Strategically analyze your business. Find out what your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats are. Increase your strengths, minimize your weaknesses, exploit your opportunities and avoid the threats. Check out: http://www.business-plan.co.za

1. Marketing Plan - SWOT Analysis
Business Plan
Marketing Plan -
SWOT Analysis

2. Marketing Plan - SWOT Analysis
Business Plan
Strategically analyze your business. Find out what your strengths,
weaknesses, opportunities and threats are. Increase your strengths,
minimize your weaknesses, exploit your opportunities and avoid the
threats. Click hereyear again. And, no, I'm not referring to Christmas
It's that time of
The SWOT analysis which stands for Strengths, Weaknesses,
Opportunities and Threats is a critical feature of the overall marketing
plan and emerges from an audit of the marketing function. It should
cover the whole company and scrunch down into the detail of each
business segment and product. It effectively looks at the current
environment and business practices but if conducted properly, will
provide the management and owners of the company, with a clear
understanding of where the organisation is headed.
Too often the SWOT analysis process will end up as a jumbled list of
issues and the more effective ones will help identify needs, what
people buy and crucially help you to understand your competitors.
Once it is completed you will have a list of issues, it is then necessary
to consider the impact of those issues and craft a solution.
You will often see examples of a SWOT analysis drawn up as a matrix
in quadrants and if you've read the previous article you will know that

3. Marketing Plan - SWOT Analysis
Business Plan
these emanate from two key variables; internal (company) and
external factors.
Let's take just one of these quadrants - Threats - this one element
can then be further divided into another matrix which can be drawn
up to show the likelihood of it occurring along one axis and the level
of its impact on the other. In this way you end up being able to track
certain events and place them in one of the quadrants as follows;
High likelihood, major impact
High likelihood, low impact
Low likelihood, high impact
Low likelihood, low impact.
Where would you place your efforts, resources and money to combat
the threat? If it is both highly likely to happen and the effect on your
business would be great, then it's a sort of no brainer. Similarly,
although you need to be aware of the potential, you wouldn't need to
spend too much time worrying about or planning to avoid, an event in
the fourth quadrant.
Strategically analyze your business. Find out what your strengths,
weaknesses, opportunities and threats are. Increase your strengths,
minimize your weaknesses, exploit your opportunities and avoid the
threats. Click here

4. Marketing Plan - SWOT Analysis
Business Plan
Examples of the above can be anything you like; for example it could
be that you are a retailer and one of the major supermarket chains
applies for planning permission to open a store just down the road.
The local authority you know could be keen to attract this sort of
business to regenerate the area, so it's probable that this will go
ahead. The effect on your business could be catastrophic depending
on what your business is. So you really need to work out what to do
about it; open an on-line shop, stock more diverse items that may be
outside the normal range for the superstore, you may even consider
moving your business.
An example of low likelihood but high impact would be a fire so a
thorough risk assessment and preventative measures such as;
insurance, staff training, provision of suitable fire extinguishers, visit
from the local fire officer to advise you etc, would be necessary.
The same process should be completed for each of the SWOT
elements until the final analysis is completed. The end result will be a
three or four page summary of the critical findings, which will slot into
the marketing plan and provide a much clearer understanding of what
is needed to ensure the business survives into the future.

5. Marketing Plan - SWOT Analysis
Business Plan
Steve Ferns is a Chartered Marketer and member of the Chartered Institute of
Marketing. He has held senior management and board level posts in both UK listed
companies and local government over the past 20 years dealing with national and local
politicians and other stakeholders. Throughout his career he has specialised in
turnaround situations and business regeneration.
He has extensive experience in people management and along with marketing, advises
companies and individuals on UK employment practices and HR. He is a lay member of
the Employment Tribunals has lectured in business studies and been chair of governors
at a local school. His company website is http://tacticks.co.uk and provides more
information on some of the services offered which includes a free one hour
consultation.
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