A SWOT analysis is a fast way of finding out where opportunities lie for your company and what requires extra attention. Using a table to list the strengths and weaknesses of your company, and setting them off against the opportunities and threats in the market, you get a clearer view of what you need to focus on. Doing a SWOT analysis is part of your market research and gives direction to your marketing strategy for the coming period. It is a summary of your internal and external analysis.

This article contains two sections. The first part outlines the 8 steps for doing a SWOT analysis, while the second part outlines SWOT Analysis questions.

Part A: 8 steps for doing a SWOT analysis

To conduct a SWOT analysis, the following steps are followed:

  1. Decide on the objective of your SWOT analysis

You should have a question or objective in mind to get the most out of your SWOT analysis. For example, you could use a SWOT analysis to help you decide if you should introduce a new product or service, or change your processes.

  1. Research your business, industry, and market

Before you begin the SWOT analysis you need to do some research to understand your business, industry, and market. Get a range of perspectives by talking to your staff, business partners, and clients. Also, conduct some market research and find out about your competitors.

  1. List your business's strengths

The first step is to identify and list what you think are your business's strengths. Examples could include strengths relating to employees, financial resources, your business location, cost advantages, and competitiveness.

At this stage of the SWOT analysis, the list does not need to be definitive. Any ideas and thoughts are encouraged. Step 7 is where the list is prioritized.

  1. List your business's weaknesses

List things in your business that you consider being weaknesses (i.e., that put your business at a disadvantage to others). Weaknesses could include an absence of new products or clients, staff absenteeism, a lack of intellectual property, declining market share, and distance to market.

Make sure you address the weaknesses raised in your SWOT analysis. Weaknesses can indicate how your business has grown over time. When you review the SWOT analysis after a year, you may notice that your weaknesses have been resolved. While you may find new weaknesses, the fact that the old ones are gone is a sign of progress.

  1. List potential opportunities for your business

Think about the possible external opportunities for your business. These are not the same as your internal strengths, and are not necessarily definite – an opportunity for one aspect of your business could be a threat to another (e.g., you may consider introducing a new product to keep up with consumer trends, but your competitors may already have a similar product). Keep this in mind, but for the SWOT analysis, the same item shouldn't be listed as both an opportunity and a threat.

Opportunities could include new technology, training programs, partnerships, a diverse marketplace, and a change of government.

  1. List potential threats to your business

List external factors that could be a threat or cause a problem for your business. Examples of threats could include rising unemployment, increasing competition, higher interest rates, and the uncertainty of global markets.

  1. Establish priorities from the SWOT

When you have completed the steps above, you will have 4 separate lists. Ideally, these lists can be displayed side-by-side so you can have an overall picture of how your business is running and what issues you need to address. You can then work out what issues are the most important and what can be dealt with later (i.e., develop 4 prioritized lists).

  1. Develop a strategy to address issues in the SWOT

Review your 4 prioritized lists by asking:

  • How can we use our strengths to take advantage of the opportunities identified?
  • How can we use these strengths to overcome the threats identified?
  • What do we need to do to overcome the identified weaknesses in order to take advantage of the opportunities?
  • How will we minimize our weaknesses to overcome the identified threats?

Once you have answered these questions and finalized your lists, you can now use the SWOT analysis to develop strategies for achieving your business goals.

Part B: SWOT analysis questions

Like feature-benefit matrices, there are several ways to conduct a SWOT analysis. However, regardless of how you choose to structure your analysis, we need to start by asking a series of questions. Here is a breakdown of the questions you should seek to answer when performing your SWOT analysis.

Strengths questions:

Let’s take our first element, Strengths, for example. To determine what your strengths are as an organization, you could begin by asking some of the following questions:

  1. What do your customers love about your company or product(s)?
  2. What does your company do better than other companies in your industry?
  3. What are your most positive brand attributes?
  4. What’s your unique selling proposition?
  5. What resources do you have at your disposal that your competitors do not?

By answering these questions, you’ll be in great shape to start identifying and listing your organization’s strengths.

Weakness questions:

We can use the same principle to determine your company’s weaknesses:

  • What do your customers dislike about your company or product(s)?
  • What problems or complaints are often mentioned in your negative reviews?
  • Why do your customers cancel or churn?
  • What could your company do better?
  • What are your most negative brand attributes?
  • What are the biggest obstacles/challenges in your current sales funnel?
  • What resources do your competitors have that you do not?

You may find that determining the strengths and weaknesses of your organization or project is considerably easier or takes less time than figuring out the opportunities and threats facing your company. This is because, as we said earlier, these are internal factors. External factors, on the other hand, may require more effort and rely upon more data, as these are often beyond your immediate sphere of influence.

Opportunities questions:

Identifying opportunities and threats may require you to conduct in-depth competitive intelligence research about what your competitors are up to or the examination of wider economic or business trends that could have an impact on your company. That’s not to say that opportunities and threats cannot be internal, however; you may discover opportunities and threats based solely on the strengths and weaknesses of your company. Some possible questions you could ask to identify potential opportunities might include:

  • How can we improve our sales/customer onboarding/customer support processes?
  • What kind of messaging resonates with our customers?
  • How can we further engage our most vocal brand advocates?
  • Are we allocating departmental resources effectively?
  • Is there a budget, tools, or other resources that we’re not leveraging to full capacity?
  • Which advertising channels exceeded our expectations – and why?

Threat questions:

When it comes to threats, you could certainly begin by asking a series of questions like those above. However, it’s often easy to come up with a list of potential threats facing your business or project without posing questions beforehand. This could include “branded” threats such as emerging or established competitors, broader threats such as changing regulatory environments and market volatility, or even internal threats such as high staff turnover that could threaten or derail current growth.

As you focus on the growth of your company, Primestart Research has a team of professionals dedicated to performing a SWOT analysis, competitor and market analysis. Contact us to get started.