When businesses of any size face challenges and unprecedented setbacks, it is possible that they may result in the business owner’s worst nightmare – closing down operations. This was something that happened to many businesses in the Pandemic and Post Pandemic Era. Even if your business stayed in operations, you may have identified places that you need to improve upon. These can be places where you can be better prepared or can improve your positioning and readiness for new and emerging realities, trends, and customer needs.
One of the best ways to identify these positions is by doing a SWOT analysis. If you’re new to SWOT analysis or to marketing in general, this blog will explain how to do it and why it’s beneficial for your business. Let’s get into it!
A Quick Disclaimer
A SWOT analysis can feel a little bit like an attack sometimes. You may find yourself taking some of the results personally. Remember that a SWOT analysis isn’t intended to be a criticism of your business or of you as a business owner. It’s not a moral judgment by any means; it’s simply a tool for you to use to take an honest look at your business and figure out what you can do to make it better. Some of it may hit you on a personal level, but that’s normal, and it’s a feeling that you have to push aside so that you can do what’s best for your business.
What is a SWOT analysis?
SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, and it’s an assessment tool used to help you identify the areas where your business is excelling and the places where you need to improve.
Why do you need to perform a SWOT?
A SWOT analysis is used to identify where a company is excelling and where they have room for improvement. This is typically used to assess the situation before a new strategy for growth or marketing is created. It’s a good idea to perform a SWOT analysis every six months to a year and anytime there’s a big change coming, like if suddenly people can’t visit your store anymore—how many of you had that problem recently? If you’re doing it properly, you’ll have new breakdowns every time and a new priority list to work on until the next hurdle.
Who should be involved in a SWOT analysis?
No SWOT, no matter how good it is, will be useful if you don’t have leadership on board to make the necessary changes or to at least make a plan to make the necessary changes. So, before you start, you’ll want to get buy-in from the leadership team. However, this shouldn’t be a top-down exercise. You want to get input from your customer service team, your marketing department, your product development, your product fulfillment and shipping department, and human resources. Be sure each department is represented, but don’t just choose the managers or the department heads. You want to hear from folks who are “in the weeds,” so to speak—those who are intimately familiar with the day-to-day processes and realities of the business.
How to perform a SWOT analysis
A SWOT analysis can be intimidating and confusing, so we recommend breaking it down into categories and focusing on one at a time. Here’s the order in which you can typically complete a SWOT analysis:
- Step 1 – Establish your question or your objective for your entire analysis
- Step 2 – Gather data, research competitors, and ask for employee or industry expert input. Step 3 – List your business’s strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats (or actually filling out the quadrants).
- Step 4 – Establish priorities for addressing your SWOT findings.
- Step 5 – Create a strategy and put your team members or your contractors into motion.
- Step 6 – re-evaluate and revisit your SWOT regularly.
So, let’s dive into step one. First, you need to establish your SWOT objective. Before you dive headlong into your SWOT analysis, you need to establish an objective or have a question that you’re answering. You need to do this to keep your analysis focused. It can be easy to fall down a rabbit hole of every single strength, every single weakness, every single opportunity, and threat. You may soon find yourself with dozens of ideas for unrelated things like marketing, creating new products, or expanding your services.
After you’ve established your objective or question, it’s time to gather data, research your competitors, and ask for input. You really can’t perform a SWOT analysis in a vacuum. You can try, but it probably won’t get you very far because you’re only relying on your personal perspectives and your knowledge. Getting input from others is crucial, and so is gathering hard data so your analysis is based on fact and measurables and not on hopes and dreams.
Next, you’ll want to research your competitors. What are your competitors really good at? What do customers love about them? What does their internet presence look like? What is their ordering and shipping experience like? You’ll need this information so that you can identify things you do better than your competitors and the things that you do worse than them. This is really important information for your positioning.
And you’ll need to ask for input, of course. Even if you’re the owner or you’ve worked in the industry for a long while, you don’t know everything there is to know about your business or the customer journey—that’s just a fact.
The Actual SWOT Analysis
You need to list your businesses strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Now we’re getting to the bits that you think of when you do a swot analysis. This is where we’ll do the majority of the work brainstorming ideas and identifying issues and potential solutions. Let’s go over what you’ll include in each section and some questions that you can ask yourself or your team if you’re feeling stuck at any point:
Strengths
Focus on those things that you do exceptionally well in this quadrant. This can be anything from culture to shipping times to product design.Try to include a mix of tangibles and intangibles here. Having good ideas is definitely a strength but that’s intangible. Having a lot of engagement on social media is definitely a strength and that’s a tangible thing that you can measure. Below are some questions to ask yourself if you’re struggling to come up with your strengths:
- What’s something our current customers compliment us on?
- What’s something we’ve been officially recognized for?
- What does our team do really well?
- What are we experts in and what makes us experts?
- When customers come to us from a competitor,what do they say is the reason?
Weaknesses
This quadrant is for things that you don’t do well. Look at this honestly and really listen to your employees and your customer feedback without taking it personally. Here are some questions to ask yourself if you’re struggling to come up with weaknesses:
- What negative feedback do we receive from customers most often?
- What stops prospects from becoming customers?
- What is delaying our processes internally?
- What are we doing inefficiently, is there a better way to do it?
- What resources, knowledge or skills do we lack now?
Opportunities
In this section, you should focus on things you’d be able to do if you just had one or two different circumstances (don’t get too head in the clouds). That’s not to say that you shouldn’t throw those ideas out there but it means you should focus on developing the ones that you can accomplish in a six month to one year time frame. Those big lofty goals can be added to your long term development plan. Work on this separately from your swat tasks as this also helps to keep things focused. Here are some questions to ask yourself if you’re struggling to come up with those opportunities:
- Are there any current or projected trends that we can connect to our business or product?
- Is there a skill set or person that we’re lacking?
- Could we create a role and hire someone to fill that and join the team?
- Can we promote from within?
- Who can we support?
- What can we do to support them?
Threats
This quadrant is for threats that could take business from you. These threats can be from competitors or industry changes, market shortages or big extenuating circumstances. You should list internal and external threats here because both play a large role in the health and success of your business. Let’s look at some questions ask yourself if you’re struggling to come up with those threats:
- Are there any big changes coming to the industry?
- Are there new competitors or products that could replace our business or our product?
- What supply chain issues have we had this year?
- Have we seen a decline in sales?
What’s next?
After you’ve filled out your quadrants and answered your questions, it’s time to establish priorities for addressing your SWOT findings. Now that your SWOT analysis is complete, you’ve got this list of areas that you’re killing it at and know what you need to do to improve upon.
But how do you actually get started? You’re going to need to create an action list and prioritize the items on that list. Then you delegate to employees or contractors to outsource or complete the task on the list.
So there you have it! A quick and easy guide on how to effectively put together a SWOT analysis for your company or Small Business. By conducting a SWOT analysis at regular intervals, it will paint a long term picture of the growth and pitfalls that your entity is facing. Be sure to follow our steps and ensure that you are honest about the capabilities of your business when conducting this tried and tested analysis.
