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SWOT Analysis

What is SWOT Analysis?

SWOT stands for S trengths, W eaknesses, O pportunities, and T hreats. A SWOT analysis is a framework to help assess and understand the internal and external forces that may create opportunities or risks for an organization.

Strengths Strengths may be any number of areas or characteristics where a company excels and has a competitive advantage over its peers. Advantages may be more qualitative in nature and therefore difficult to measure (like a great corporate culture, strong brand recognition, proprietary technology, etc.), or they may be more quantitative (like best-in- class margins, above-average inventory turnover, category-leading return on equity, etc.). Weaknesses Weaknesses are areas or characteristics where a business is at a competitive disadvantage relative to its peers. Like strengths, these can also be more qualitative or quantitative. Examples include inexperienced management, high employee turnover, low (or declining) margins, and high (or excessive) use of debt as a funding source.

Opportunities The “Opportunities” section should highlight external factors that represent potential growth or improvement areas for a business. Consider opportunities like a growing total addressable market (TAM), technological advancements that might help improve efficiency, or changes in social norms that are creating new markets or new sub- segments of existing markets. Threats Threats are external forces that represent risks to a business and its ability to operate. The categories tend to be similar to the “Opportunities” section, but directionally opposite. Consider examples like an industry in decline (which is the same as a decreasing TAM), technological innovation that could disrupt the existing business and its operations, or evolving social norms that make existing product offerings less attractive to a growing number of consumers.

How to do a SWOT analysis

You can get the full experience in our video below, and this entire post is dedicated to answering that question, but for simplicity’s sake, here’s how to do a SWOT analysis:

1. Gather your team together
2. Set up your quadrants—on a whiteboard or projector (perhaps using our template).
3. Start with strengths
4. Follow suit with weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
5. Organize the information collected into a neat and tidy document.
6. Send out to the team with notes.
7. Organize a second meeting to come up with action items and owners.

SWOT analysis questions

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.

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 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 quite 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.