Marketing Strategy - SWOT

You've had a brilliant business idea. But it's a bit early for you to commit your budget on an expensive market research survey or start to negotiate with investors over how much you’ll need to raise to get started. It’s probably even too soon to put together a comprehensive business plan.

What is going to be essential is a simple, clear, snapshot insight into what you can deliver upon and whether the marketplace will be sufficiently receptive to your offering. In short, what you need to do is to conduct a SWOT analysis.

A SWOT analysis is an established method of assessing an organisation’s viability by examining its (internal) strengths and weaknesses and matching these to its (external) opportunities and threats. Collecting facts and ideas together into one place may enable you to; see the bigger picture at a glance, identify all major factors affecting your organisation’s competitiveness and acts as a decision-making aid to formulating a cogent business plan and/or marketing strategy.

Each organisation will have its own specific SWOT profile and the process requires an iterative approach to reflect ever-changing internal and external relationships.

Internal examination

Firstly focus on the organisation itself – look at its culture and character. In the top left quadrant, fill in all the strengths of both your organisation and yourself (or workforce). Spell them out clearly and honestly – and don’t be modest[1].

Then move to the top right quadrant, filling in all your weaknesses or areas in which your business may be exposed. Be honest. It’s better to face the bad news now rather than see the business fall flat at a later date.

External Investigation

These are essentially macro environmental issues that surround and affect your organisation, product and position. On the bottom left quadrant, identify the positive market forces.

Now on the bottom right quadrant, list those factors that may threaten the success of your enterprise.

Now you have defined your SWOT profile and are now in a much stronger position to take an overview of your proposition.  Weigh up all the pros and cons of starting up a new enterprise and then take your decision as to whether you intend to proceed. If the business still strikes you as a viable proposition, then it’s time to establish a detailed business plan and get the ball rolling. If you decide that this particular opportunity doesn’t look good on paper any more, you can adapt the SWOT profile and target a different segment of the market.

This systematic approach, examining the external and internal factors while looking at both the negative and positive elements gives you a simple, rounded perspective on evaluating your business idea. Providing you continue to build on your strengths, minimise your weaknesses, seize your opportunities and counteract your threats, you will give your chances of setting up and running a successful business a tremendous boost.  

Contact your local Accredited Partner for more details.

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