This is the 4th part in a 9 part series on building your marketing plan.
Conducting a SWOT analysis is very helpful when creating your marketing plan. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.
Your strengths and weaknesses are internal factors and opportunities and threats are external.
You should conduct regular SWOT analysis for your business. How often depends on the business climate and the stage your business is at. For sure you should conduct a SWOT analysis annually, and I highly recommend it before making any big decisions.
Strengths
Start by analyzing what you are good at. Some of the questions you can ask are:
What do we do well?
What makes us unique?
What do outsiders see as strengths?
Weaknesses
This is not very easy to be assess. You need to take an honest appraisal of your weak points. Some of the questions for this stage would be:
Where have we failed our clients in the last year?
What are our internal process weak points?
Are there consistent complaints from customers or employees?
Opportunities
Opportunities are exciting. It is easy to get caught up in the day-to-day operations and fighting the daily fires that pop up around us. When this happens it can be hard to see the opportunities that are open to you. For this stage make sure you open your mind and don't limit yourself as you assess opportunities that could be open to you.
Are there any opportunities you have missed in the last year, and can you still take advantage?
What trends are happening in your industry?
What strengths can you take advantage of to create more opportunity?
Threats
The easy answer to threats come from competition, but don't forget to look at your industry as a whole to determine if there are other outside influences that could threaten the way you do business today. Some of the questions to ask here are:
What does my competition do better?
What does the economy look like?
Could regulation or technology affect your product or service?
After completing your SWOT analysis you can take the results and look at how you can address all these factors through your marketing campaigns.
4t Creative is here to help you develop your strategic marketing plan. Contact us to find out more about our consulting services.