Marketing SWOT Analysis
What is a marketing swot analysis? A marketing swot analysis, or a business swot analysis, is an acronym for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. A swot analysis is a process used by businesses to determine their posistion within the market place.
The following article should answer the question of what is a swot analysis. It has been contributed by Okwuduche Chinweike from Investment Accountants
What is SWOT Analysis
How to do it and why
The success of every business hinges on its ability to effectively and efficiently Market its products and services. Businesses strive on a daily basis to perfect their marketing strategies.
One way of doing this is to set up a marketing intelligent unit. The job of this unit is to gather both micro and macro environmental factors that affects the business’s marketing
activities.
This process of gathering the micro and macro environmental factors is known as marketing swot analysis
Marketing SWOT analysis seeks to define the relationship between a company’s marketing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and treats.
The basic aim of marketing SWOT analysis is to utilize the strengths and opportunities of a company and to minimize the adverse effects of the weaknesses and threats that a company might suffer.
Good marketing is the art of finding, developing and profiting from these opportunities and strengths and doing all you can to minimise the weaknesses and threats.
In this article are tips on how to get the best out of the strengths and opportunities and reduce the negative effects of the weaknesses and threats to the barest minimum.
Identify Strengths
and Opportunities
A company’s marketing strengths are those core values that the company has. This could be her workforce (ie the employees etc) or a range of sophisticated IT infrastructure.
Marketing opportunities are those obvious pressing needs that buyers have which a company is in the right footing or position to provide solutions to.
Tips
Supply things in short supply. A company can make huge money simply by tapping into areas that are underserved
Supply already existing things in a different and unique way. There is never a time that two things can be exactly the same, even though they may be created with the intention of serving the same audience. So, a little bit of research will open a companies ‘business eyes’ into areas that need little modification and improvement
Supply things no one has supplied before. Even though this is hard to achieve, companies can still make people (customers) feel that an entirely new product has been developed by carrying out an extensive modification, or by sampling people’s opinion
before manufacturing a product
Make your workforce happy and motivated at all time. This can be achieved by employing the appropriate incentives. Setting a realistic & reasonably challenging goal. This will help a company tap deeply into its core strengths
Put your assets (IT infrastructure) to their full use. This is achieved by training your staff in an on-going manner. Opportunities can come in different forms and marketers need to be open minded at all time so as to leverage on their strengths. Remember, opportunities on their own, are nothing if not tapped into
Eliminate Weaknesses
and Threats
Weaknesses are vulnerabilities that exist in a company’s business operations- marketing inclusive. The fact these vulnerabilities exist does not mean the company will have to live with it. Steps need to be taken to identify what those weaknesses are and corrective actions taken.
Threats are challenges posed by prevailing trends and circumstances. They could be economic, political, legal, technological or socio-cultural factor. These factors can lower
sales and ultimately profit if defensive actions are not taken.
Tips
Going into strategic alliance with other companies could supplement the weaknesses that exist in business operations.
Engage the service of a marketing consultant
Eliminate processes that do not add value. This is achieved through a process known as value-chain-analysis.
Carrying out a defensive campaign
Engaging in some environmental (green) marketing activities
In all, a SWOT analysis helps a company develop their marketing strategies, which in turn will translate into more sales and profits.
However, even the most-well-thought-out marketing strategy will fail if implemented poorly. So, care should be taken to implement findings from the marketing SWOT analysis exercise.
Remember however, that marketing strategies developed through a detailed marketing SWOT analysis is just one element out of the eight elements of today’s business success factors.
Okwuduche can be contacted via Investment Accountants
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