By now, you'll have built up a good picture of how your business is performing, and have a clearer idea of the opportunities and threats out there in the market place.
Identifying and noting your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats is the first step. The second step is to maintain and enhance your strengths, address your weaknesses, capitalise or exploit your opportunities and seek to minimise the impact of threats to your business.
The SWOT analysis tool is a very useful way of capturing these critical findings and making sense of them. Use it to identify the most important factors for your business.
For example, in your competitive analysis, you may have found that your competitors are beating you on better service, so service training may be an action point for the year ahead. These notes can feed into your action plan.
A SWOT analysis should be completed every few months, and the results should change with each revision to represent how you are addressing internal weaknesses, maintaining your strengths, and exploiting your opportunities.
Study the SWOT analysis carefully – it contains many of the answers to your marketing strategy and future direction.
Key questions to ask while carrying out a SWOT analysis
Strengths
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Weaknesses
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Advantages of your product / service offering?
Competitive advantages?
USPs (unique selling points)? Experience, knowledge, data? Financial reserves?
Marketing – Brand Awareness?
Web presence and activity?
Social-networking expertise?
E-marketing activity?
Distribution?
Customer base?
Location?
Price, value, quality?
Accreditations, qualifications, certifications, awards?
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Disadvantages of your product / service offering?
Gaps in capabilities?
Lack of competitive strength?
Poor web presence?
Absence of social networking?
Lack of e-marketing skills? Reputation?
Financials?
Known vulnerabilities?
Timescales, deadlines and pressures? Cashflow?
Morale, commitment, leadership? Accreditations?
Processes and systems?
Management expertise, succession? Loss of key staff?
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Opportunities
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Threats
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Market developments?
Competitors’ vulnerabilities?
Industry or lifestyle trends?
Technology development and innovation?
Social networking opportunities?
E-commerce potential?
Global influences?
New markets?
Niche target markets?
Business and product development?
Information and research?
Partnerships, agencies, distribution?
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Legislative/Regulatory effects?
Environmental effects?
IT developments?
Competitor intentions?
Market demand?
New technologies, services, ideas?
Vital contracts and partners?
Sustainable financial backing? Economy - home, abroad? Seasonality, weather effects?
Untrained staff?
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