SWOT Analysis

The SWOT analysis framework is a key tool to use when creating your marketing strategy. The outcomes of any analysis should be considered in the marketing plan but will also impact other aspects of the business.

The key aspect in any marketing strategy is to fully understand where you stand with respect to your competitors. For this, we use a SWOT analysis to identify your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. A SWOT analysis allows you to look at your environment from within and from outside.

Your strengths and weaknesses are often internal to your business environment. For example, a strength could be your pricing policy and service offerings, but a weakness could be the limitations of your research budget.

Strengths: Your strengths provide your competitive advantage over your competitors. Strengths may include: good customer service, a strong brand and/or reputation.

Weaknesses: Weaknesses pinpoint areas of concern and can include high overheads or a new untested brand.

Opportunities and threats look at the outside factors.

Opportunities: New opportunities may enable you to explore new directions. For example, a change in government policy or new technologies.

Threats: These can include factors such as a new competitor or any change in legislation that may adversely affect you.

A good way to get to the bottom of this is to workshop your employees and to talk to suppliers or friendly customers.

Once produced this is input into the marketing strategy and needs to be undertaken at regular periods. This is not a one-off task.