it will climb to the top of the app charts its category to get more notice. There will also be a full version that can be purchased in an app store for $2.99. In addition to the full app the app will have purchasable features and personalizations to create more revenue and customization for the individual needs. By potentially customizing the app for specific teaching methods, we will also generate easy interest in the app among teachers involved in each of those methods. By offering that service, the service of tailoring the app directly to a specific teaching method, we might even be able to create a bit of “feeding frenzy”

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buzz to encourage different methodology groups to really want to jump on this bandwagon.

Advertising will be used in the free version of the app to create revenue and encourage people to purchase the paid app. Advertise- ments will feature top educational and music apps and products. Those advertising slots within our app could either be purchased by those companies or traded for an advertising slot in their own suc- cessful apps. This means that we will advertise other apps that are trending or that already have a strong market and they will advertise us. This scheme benefits those apps because they will do advertis- ing with our market and it will benefit us because our brand will be known with other markets.

Budget

Our marketing strategy will make use of social networks and other technologies that can reach people easily. Examples of this are face- book and youtube. Our budget for marketing will include the mak- ing of two videos, participation in high school band competitions, and promotional business cards placed in music stores and rental teaching facilities.

• Video Production

– $200 Recording and Editing

– $50 Promotion of Videos – $250 Video Production Subtotal

• Band Competition

– $300 Prizes for Competition Winners

– $100 Banner and Flyers

– $100 Refreshments – $500 Band Competition Subtotal

• Music Store Business Card Promotion

– $200 Printing Business Cards

– $50 Transportation Costs to Place Cards – $250 Music Store Promotion Subtotal

• $1,000 Grand Total