The SWOT analysis is a valuable step in your situational analysis.
Assessing your firm’s strengths, weaknesses, market opportunities, and
threats through a SWOT analysis is a very simple process that can offer
powerful insight into the potential and critical issues affecting a
venture.
The SWOT analysis begins by conducting an inventory of
internal strengths and weaknesses in your organization. You will then
note the external opportunities and threats that may affect the
organization, based on your market and the overall environment. Don’t be
concerned about elaborating on these topics at this stage; bullet
points may be the best way to begin. Capture the factors you believe are
relevant in each of the four areas. You will want to review what you
have noted here as you work through your marketing plan. The primary
purpose of the SWOT analysis is to identify and assign each significant
factor, positive and negative, to one of the four categories, allowing
you to take an objective look at your business. The SWOT analysis will
be a useful tool in developing and confirming your goals and your
marketing strategy.
Some experts suggest
that you first consider outlining the external opportunities and threats
before the strengths and weaknesses. Marketing Plan Pro will allow you
to complete your SWOT analysis in whatever order works best for you. In
either situation, you will want to review all four areas in detail.
Strengths
Strengths
describe the positive attributes, tangible and intangible, internal to
your organization. They are within your control. What do you do well?
What resources do you have? What advantages do you have over your
competition?
You may want to evaluate your strengths by area,
such as marketing, finance, manufacturing, and organizational structure.
Strengths include the positive attributes of the people involved in the
business, including their knowledge, backgrounds, education,
credentials, contacts, reputations, or the skills they bring. Strengths
also include tangible assets such as available capital, equipment,
credit, established customers, existing channels of distribution,
copyrighted materials, patents, information and processing systems, and
other valuable resources within the business.
Strengths capture
the positive aspects internal to your business that add value or offer
you a competitive advantage. This is your opportunity to remind yourself
of the value existing within your business.
Weaknesses
Note
the weaknesses within your business. Weaknesses are factors that are
within your control that detract from your ability to obtain or maintain
a competitive edge. Which areas might you improve?
Weaknesses
might include lack of expertise, limited resources, lack of access to
skills or technology, inferior service offerings, or the poor location
of your business. These are factors that are under your control, but for
a variety of reasons, are in need of improvement to effectively
accomplish your marketing objectives.
Weaknesses capture the
negative aspects internal to your business that detract from the value
you offer, or place you at a competitive disadvantage. These are areas
you need to enhance in order to compete with your best competitor. The
more accurately you identify your weaknesses, the more valuable the SWOT
will be for your assessment.
Opportunities
Opportunities
assess the external attractive factors that represent the reason for
your business to exist and prosper. These are external to your business.
What opportunities exist in your market, or in the environment, from
which you hope to benefit?
These opportunities reflect the
potential you can realize through implementing your marketing
strategies. Opportunities may be the result of market growth, lifestyle
changes, resolution of problems associated with current situations,
positive market perceptions about your business, or the ability to offer
greater value that will create a demand for your services. If it is
relevant, place time frames around the opportunities. Does it represent
an ongoing opportunity, or is it a window of opportunity? How critical
is your timing?
Opportunities are external to your business. If
you have identified “opportunities” that are internal to the
organization and within your control, you will want to classify them as
strengths.
Threats
What factors are potential
threats to your business? Threats include factors beyond your control
that could place your marketing strategy, or the business itself, at
risk. These are also external – you have no control over them, but you
may benefit by having contingency plans to address them if they should
occur.
A threat is a challenge created by an unfavorable trend or
development that may lead to deteriorating revenues or profits.
Competition – existing or potential – is always a threat. Other threats
may include intolerable price increases by suppliers, governmental
regulation, economic downturns, devastating media or press coverage, a
shift in consumer behavior that reduces your sales, or the introduction
of a “leap-frog” technology that may make your products, equipment, or
services obsolete. What situations might threaten your marketing
efforts? Get your worst fears on the table. Part of this list may be
speculative in nature, and still add value to your SWOT analysis.
It may be valuable to classify your threats according to their “seriousness” and “probability of occurrence.”
The
better you are at identifying potential threats, the more likely you
can position yourself to proactively plan for and respond to them. You
will be looking back at these threats when you consider your contingency
plans.
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