Session 5: Performing a marketing SWOT analysis

In session 5 of A Marketing Podcast I discuss performing a marketing SWOT analysis as part of your marketing strategy. I walk through why your need to do one, and what you will get out of the process. I also walk you through developing each element of the SWOT and provide plenty of examples.

Session 5 Show Notes:

Recap of Previous Sessions (related to strategy development):

* [FREE DOWNLOAD] Small Business Marketing Strategy Template

* Session 2: What is a marketing strategy and why do I need one?

* Session 3: Establishing goals and objectives

* Session 4: Understanding and developing your target audiences

What’s the purpose of a Marketing SWOT Analysis

To identify marketing opportunities and marketing weaknesses, so that you can exploit opportunities and protect yourself from threats

This process will be instrumental in the development of your marketing mix.

If you’re not starting a new business and you’ve done marketing before the SWOT analysis, through no extra work, can be used as an Audit tool as well.

How is it different to a regular business SWOT analysis

A marketing SWOT is strictly concerned with marketing Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities and Threats

For example, the business strength of a long standing history – would be comparable to a marketing strength of a well established brand

We’re doing this to help us develop our marketing mix later in the strategy, so focusing on marketing SWOT’s is how the process and outcomes are different from a typical business SWOT.

Get your marketing strategy template that includes a SWOT template

Marketing SWOT Analysis: Strengths

Strengths are the elements of your marketing that you should lean on and use to position yourself, and your business above, your competitors

Internal and Helpful Elements

You should build your marketing mix to make use of as many strengths as possible

Compare yourself to your competitors and identify how you will stand out from them in your marketing

As a new business (no marketing yet):

You can develop strengths by thinking about your personal knowledge and experience and how that could apply to marketing for the business

Example: You’re starting a new personal coaching service for corporate 50+ year old males. You’ve worked in the corporate world for 5 years, and you know about the logistics and challenge to get to the gym. This knowledge is a strength.

Example 2: A less complicated example would be if you had 500+ connections on LinkedIn – the strength is a strong LinkedIn presence

As an audit tool (previous marketing performed):

When using the SWOT as an audit tool, think of the outcomes from your marketing and where you stood out from the crowd those are strengths

Example: if you were using  Facebook to drive traffic to an inbound marketing landing page, and you saw great results in terms of conversions- you could identify that you delivered a coherent message between platforms – your strength – understanding of your social community and how to communicate to them

As you can see, to develop and identify strengths from previous marketing, you have to do some research and find out exactly what it was that was successful or failed – this is auditing

A business strength example

as the last two were heavily focused on personal marketing strength here’s a bu...