[It ain’t that hard to be different. Tom Peters]
Digital Business Models
1. Access: Customer usage not ownership (Spotify, Zipcar)
2. Bricks-and-clicks: Retail and e-tail (Best Buy, Target)
3. Bundling: Sell 2 or more products for a discount (Comcast, Microsoft Office)
4. Community of users: Users generate knowledge, solve problems (eBay, Wikipedia)
5. Crowdsourcing: Outsource to non-employees for solutions (My Starbucks Idea, Doritos Super Bowl Contest)
6. Experience: App-based service plans (ClassPass, Zeel Massage)
7. Free: No cost products/services, revenues generated elsewhere (Skype, YouTube)
8. Freemium: Basic service at no charge, enhanced services have fees (LinkedIn, MailChimp)
9. Long tail: Millions of products offered, most sell very few (Amazon, Netflix)
10. Marketspace: Digital marketplace of buyers and sellers (Alibaba, eBay)
11. Multi-sided markets: Serve multiple segments – e.g., readers and advertisers (USA Today, Visa)
12. On-demand: Services as needed (TaskRabbit, Uber)
13. Open business model: Companies share low cost options [way below branded] Linux, Qualcomm)
14. Pay for value: Customers opt to pay what they wish (Neighborhood café, Radiohead CDs)
15. Platform participant: Enhance platforms by creating user applications (Foursquare, Zynga)
16. Pure-play: Online presence (Blue Nile, Overstock.com)
17. Shaper: Open up new marketspace (Apple, Facebook)
18. Software as a service (SaaS): Deliver applications over the internet (Salesforce.com, ADP)
19. Subscription: Recurring fees for services purchased on a regular basis (Dollar Shave Club, SiriusXM)
20. Unbundling: Sell a single product from a set of related products (AT & T DSL, Windows Live Essentials)
Think about the 7 questions below as your management team assesses your business model and market performance.
1. Can you clearly explain your business model?
2. What is unique about your strategy?
3. How does it compare with your direct and indirect competitors?
4. Have you broken any industry rules lately?
5. Can you develop a more innovative and interesting business model?
6. Will your business model win in the market?
7. Does your organization truly deliver superior value for customers in the Now Economy?
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This blog post is the 3rd in a series extracted from Superior Customer Value – Finding and Keeping Customers in the Now Economy, 4th Ed. (2019, Routledge Publishing/ Taylor & Francis). For further information, contact Art Weinstein at artweinstein9@gmail.com, www.artweinstein.com/, 954-309-0901 .
This was a really great overview on the different digital business models that we see today. It's pretty interesting how the digital landscape has changed and created such a large range of approaches when running a business. Each model that was listed can show its own strengths and opportunities for different types of businesses.
ReplyDeleteI disagree a bit with your information. I find that to have a successful marketing plan that the identity of the business must be certain. Sometimes when working with a company to create a marketing plan there is brand development, infostructure, process building, fulfillment organization, etc. that goes into place before a marketing plan can begin to work at all.
ReplyDeleteThe reason I bring that up is that you cited three questions:
1) where should we compete?
2) how should we compete?; and
3) how can we monetize products, services, experiences, and ideas.
However I don't feel that many companies immediately jump to those questions. Sometimes the business model is to be a wealth of knowledge, or cause-based, product specific, service industry, recurring etc. Each one has a different system, and one of the most important things I have learned working in marketing is that sometimes to be the best digital marketer, I also have to know how to do a proper business consultation, be able to pick out what needs to be better, or what is harming the overall structure so that we can move in the best unison to positivity for the client. I have also found that if your marketing team is only worried about the budget, how much they can spend in the budget vs how much the client needs to stay open, its a disservice. These are peoples lives, not a game.
As I read this post, I really liked the statement, "Different isn’t always better, but better is always different." I like this post's approach since in the business world, it's important to get people to notice you and build a positive reputation in order to increase sales. The world changes over time, and people with it and that's why they start looking for more specific things that fit their needs. For this reason, businesses and companies need to evolve and create strong business models that work based on the needs of their customers while offering them what other companies can't. It's crucial to stick to these principles and provide the customer with what they need, but at the same time, set yourself apart from other businesses that might sell similar goods or meet similar needs in order to succeed and stand out from the competition and attract in more customers.
ReplyDelete