Talking with customers

Social media, websites, e-news – all of the things I’ve talked about in this series are part of a bigger picture: how you engage with your customers. None of these technologies and techniques have any intrinsic value, except as they engage you with customers.

Business models

Now there’s a phrase that fills up a lot of space without meaning much.
Like Alice, you can say it means whatever you want it to mean, but a business model that guides decisions towards a stronger future will always be fundamentally about engaging with customers.

Does the model drive the business – or does the business create the model?

How you engage with all or any of the new media should be driven by a conscious business model. A good model will at least make your decisions easier, more coherent and more consistent.

Often though action proceeds without a model, as in, “We’ve got to be on Facebook!”

There may be no conscious business model here, but there is still a model: what you do with your website, social media and so on becomes your defacto business model, a mirror of your business.

Then a strange thing can happen: you can engage a consultant to take you on a journey of discovery within your own business, to find out who you are and by inference what your business model is.

Business models for dummies

I have to admit, I often feel like a dummy when experts start talking business models. I can almost smell the promise of a higher-powered, superior level or existence. Almost. Then it slips away.
So here are the basics of what any business needs from a business model. Plain and ordinary things I can understand.

• Who are you?
• What’s your story?
• What do you want to talk with?
• How will you engage with them?
• What will you do for them?
• How will you get them to pay you (enough) in return?

If you can answer those questions, then you have a business model. And if you don’t, you still have one – but you don’t know what it is and it may not be very good. It maybe missing one or two points, especially how will you engage with them and how will you get them to pay you (enough)?

Where websites and social media fit in

The simple business model above makes it clear where websites and social media fit: they are ways of engaging with your audience, so you can tell them your story.

They can be really good at engaging and telling, but generally they won’t help you work out who you are or what you do (your story).
They may help you do whatever you do (see especially the previous blog post on things you can do with a website) but they can’t often be the main service provider. They can complete the formality of a transaction but they can’t make customers want to buy.

Making your decision on internet and social media

At the beginning of this series I promised practical help in deciding which web options (if any) where for you. I hope I have provided some help along the way. The business model perspective however pulls it all together.

Know who you want to talk to and what you want to say to them. If you are clear on that, you’ll be able to work out which internet strategies could work for you.

• Do they enable you to tell your story? 
• Will they engage with the customers you want?
• Will they help you move those customers towards purchase?

The internet is all shiny new and complex, but these questions are eternal and fundamentally simple.