In the recent years, the marketing games have changed as well as customer behaviours. These are the result of the invention of the wireless internet, smartphone and social media. Since social media has become popular, many enterprises use it as a tool to broadcast, advertise and promote their products. This conducts to the high level of competition among start-ups and large brands. This competition is not only effect brands provided products or services, yet also affect software developers. Many new developers launch new sites or applications every single day; there are a variety of social media platforms that users can choose what they would like to use, share their thought and spend time on. However, there is a lack in the number of social networking site or applications for academic propose. Meeting of Mind is introduced with the aim of filling the gap that there are no social media explicitly created for university students regarding matching and finding the right professors. This idea becomes our strength since we can offer brand new experiences for our users.
Only the creative and outstanding cannot guarantee that the business will succeed. So, apart from the business model canvas we also have value proposition canvas from the same theorist, Alexander Osterwalder. The value proposition canvas is about figuring out why the customer needs a supplier, what the customer can perceive as an extra value as well as something from products and services that customers find it is annoying or useless. It helps to understand what the target customer wants systematically and generates products that match their needs perfectly. By applying the value proposition canvas, companies identify the need for a customer in a visual and structured way.
Here is our Value Proposition Canvas
Customer Segments
Our customer segments are divided into 3 sections
• Internet Users: In the case of Meeting of Minds we only focus on students, professors and academic staffs. As a typical user, Meeting of Minds is a platform and social utility where students can find the right professors or their academic partners who have similar interest and area.
• Advertisers and Marketers: Our platform aims to facilitate university students, so in this case we are not focusing on the benefits much. Yet, in order to monetise we do have a customer segment for marketers and advertisers who would like to use our platform as a market tool to advertise their products. As advertisers and marketers, when the rate of the web traffic gets high that means there are many people use the website. Thus, this is a key element for marketers to use a platform as a marketing tools whether advertise or create their own contents with less costs.
• Developers: As a developer, Meeting of Minds provides a platform contains academic contents. There are several developers with the aim of creating and developing awesome tools for academic purpose. In the future, we might have an application centre which allows them to create their own interesting application via our platform.
Ref:
Mulder, P. (2017). Value Proposition Canvas by Alexander Osterwalder | ToolsHero. [online] ToolsHero. Available at: https://www.toolshero.com/marketing/value-proposition-canvas/ [Accessed 1 May 2018].