What is a SWOT Analysis
A SWOT analysis (SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) is a vary useful tool for understanding and decision-making for all sorts of situations in business and organisations.
A SWOT analysis is an excellent tool to get you started on your marketing plan.
There are a few ways to carry out your SWOT analysis and a quick search on the web will provide you with any number of pre made forms to guide you. However a simple way for the small business is to take an A4 piece of paper, draw one horizontal and one vertical line to divide it into 4 sections and put a heading on each section Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats.
Now under each heading enter the appropriate information in a list. It is important when doing SWOT analysis to make sure you are not viewing your business with rose tinted glasses it should be a warts and all exercise. Whilst it is an exercise you can carry out yourself SWOT analysis is an excellent tools for groups or brainstorming sessions.
Under Strengths you will list such things as any competitive advantage you may have, Experience in your workforce, Accreditation’s, Location, any unique selling points, Pricing advantages, Excellence in Processing, excellence in service and any other criteria you see as a strength in your business.
Under Weaknesses you list the criteria that you consider to be the weaknesses in your company, often the criteria in Weaknesses can be the same criteria as I listed in Strengths, but you are lacking in these. For instance your workforce may be new and require training.
Opportunities will be such items as new technologies you have, new contracts you have in your pipeline, increase in your production capabilities. If you have identified a weakness such as the workforce being new and needing training, an opportunity is to train them in the correct way.
Threats will most often be external criteria such as change to economic situation, exchange rates, new technology coming to market, loss of key staff etc etc.
Once you have completed your SWOT analysis you can use the information to help you form your marketing plan. For instance you may identify a non responsive website as a weakness in your business, and part of your marketing plan will be to find out the best way to make your website a responsive one.
You can find out more about SWOT Analysis here
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