Mrs Butler could start with the higher level tutoring as these are areas that less tutoring is provided for as not many people are qualified to teach these subjects. This could be the USP (Unique Selling Point) as most tutors only tutor children short term while they are doing their 11+ and then they stop tutoring them after. Once the business is set up, Mrs Butler could start to differentiate her products by using papers from different exam boards. Mrs Butler is a specialist in ICT, General Studies and Business Studies which already differentiates her from other tutors but as she offers subjects at different levels, she could also tutor pupils for the 11+ and for English, maths and science at a KS2 level.
When I was looking at prices for the resources, I saw that there is a £500 limit. I found that the average writing pad is £2.00 for 400 sheets, and small plain files can be £3.00, so she could buy about 20 files and 5 writing pads for her students to make sure that they keep their work organised for when they come to be tutored by Mrs Butler; this would cost her £70. Mrs Butler would need textbooks to teach the pupils from, although in some cases the pupils may have their own, provided by their school. The textbooks for AS/A2 level would cost £200, although these wouldn’t cause too many problems as Mrs Butler could use the work schemes that she uses now to teach her pupils. The KS2 English, Maths and Science textbooks would cost £75 and nelson papers costing £25 could be used to educate pupils for their 11+ and could be reused as the writing pads would be used for writing the answers on.
As Mrs Butler already has 2 children whom she will have educated for their 11+, she could use the same resources for other children. For the GCSE business studies course, the textbooks would cost £100 and Mrs Butler could once again use her current work scheme which she uses currently at her school. Don’t forget that there are free websites and free past papers that you can also use. The total cost for the resources is £470.
When Mrs Butler is charging her pupils, she could charge by the hour, and use the following costs:
7-11= £10
11+ = £12
11-14= £15
14-16= £18
16-18= £20
To find out the costs that Mrs Butler should charge for her tutoring service, I phoned up some tutors and found that they tutored 20 pupils on average. I asked how much they charged and found that the price for each age gap increases by £2-£3. They found that when they were ‘open’ on Sundays, they didn’t get many pupils and Wednesday and Saturday were the most popular days. I found that as this would be a new service that was set up, Mrs Butler should only tutor 15 people, until she becomes more confident and then she can start to tutor more pupils. To work out how Mrs Butler could balance her time, I have devised a diary, that she could follow to plan out her lesson times.
She could save one day a week for A level, one for Year 11, Year 10 and one for the 11+ so that she knows what she is doing, and can get all of the textbooks out that she needs, ready for the lesson. I found that the older the age range, the more expensive the books and textbooks are and to make a profit, the price for the pupil would have to reflect this.
I think that Mrs Butler should carry out her tutoring service at home as this will secure her safety rather than her having to go to other people’s homes and risk her own safety. Working at home will also mean that she doesn’t need to pay any fees in terms of rent although she will need to pay for the insurance. I would suggest that she rents out a room although to do this, she would have to pay a larger rent and increase her budget from £300 to £600. I think that if she wanted to increase the sales that she could have, she should stay at home as she has everything there that she could need, and she doesn’t need to travel far distances with heavy bags, she could have a conservatory built, or just make a bookcase to store the books in.
E Com stands for Electronic commerce which is the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems, usually over the internet. E-commerce is good for small businesses like Mrs Butlers as she can get a lot of interest and gauge how much she would need to charge depending on how many people contact her. Tutoring is a limited type of service as there is only a certain amount of time that you have to tutor students and therefore, I don’t think that e-commerce would be a good option for Mrs Butler. It is also an extra expense that I feel Mrs Butler doesn’t need to pay as she may get too much response to her ad, and may have to turn down some people; I also think that there are many other ways that she can advertise her business for free such as:
Using Personal Profiles
Use your car window
Word of Mouth
Holding little offers or events
Shop Windows
Free directory Websites
The above will save Mrs Butler a lot of time and she will be able to just have enough customers. If she carries a poster around in her car then wherever she goes, people will be able to see it and will be inclined to phone her up and find out more about the service. If she puts up posters in a local shop then she is likely to have people who also live locally coming to her. It is important to tutor people who live locally as they are more reliable and likely to turn up to the lesson if they know that they don’t have far to travel to get there.
I think that for advertising, Mrs Butler should use an advert in the Yellow Pages per anom for £250 and having an advert in the local radio for £100 for two weeks. I think that Mrs Butler should choose these because they are local papers, so the interest that she receives will also be local. I think that the free techniques that I listed above would also be good for her as you risk no money on it, there is no risk to it as there may be if you spend hundreds of pounds on a radio advert that doesn’t even work. I think that by using free advertising techniques, there is nothing to lose from it, and if you don’t gain any interest, then you know not to use it again. The methods that I have recommended would cost £350 which still leaves some money to use elsewhere.
Mrs Butler specified that she would like me to investigate the benefits and problems with using the internet to reach her target market. I have summarised the arguments for and against in this section for the internet. Some of the benefits of using the internet to reach her target market are that the internet reaches out to a wider target audience and it is quite cheap, as long as you pay the start up cost and then the monthly costs. It can produce a good overturn and is cost effective as there is a lot of content that you can put on there, for a cheap price, and still make lots of money. There are more people that are likely to see your website
As well as advantages, there are also disadvantages with advertising your company on the internet. They can include difficulty in attracting customers, difficulty of paying over the internet, or by card. There are also many problems that the customers potentially have as they may feel that they can’t contact the person on the other side of the website, and therefore don’t know whether they can trust them with their child (ren). The way you advertise the company has a large impact on the customers that you receive and you want customers that could potentially pay you as soon as the lesson is over, rather than having a month end fee, and then not paying it.
1
14-16
4
3
2
6
5
5
6
2
3
4
1
Diary
Monday Tuesday
3:30- 5:30 3:30- 5:30
Wednesday Thursday
3:30- 6:30 3:30- 5:30
Friday Saturday
3:30- 5:30 10:30- 3:30
Sunday
Day Off!
Monday- Friday, 2 students a day, 3 on Wednesday is 11 students, Saturday, 5 students, altogether 16 students. The diary above shows the hours that you could do and the students that you could work with in a week. As some A-level students have free periods last and finish at 2:30, Mrs Butler could tutor them, an hour after they have finished, giving them time to get there if they live far away.
