Day 4 – Business Model Canvas
Todays focus was to hand over as much of the old assignment as possible to a colleague, but I also had a meeting with the CTO of the client organization to discuss the Business Model. I’ll summarize the result here.
Key partners
Developerment teams (two, no names here)
Google (for Search Console, analytics etc)
In the future, investors might become key partners
Key activities
Key activities are the product development, marketing and sales and top-level support.
Key Resources
Top-tier world class SEO knowledge and experience
Worker-application
Web knowledge
CEO’s own personal brand
Value propositions
The application will do the on-page SEO analysis, and reporting, of a top-tier world class SEO engineer, allowing SEO agencies to scale without the need to recruit the best engineers out there (who’s really not available to hire). This goes for both agencies with skilled engineers who can’t do more work, as well as agencies that lack the skilled engineers.
Customer Relationships
Today, there are no customers, hence no relationships. However, to make this project successful we anticipate close, personal relationships, with easy access to high level support. This is a premium offer, and is priced as such.
Channels
One obvious channel is SEO, since SEO is the core of the business. The company also plans to attend conferences and to targeted sales outreach. What will work, what will be cost effective? We don’t know yet. My guess is that most activities will lead to a demo, and from there a personal sales/support person lead the way to a signed deal. Since this is such a premium offer, I will not be surprised if the only CTA on the website is book a demo.
Customer Segments
The main customer segment is SEO agencies, but also digital marketing agencies who offer SEO services. First year, focus will be on the Swedish market, where the CEO estimates a relevant market of 70-100 potential customers. He aims to sign 10 of them. Through his many years in the business, he’s built a personal relationship with many of the other SEO agencies and is confident the target will be met. Then, we take on the world market.
Cost Structure
Initially, the main cost is for developers (and architect), but soon costs for sales and marketing will be added, and then also cost for support. Hosting and running the application will also bring cost, but probably just a fraction of the total cost.
Revenue Streams
There are two revenue streams, the first one is the subscription fee from the customers, the other is investments.
Since this application does the work of several senior SEO engineers, the presumption is that the will to pay is high. My guess is that we will need to have different tiers of subscription, probably volume based or possibly feature based (or both), but the client mentioned nothing about that.
Competitors
Not part of the BMC, I know, but I needed to check with the CEO. He mentioned two tools, Ahref and Semrush. Both of them offer tools somewhat related to what we’re trying to do, but not all the way. The CEO also point out that even if there are noone doing this today, he expect competitors will launch within 12 months. He’s main concern if that some of the big names does it before we launch.
