Stanford cancelled 11 athletic teams. Harvard went online only for the full 2020-2021 academic year. Local schools in several states are giving parents the choice on how to best educate their children this fall.
Wild times.
In the midst of all that, there’s a burgeoning trend. Gap years.
Traditionally speaking, gap years were for recent high school or college graduates to take a year off and experience the world. There are several experience-related businesses that help facilitate these “gap years” for adventurous (and typically wealthy) students around the world.
If that’s your thing, cool. It’s not really mine.
Instead, I decided to build a new company that helps people build their own business who are:
1) actually taking a gap year
2) taking courses at their university remotely and have extra bandwidth or
3) scaling back their education cost and taking junior college classes this academic year due to covid
Introducing: https://www.gapyearstartup.com
I’ve given visitors three options: 1) Take an affordable 10-day course that’s delivered via a text message platform called Arist 2) Sign up for a 6-week live bootcamp that helps students launch a business or 3) Apply to launch and operate a business that I have plans for but lack the time to run.
So, how am I going to drive traffic? Glad you asked.
1) I’ve already kicked off a cold outbound email campaign to owners and operators of ACT/SAT prep companies. They have my customer - both the parent and student. Parents will likely be the ones to pay for the more expensive live bootcamp option, so I need to target them too. I’m currently telling them that I can provide them with a new revenue stream that does not cannibalize their customer base at all.
2) Similarly, I’m targeting graduation product companies like www.gradshop.com - they have my customer and I can help extend the LVC (lifetime value of the customer) for them without them doing anything.
3) I’m considering paid media, both Facebook + Instagram and Google (PPC). I already have completed some solid research on Google, but have more work to do on evaluating the viability for social ads.
That’s it for now - I’ll have an update later this month. Give me a shout if you have any other ideas on traffic and distribution - I’m always open to new strategies.
-Stephen