Ben Blackstone

 The firm I created is an online advertising development company  Name of the Firm is Boston Metro Advertising  We develop ads for both online use and also bought half a page of space in the Boston Herald to put clients ads if they would like them in print  While the market size of advertising has shrunk this is mostly due to the fact that marketing and advertising has become cheaper through the internet  I develop ads and give them a medium to reach their customers through printed ads

 This business is a service provider, companies can give suggestions about ads they would like us to develop or they can use our website to develop their own ad  We are creating a website that is interactive, but effective and user friendly for our customers  We use a sales revenue model  We are attempting to become a ubiquitous source of ad development

 A few critical assets we will be utilizing are a couple laptops and ad development software  We will also have someone develop the website to make sure it can do complex functions, but still be easy to use  Because the firm is so small the value chain is relatively simple and at this point in time almost all operations will be done by me  We will find and communicate with clients over the web and keep in touch after the ad has been developed and the sale is made to ensure quality control

 Our ideal customer is an adult from the age of 30-49, this is someone who still reads the paper. This person is highly educated, with a high volume of internet access, and comes from a high socioeconomic background  The set of expectations I will set is that we are an elite firm and that by coming to my website you’re looking for the best ads and not the cheapest ones by a long shot because quality is much more important to me than quantity  If I can have a few big dollar gigs that I create high quality ads for I will begin to mold my image as an elite advertising designer

 Strengths:  The firm will ensure the highest quality of advertisements  Our best competencies are our computer proficiency and work ethic  Our strategic plan is to infiltrate the market and increase revenues every year  Some intangibles we have over our competitors are an incredible attention to detail and some of the best talent in the area  Weaknesses:  We are weak compared to our competitors based on the size of the market share we currently take up  At this point we are lacking enough talent to become a big player in the industry  Something that needs to improve in our initiative is perfecting our firm value chain  We were not able to improve the weaknesses we have discovered yet because we have not begun operations yet to see how they will work

 Opportunities:  Favorable market conditions for us are when other businesses are thriving and have large sums of money to spend on their marketing budgets  Emerging technologies in support of our initiative are some completely interactive tools that can simulate reality  If we maintain a professional reputation we could grow to become a major player in the industry one day  Threats:  Our obstacles are going to be penetrating the market enough to turn a handsome profit  Our competitors are going towards just about developing all their advertisements purely for use online  Not many changes in legislation have been made lately to harm our initiative