SWOT analysis is a technique used by businesses to assess strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. SWOT analysis can be used in virtually every segment of a business's practices from sales to human resources. It is particularly effective when used to assess your company's marketing and promotional strategies. Whether your business is a one-person operation or a large corporation with thousands of employees, examining a business from these important angles can be beneficial to your company's overall health.
Identify the strengths of your company's marketing plan. These could include brand awareness or reach. Knowing your marketing plan's strengths gives you a foundation on which to build and establish marketing practices that utilize those strengths in the best ways possible.
Identify your marketing plan's weaknesses. Perhaps brand awareness is one of your marketing strengths but converting leads is a weak aspect of your marketing and promotion. Knowing this weakness, you can put your energy behind finding solutions to mitigate it.
Identify marketing and promotional opportunities that you have not yet explored. For example, perhaps your company already has a blog but has not yet utilized social media to engage your potential customers. Identifying this opportunity for new business gives you the ability to create actionable marketing objectives to capitalize on this different medium.
Identify threats to your marketing plan. A threat is anything that might make your marketing plan difficult or otherwise hard to achieve. Examples of potential marketing threats include competition, new technologies your company doesn't have the expertise to utilize or changing consumer preferences. Knowing which threats exist gives you the opportunity to alleviate those threats and position your company for future success.
Tip
Businesses should repeat a SWOT analysis frequently to ensure that its marketing perspective is current.
