If you went to business school, you remember the numerous SWOT analyses you had to put together throughout your college education.  At the time, they almost seemed too simplistic, but as you moved into your career and started a business you realized how invaluable this tool really was.

A SWOT analysis is a great way to prep for your yearly or even quarterly marketing plan.  It allows you to identify new opportunities while being aware of any potential threats to not only your marketing plan but your business as a whole.  It allows you to see the full picture before laying out your plan.

Understanding your Internal Analysis

Your internal analysis will include both your company’s strengths and weaknesses.  Your strengths are going to be the internal factors that make your product or service attractive to your target audience.  This is going to be your competitive advantage, those attributes that make you stand out from the competition.  Those key parts of your business that make you better. Understanding your strengths are important because you want to eventually use those to take advantage of opportunities.

Every company is going to have some weaknesses and it’s better to outline them and understand what they are than ignore them.  What are your company’s limitations?  What areas do your competitors do better than you in?  Your weaknesses are internal factors that hold your company back from being competitive in certain areas.  Once you understand what these weaknesses are, you have the opportunity to improve in those areas and maybe even turn them into strengths.  Knowing what is holding your company back can also help identify the opportunities your company is missing out on.

Your External Analysis – Opportunities & Threats

The opportunities and threats portion of the analysis are those external factors that you have no control over.  The opportunities are those factors that could open the door for new possibilities for your company.  Knowing what these are can help you focus your marketing strategy, your resources and strengths around achieving a goal you’ve created from them.

Did a new company recently enter your market with a similar product?  Do recent changes in technology threaten to make your product or service obsolete?  These are examples of threats your company may face.  Just like weaknesses, it’s important to understand what they are so that you have time to plan how your company is going to deal with them.  They have the potential to become opportunities if you know what they are and what factors make them a threat.

Turning your SWOT Analysis into a Marketing Plan

Now that you’ve completed your SWOT Analysis you have the base of your Marketing Plan complete.   You can use your SWOT Analysis to create an outline of each of the opportunities you want to pursue.  Once you have your opportunities outlined you can build out your strategy and the tactics you are going to use to achieve those goals.  Understanding your strengths and weaknesses can also guide which strategies and tactics your company should use.  For example, maybe social media marketing has proven to be something your company is great at leveraging.  This is going to be a tactic you want to work into your marketing strategy.  If one of the threats you found was a similar company entering the market, you need to make sure your marketing plan drives home your competitive advantage and clearly lets your target audience why you are still the best option for them.

Your SWOT Analysis is only the first step in completing your Marketing Plan.  You also need to understand who your product or service is targeting and how you can reach them.  Check out our June post on “How to Define your Target Audience” for some more information on that next step in your Marketing Plan.