Plan your Business with the Business Model Canvas

A business model canvas is a template that helps you lay out your business plan and all of your key points to eventually lead to successful business operation. The canvas will help you identify sources of revenue, your customer base, products, and all financial details. It can give you a clearer understanding of your business model and have better insights into your customers and potential value propositions.

Here is some information about the different sections of the canvas and some business key points to get you started:

1. Customer Segments

The above guide demonstrates the different components of a business model canvas starting with the ‘Customer Segments’. This part lets you understand the nature of the audience you are targeting, whether they are businesses or customers.

If you are targeting businesses, then your customer segment would be ‘B2B; Business to Business’, if you are targeting customers, then your customer segment would be ‘B2C; Business to Customer’.

You could also add further characteristics of your customers such as age groups, gender, geographic location, and behavioral and psychographic factors. 

2. Value Proposition

‘Value Proposition’ refers to what your business offers, such value could be tackled from two perspectives: Standalone value and Complementary offerings.

The standalone value of your product or service focuses on the offered features on their own.

Complimentary offerings focus on the value of your product or service as a complement to other products and services. They are divided into essential offerings, without which your product won’t work, and non-essential offerings. 

3. Channels

The ‘Channels’ focus on the communication strategy used to deliver your value proposition to the customers. In order to be able to allocate key channels, you have to first understand the Customer’s Buying Cycle: Awareness, Learning, Purchase, Delivery, and After-sale. This will help you to understand what happens to the consumer during the purchasing process.

Then you specify your channels which could range from retail stores, intermediaries, online, mobile stations, and reverse channels.