Managing a successful business requires allocating your resources to key areas to properly set the stage for growth. The purpose of this post is to advance two methods for business model development.
Regardless of whether you are starting out, or you face a changing marketplace and need to review your brand positioning, these methods are well worth a closer look. The methods below excel at revealing the baseline business models in today’s mobile, social and local marketplace.
Valuable Methods for Business Success
The Business Model Canvas and SOSTAC ® methods combined represent a valuable toolkit for effective management of a brand’s assets, capacities and revenue. The further benefit of these models is that they are widely available and talked about methods that capably stitch together your marketing, customer retention and acquisition strategies, with your unique brand identity and your legal and financial needs. Searching for either of these methods on your favorite search engine will certainly give access to content on Slideshare, Prezi and Youtube.
The Business Model Canvas was first originated in the book Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur. From the description:
“Business Model Generation is a handbook for visionaries, game changers, and challengers striving to defy outmoded business models and design tomorrow’s enterprises. If your organization needs to adapt to harsh new realities, but you don’t yet have a strategy that will get you out in front of your competitors, you need Business Model Generation.”
What are the harsh new realities that small businesses, individuals and public sector organizations face in today’s marketplace? The business model canvas helps to address your human, financial and brand capacities. The company behind Business Model Generation, the Business Model Foundry has a new web app that deserves special mention. Called Strategyzer, the web-app offers a platform for global digital collaboration and rapid business model prototyping with the business model generation tool-kit. The following video, with a talk Alexander Osterwalder gave at the Stanford Technology Ventures Program shows the method in action.
The SOSTAC ® planning model by Paul Smith of PRSmith came to my attention via David Chaffey of SmartInsights. This method is different from Business Model Generation in that it is directed more at those in digital marketing, customer relations and professional communications. The SOSTAC ® model is also as good for business model planning as it is for helping to highlight required assets for efficient reputation management and crisis communications, no doubt due to the fact that this method was authored by a public relations professional. Nevertheless, the value of the model is in the details. SOSTAC ® stands for situation analysis, objectives, strategy, tactics, actions and control. Like the Business Model Canvas, the SOSTAC ® method delivers a complex message with ease. Focused on the digital marketplace it offers valuable methodologies to ensure the following: that your brand relates and engages with key influences and communities; that you refine your unique selling position and messages; and finally, that you crucially develop your communications with an understanding of your strengths and weaknesses.