For those of you that have been at the helm for awhile you’ve probably taken a few swings at the old faithful S.W.O.T. analysis – the strategic planning tool that gets you looking at your organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. As helpful as this tool can be at taking a macro view of our business, the results of this effort often lack the sophistication required to make definitive and tangible marketing decisions.
My hope here is to encourage you to dig deeper and step up to the plate ready to hit a home run so that you and your organization can make the right kind of changes moving forward.
So let’s do it! Let’s recap the S.W.O.T. analysis.
INTERNAL ENVIRONMENT
Strengths: Characteristics of an organization that give it a competitive advantage over others in the industry. For example, my rugged good looks and charm are strengths of Relevention 🙂
Weaknesses: Factors that put an organization at a disadvantage compared to similar entities. I think Microsoft’s ongoing failed attempts to up their “cool factor” or image only make Apple look that much better.
EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT
Opportunities: Possible strategic business moves to increase sales/profits and market share in the competitive landscape; basically, what/who can you leverage in order to achieve success. For example, can you diversify your product or service offering towards a growing trend, target a new untapped audience, offer a special promotion (or cross-promotion), or reduce costs along the value chain?
Threats: Environmental elements in an industry that pose as a potential source of trouble for a business. This could include a shift in consumer behaviour, new competitors, downturn in the economy, the Vancouver Canucks losing game seven in the Stanley Cup Finals, that kind of thing.
With some of those elements in mind it’s time to get serious. To do that I recommend you consider analyzing your organization via Porter’s Five Forces framework.