Business Model and Strategic Marketing Planning

The term business model refers to a company’s plan for making a profit. It identifies the products or services the business plans to sell, its identified target market, and any anticipated expenses. Business models are important for both new and established businesses. They help new, developing companies attract investment, recruit talent, and motivate management and staff. Established businesses should regularly update their business plans or they’ll fail to anticipate trends and challenges ahead. Business plans help investors evaluate companies that interest them.

A business model describes how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value, in economic, social, cultural or other contexts. The process of business model construction and modification is also called business model innovation and forms a part of business strategy.

In theory and practice, the term business model is used for a broad range of informal and formal descriptions to represent core aspects of an organization or business, including purpose, business process, target customers, offerings, strategies, infrastructure, organizational structures, sourcing, trading practices, and operational processes and policies including culture.

A business model is a high-level plan for profitably operating a business in a specific marketplace. A primary component of the business model is the value proposition. This is a description of the goods or services that a company offers and why they are desirable to customers or clients, ideally stated in a way that differentiates the product or service from its competitors.

A new enterprise’s business model should also cover projected startup costs and financing sources, the target customer base for the business, marketing strategy, a review of the competition, and projections of revenues and expenses. The plan may also define opportunities in which the business can partner with other established companies. For example, the business model for an advertising business may identify benefits from an arrangement for referrals to and from a printing company.

Successful businesses have business models that allow them to fulfill client needs at a competitive price and a sustainable cost. Over time, many businesses revise their business models from time to time to reflect changing business environments and market demands.

When evaluating a company as a possible investment, the investor should find out exactly how it makes its money. This means looking through the company’s business model. Admittedly, the business model may not tell you everything about a company’s prospects. But the investor who understands the business model can make better sense of the financial data.

Strategic Market Planning

Strategic Market Planning is an ongoing process through which the company creates marketing strategies and plans its implementations in the target market. The process taken into account the current position of the company, helps in identifying the promotional opportunities & then evaluating these opportunities. Target market is identified through comprehensive research.

Marketing is a complicated process and mostly cannot be planned in short period of time. The strategic market planning takes into account long term and short-term view of the market and considers various parameters to plan according to the target market.

Strategic Market Planning Stages

The strategic market planning has three stages:

1. Segmentation of the market and customers
2. Profiling of the market segments
3. Development of the actual marketing strategy