Plenty of startups try to determine the perfect business model to take to market only to find that the market doesn’t need, want or understand what they are presenting.

The fact is most books or courses on business models take this into consideration by suggesting trial and error scenarios and market hypothesizes prior to launch.

Any business model, or plan for that matter, is little more than a guess and I believe that your best chance for getting that guess right is to build your business model based on a marketing strategy.

This assumes the role a fully developed marketing strategy actually should play in determining the direction of an organization. The fact is most people, if they consider marketing strategy at all, stop at a core message, identity elements and perhaps a sales proposition and call it a strategy.

A marketing strategy is how you plan to use the resources available to you to build an ongoing case that your business, products and services are the obvious choice for a narrowly defined ideal customer.

If you accept this expanded view of marketing strategy then I would suggest you answer the following questions in an attempt to measure where your strategy stands today and where it could go if your understood and integrated it fully as your business model

1. What about this job, work, or organization are you passionate about?
2. How does this business serve a higher purpose for you and your customers?
3. What value do you really bring that benefits your market in ways that your competitors wouldn’t dream of proposing
4. What’s the dominant personality trait that you need your customers to associate with your business?
5. What does an ideal client look like?
6. What is the simple 10-word core message that explains and excites?
7. How will your market become aware of your business?
8. How will your market come to trust that you have the answers?
9. What are the revenue sources that you can tap to grow this business?
10. Can you describe the perfect customer experience throughout your organization?
11. What resource gaps and constraints do you need to overcome to achieve your strategy?
12. What partnerships do you need to create in order to achieve your strategy?
13. What would the result of using this strategy model to run your business look like?